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Why Do You Need This New Edition?
1. America: Past and Present (tenth edition) is now tied more closely than ever to the innovative website, MyHistoryLab , which helps you learn more in your history course ( www.myhistorylab.com ). MyHistoryLab icons connect the main narrative in each chapter of the book to a powerful array of MyHistoryLab resources, including primary source documents, analytical video segments, interactive maps, and more. A MyHistoryLab Media Assignments feature now appears at the end of each chapter, capping off the study resources for the chapter. MyHistoryLab also includes both eText and audiobook versions of America: Past and Present , so that you can read or listen to your textbook any time you have access to the Internet.
2. America: Past and Present (tenth edition) now uses the latest New MyHistoryLab , which offers the most advanced Study Plan ever. You get personalized study plans for each chapter with content arranged from less complex thinking—like remembering facts—to more complex critical thinking—like understanding connections in history and analyzing primary sources. Assessments and learning applications in the Study Plan link you directly to the America: Past and Present eText for reading and review.
3. America: Past and Present (tenth edition) includes several new study aids designed to help you improve your understanding of each chapter. Learning Objective Questions now appear at the head of each chapter to help you focus on the most important information. Each chapter closes with a complete Study Resources section, containing a Time Line, Chapter Review, Key Terms and Defi nitions, and Critical Thinking Questions.
4. America: Past and Present (tenth edition) contains stronger coverage of African American history. A new feature essay in Chapter 16 addresses the short-lived order of “40 Acres and a Mule” for every freedman. A major new section in Chapter 19 describes the spread of Jim Crow in both the South and North after Reconstruction.
5. America: Past and Present (tenth edition) includes a new feature essay in Chapter 18 on the rise of the department store in the late nineteenth century and how this affected women and changed the way many Americans shopped.
6. A new feature essay in Chapter 32 discusses why global warming has become such a controversial issue in the United States and how Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has affected this dispute.
7. Chapter 32 has also been updated to provide a full account of the election of 2008 and the Obama administration through 2011.
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AMERICA Past and Present
VOLUME 2
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AMERICA Past and Present
VOLUME 2
Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montréal Toronto
Delhi Mexico City Saõ Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo
T E N T H E D I T I O N
ROBERT A. DIVINE University of Texas
T. H. BREEN Northwestern University
R. HAL WILLIAMS Southern Methodist University
ARIELA J. GROSS University of Southern California
H. W. BRANDS University of Texas
◾ ◾ ◾
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Combined Volume: ISBN-10: 0-205-90520-X ISBN-13: 978-0-205-90520-1 Instructor Review Copy: ISBN-10: 0-205-90632-X ISBN-13: 978-0-205-90632-1 Volume 1: ISBN-10: 0-205-90519-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-205-90519-5 Volume 1 A la carte: ISBN-10: 0-205-91008-4 ISBN-13: 978-0-205-91008-3 Volume 2: ISBN-10: 0-205-90547-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-205-90547-8 Volume 2 A la carte: ISBN-10: 0-205-91009-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-205-91009-0
Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on appropriate page within text or on pages C1–C2.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data America, past and present / Robert A. Divine ... [et al.].—10th ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-205-90520-1 (combined volume)—ISBN 978-0-205-90519-5 (volume 1)—ISBN 978-0-205-90547-8 (volume 2) 1. United States—History—Textbooks. I. Divine, Robert A. E178.1.A4894 2013 973—dc23 2012018891
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vii
Chapter 16 The Agony of Reconstruction
Chapter 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire
Chapter 18 The Industrial Society
Chapter 19 Toward an Urban Society, 1877–1900
Chapter 20 Political Realignments in the 1890s
Chapter 21 Toward Empire
Chapter 22 The Progressive Era
Chapter 23 From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism
Chapter 24 The Nation at War
Chapter 25 Transition to Modern America
Chapter 26 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal
Chapter 27 America and the World, 1921–1945
Chapter 28 The Onset of the Cold War
Chapter 29 Affl uence and Anxiety
Chapter 30 The Turbulent Sixties
Chapter 31 The Rise of a New Conservatism, 1969–1988
Chapter 32 Into the Twenty-fi rst Century, 1989–2012
Brief Contents
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Maps, Figures, and Tables xxi Features xxiii About the Authors xxvi Supplements xxviii
Chapter 16
THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION 366 Robert Smalls and Black Politicians During Reconstruction 366
The President vs. Congress 368 Wartime Reconstruction 368 Andrew Johnson at the Helm 369 Congress Takes the Initiative 371 Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted 372 The Impeachment Crisis 373
Reconstructing Southern Society 374 Reorganizing Land and Labor 374 Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery? 376 Republican Rule in the South 376 Claiming Public and Private Rights 377
Retreat from Reconstruction 379 Rise of the Money Question 379 Final Efforts of Reconstruction 379 A Reign of Terror Against Blacks 380 Spoilsmen vs. Reformers 381
Reunion and the New South 382 The Compromise of 1877 382 “Redeeming” a New South 383 The Rise of Jim Crow 386
Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfi nished Revolution” 387
◾ FEATURE ESSAY “Forty Acres and a Mule” 384
Chapter 17
THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE 390 Lean Bear’s Changing West 390
Beyond the Frontier 391
Crushing the Native Americans 392 Life of the Plains Indians 393 “As Long as Waters Run”: Searching for an Indian Policy 394 Final Battles on the Plains 395 The End of Tribal Life 396
ix
Contents
Settlement of the West 400 Men and Women on the Overland Trail 400 Land for the Taking 401 Territorial Government 402 The Spanish-Speaking Southwest 403
The Bonanza West 403 The Mining Bonanza 403 Gold from the Roots Up: The Cattle Bonanza 405 Sodbusters on the Plains: The Farming Bonanza 407 New Farming Methods 408 Discontent on the Farm 409 The Final Fling 410
Conclusion: The Meaning of the West 410
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West 398
Chapter 18
THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY 414 A Machine Culture 414
Industrial Development 416
An Empire on Rails 416 “Emblem of Motion and Power” 416 Building the Empire 418 Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines 419 Rails Across the Continent 419 Problems of Growth 420
An Industrial Empire 421 Carnegie and Steel 421 Rockefeller and Oil 423 The Business of Invention 424
The Sellers 428
The Wage Earners 428 Working Men, Working Women, Working Children 428
Culture of Work 430 Labor Unions 431 Labor Unrest 432
Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefi ts and Costs 435
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Shopping in a New Society 426
Chapter 19
TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900 438 The Overcrowded 438
The Lure of the City 439 Skyscrapers and Suburbs 440 Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding 441
x Contents
Contents xi
Strangers in a New Land 441 Immigrants and the City 444 The House That Tweed Built 446
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 447 Manners and Mores 448 Leisure and Entertainment 448 Changes in Family Life 449 Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness among Women 450 Educating the Masses 450 Higher Education 451
The Spread of Jim Crow 454
The Stirrings of Reform 455 Progress and Poverty 455 New Currents in Social Thought 456 The Settlement Houses 457 Crisis in Social Welfare 458
Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society 459
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears 442
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY Plessy v. Ferguson : The Shaping of Jim Crow 460
Chapter 20
POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s 466 Hardship and Heartache 466
Politics of Stalemate 468 The Party Deadlock 468 Experiments in the States 468 Reestablishing Presidential Power 469
Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress 470 Tariffs, Trusts, and Silver 470 The 1890 Elections 472
The Rise of the Populist Movement 472 The Farm Problem 472 The Fast-Growing Farmers’ Alliance 473 The People’s Party 474
The Crisis of the Depression 476 The Panic of 1893 476 Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike 476 The Miners of the Midwest 477 A Beleaguered President 478 Breaking the Party Deadlock 478
Changing Attitudes 479 “Everybody Works But Father” 479 Changing Themes in Literature 480
The Presidential Election of 1896 481 The Mystique of Silver 481
The Republicans and Gold 481 The Democrats and Silver 484 Campaign and Election 484
The McKinley Administration 485
Conclusion: A Decade’s Dramatic Changes 486
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 482
Chapter 21
TOWARD EMPIRE 490 Roosevelt and the Rough Riders 490
America Looks Outward 492 Catching the Spirit of Empire 492 Reasons for Expansion 492 Foreign Policy Approaches, 1867–1900 493 The Lure of Hawaii and Samoa 495 The New Navy 496
War with Spain 497 A War for Principle 498 “A Splendid Little War” 500 “Smoked Yankees” 501 The Course of the War 502
Acquisition of Empire 503 The Treaty of Paris Debate 504 Guerrilla Warfare in the Philippines 505 Governing the Empire 506 The Open Door 507
Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain 510
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The 400 Million Customers of China 508
Chapter 22
THE PROGRESSIVE ERA 514 Muckrakers Call for Reform 514
The Changing Face of Industrialism 515 The Innovative Model T 516 The Burgeoning Trusts 517 Managing the Machines 518
Society’s Masses 519 Better Times on the Farm 519 Women and Children at Work 520 The Niagara Movement and the NAACP 521 “I Hear the Whistle”: Immigrants in the Labor Force 522
xii Contents
Contents xiii
Confl ict in the Workplace 524 Organizing Labor 525 Working with Workers 527 Amoskeag 530
A New Urban Culture 530 Production and Consumption 530 Living and Dying in an Urban Nation 530 Popular Pastimes 531 Experimentation in the Arts 532
Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform 533
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Triangle Fire 528
Chapter 23
FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM 536 The Republicans Split 536
The Spirit of Progressivism 537 The Rise of the Professions 539 The Social-Justice Movement 539 The Purity Crusade 540 Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights 540 A Ferment of Ideas: Challenging the Status Quo 542
Reform in the Cities and States 544 Interest Groups and the Decline of Popular Politics 544 Reform in the Cities 544 Action in the States 545
The Republican Roosevelt 546 Busting the Trusts 547 “Square Deal” in the Coalfi elds 547
Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height 548 Regulating the Railroads 548 Cleaning up Food and Drugs 548 Conserving the Land 549
The Ordeal of William Howard Taft 550 Party Insurgency 550 The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair 551 Taft Alienates the Progressives 551 Differing Philosophies in the Election of 1912 552
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom 553 The New Freedom in Action 554 Wilson Moves Toward the New Nationalism 554
Conclusion: The Fruits of Progressivism 558
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer 556
Chapter 24
THE NATION AT WAR 562 The Sinking of the Lusitania 562
A New World Power 564 “I Took the Canal Zone” 564 The Roosevelt Corollary 565 Ventures in the Far East 566 Taft and Dollar Diplomacy 566
Foreign Policy Under Wilson 566 Conducting Moral Diplomacy 567 Troubles Across the Border 568
Toward War 568 The Neutrality Policy 569 Freedom of the Seas 569 The U-Boat Threat 570 “He Kept Us Out of War” 570 The Final Months of Peace 571
Over There 572 Mobilization 572 War in the Trenches 576
Over Here 577 The Conquest of Convictions 577 A Bureaucratic War 578 Labor in the War 579
The Treaty of Versailles 582 A Peace at Paris 582 Rejection in the Senate 584
Conclusion: Postwar Disillusionment 585
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Measuring the Mind 574
Chapter 25
TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA 588 Wheels for the Millions 588
The Second Industrial Revolution 589 The Automobile Industry 590 Patterns of Economic Growth 590 Economic Weaknesses 591
City Life in the Jazz Age 592 Women and the Family 593 The Roaring Twenties 593 The Flowering of the Arts 595
The Rural Counterattack 598 The Fear of Radicalism 599
xiv Contents
Prohibition 600 The Ku Klux Klan 600 Immigration Restriction 602 The Fundamentalist Challenge 603
Politics of the 1920s 603 Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover 603 Republican Policies 605 The Divided Democrats 605 The Election of 1928 606
Conclusion: The Old and the New 607
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism 596
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY The Scopes “Monkey” Trial: Contesting Cultural Differences 608
Chapter 26
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL 614 The Struggle Against Despair 614
The Great Depression 614 The Great Crash 615 Effect of the Depression 616
Fighting the Depression 619 Hoover and Voluntarism 619 The Emergence of Roosevelt 620 The Hundred Days 621 Roosevelt and Recovery 622 Roosevelt and Relief 623
Roosevelt and Reform 624 Challenges to FDR 624 Social Security 624 Labor Legislation 627
Impact of the New Deal 627 Rise of Organized Labor 627 The New Deal Record on Help to Minorities 628 Women at Work 629
End of the New Deal 630 The Election of 1936 630 The Supreme Court Fight 630 The New Deal in Decline 631
Conclusion: The New Deal and American Life 631
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice 632
Contents xv
Chapter 27
AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945 638 A Pact Without Power 638
Retreat, Reversal, and Rivalry 639 Retreat in Europe 640 Cooperation in Latin America 640 Rivalry in Asia 641
Isolationism 641 The Lure of Pacifi sm and Neutrality 642 War in Europe 642
The Road to War 644 From Neutrality to Undeclared War 644 Showdown in the Pacifi c 645
Turning the Tide Against the Axis 647 Wartime Partnerships 647 Halting the German Blitz 648 Checking Japan in the Pacifi c 648
The Home Front 649 The Arsenal of Democracy 649 A Nation on the Move 650 Win-the-War Politics 653
Victory 654 War Aims and Wartime Diplomacy 655 Triumph and Tragedy in the Pacifi c 656
Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War 660
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Face of the Holocaust 658
Chapter 28
THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR 664 The Potsdam Summit 664
The Cold War Begins 666 The Division of Europe 666 Withholding Economic Aid 666 The Atomic Dilemma 668
Containment 668 The Truman Doctrine 669 The Marshall Plan 670 The Western Military Alliance 670 The Berlin Blockade 670
The Cold War Expands 671 The Military Dimension 671 The Cold War in Asia 672 The Korean War 673
xvi Contents
The Cold War at Home 674 Truman’s Troubles 674 Truman Vindicated 675 The Loyalty Issue 676 McCarthyism in Action 677 The Republicans in Power 678
Eisenhower Wages the Cold War 680 Entanglement in Indochina 680 Containing China 681 Covert Actions 684 Waging Peace 684
Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War 685
◾ FEATURE ESSAY America Enters the Middle East 682
Chapter 29
AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY 688 Levittown: The Flight to the Suburbs 688
The Postwar Boom 690 Postwar Prosperity 690 Life in the Suburbs 691
The Good Life? 692 Areas of Greatest Growth 692 Critics of the Consumer Society 692
Farewell to Reform 696 Truman and the Fair Deal 696 Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism 697
The Struggle over Civil Rights 698 Civil Rights as a Political Issue 699 Desegregating the Schools 700 The Beginnings of Black Activism 701
Conclusion: Restoring National Confi dence 703
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Reaction to Sputnik 694
Chapter 30
THE TURBULENT SIXTIES 706 Kennedy versus Nixon: The First Televised Presidential Candidate Debate 706
Kennedy Intensifi es the Cold War 708 Flexible Response 709 Crisis over Berlin 709 Containment in Southeast Asia 709 Containing Castro: The Bay of Pigs Fiasco 710 Containing Castro: The Cuban Missile Crisis 711
Contents xvii
The New Frontier at Home 713 The Congressional Obstacle 713 Economic Advance 713 Moving Slowly on Civil Rights 714 “I Have a Dream” 716 The Supreme Court and Reform 717
“Let Us Continue” 717 Johnson in Action 718 The Election of 1964 718 The Triumph of Reform 720
Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War 721 The Vietnam Dilemma 724 Escalation 725 Stalemate 726
Years of Turmoil 726 The Student Revolt 726 Protesting the Vietnam War 727 The Cultural Revolution 728 “Black Power” 728 Ethnic Nationalism 729 Women’s Liberation 730
The Return of Richard Nixon 731 Vietnam Undermines Lyndon Johnson 731 The Democrats Divide 731 The Republican Resurgence 732
Conclusion: The End of an Era 733
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration 722
Chapter 31
THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988 736 Reagan and America’s Shift to the Right 736
The Tempting of Richard Nixon 738 Pragmatic Liberalism 738 Détente 739 Ending the Vietnam War 739 The Watergate Scandal 741
The Economy of Stagfl ation 742 War and Oil 742 The Great Infl ation 743 The Shifting American Economy 744 A New Environmentalism 744
xviii Contents
Private Lives, Public Issues 745 The Changing American Family 745 Gains and Setbacks for Women 745 The Gay Liberation Movement 746 The AIDS Epidemic 748
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate 749 The Ford Administration 749 Carter and American Malaise 749 Troubles Abroad 751 The Collapse of Détente 751
The Reagan Revolution 752 The Election of 1980 752 Cutting Taxes and Spending 753 Unleashing the Private Sector 754
Reagan and the World 755 Challenging the “Evil Empire” 755 Confrontation in Central America 755 More Trouble in the Middle East 758 Trading Arms for Hostages 758 Reagan the Peacemaker 764
Conclusion: Challenging the New Deal 764
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Christian Right 756
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights 760
Chapter 32
INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012 768 “This Will Not Stand”: Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era 768
The First President Bush 770 Republicans at Home 770 Ending the Cold War 771 The Gulf War 772
The Changing Faces of America 774 A People on the Move 774 The Revival of Immigration 774 Emerging Hispanics 775 Advance and Retreat for African Americans 776 Americans from Asia and the Middle East 776 Assimilation or Diversity? 777
Contents xix
The New Democrats 778 The Election of 1992 779 Clinton and Congress 779 Scandal in the White House 780
Clinton and the World 781 Old Rivals in New Light 782 To Intervene or Not 782 The Balkan Wars 782
Republicans Triumphant 783 The Disputed Election of 2000 783 George W. Bush at Home 784 The War on Terror 785 Widening the Battlefi eld 788 Bush Reelected 790
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials 791 The Great Recession 791 New Challenges and Old 792 Doubting the Future 793
Conclusion: The End of the American Future—or Not? 794
◾ FEATURE ESSAY An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming 786
xx Contents
Maps, Figures, and Tables
MAPS PAGE
373 Reconstruction 383 Election of 1876 392 Physiographic Map of the United States 394 Native Americans in the West: Major Battles and
Reservations 405 Mining Regions of the West 406 Cattle Trails 409 Agricultural Land Use in the 1880s 418 Federal Land Grants to Railroads as of 1871 420 Railroads, 1870 and 1890 433 Labor Strikes, 1870–1900 445 Foreign-Born Population, 1890 470 Election of 1888 475 Election of 1892 485 Election of 1896 496 Hawaiian Islands 503 American Empire, 1900 506 World Colonial Empires, 1900 520 Irrigation and Conservation in the West to 1917 541 “Changing Lives of American Women, 1880–1930” 549 National Parks and Forests 553 Election of 1912 565 The Panama Canal Zone 567 Activities of the United States in the Caribbean,
1898–1930 573 European Alliances and Battlefronts, 1914–1917 576 The Western Front: U.S. Participation, 1918 580 African American Migration Northward, 1910–1920 584 Europe after the Treaty of Versailles, 1919 606 Election of 1928 620 Election of 1932 622 The Tennessee Valley Authority 623 The Dust Bowl 650 World War II in the Pacifi c 652 Japanese American Internment Camps 656 World War II in Europe and North Africa 667 Europe after World War II 669 Marshall Plan Aid to Europe, 1948–1952
PAGE
673 The Korean War, 1950–1953 675 Election of 1948 698 The Interstate Highway System 708 Election of 1960 721 African American Voter Registration before and after
Passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 724 Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War 732 Election of 1968 741 Election of 1972 746 Voting on the Equal Rights Amendment 752 Election of 1980 758 Trouble Spots in Central America and the Caribbean 759 Trouble Spots in the Middle East 772 The End of the Cold War 779 Election of 1992 780 Election of 1996 783 The Breakup of Yugoslavia/Civil War in Bosnia 784 Election of 2000 791 Election of 2004 792 Election of 2008
FIGURES PAGE
419 Railroad Construction, 1830–1920 421 International Steel Production, 1880–1914 424 Patents Issued by Decade, 1850–1899 444 Immigration to the United States, 1870–1900 447 Urban and Rural Population, 1870–1900 (in millions) 473 Selected Commodity Prices 517 Business Consolidations (Mergers), 1895–1905 523 Immigration to the United States, 1900–1920
(by Area of Origin) 524 Mexican Immigration to the United States, 1900–1920 527 Labor Union Membership, 1897–1920 544 Voter Participation in Presidential Elections, 1876–1920 573 U.S. Losses to the German Submarine Campaign,
1916–1918 616 U.S. Unemployment, 1929–1942 620 Bank Failures, 1929–1933 722 The Second Great Migration: A Theoretical Example 725 U.S. Troop Levels in Vietnam (as of Dec. 31 of Each Year)
743 The Oil Shocks: Price Increases of Crude Oil and Gasoline, 1973–1985
xxi
TABLES PAGE
372 Reconstruction Amendments, 1865–1870 379 The Election of 1868 382 The Election of 1872 455 Supreme Court Decisions Affecting Black Civil Rights,
1875–1900 469 The Election of 1880 470 The Election of 1884 486 The Election of 1900 548 The Election of 1904 550 The Election of 1908 583 Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, 1918: Success
and Failure in Implementation
PAGE
585 The Election of 1920 606 The Election of 1924 621 Presidential Voting in Chicago by Ethnic
Groups, 1924–1932 (Percentage Democratic) 630 The Election of 1936 634 Major New Deal Legislation and Agencies 645 The Election of 1940 654 The Election of 1944 678 The Election of 1952 697 The Election of 1956 720 The Election of 1964 751 The Election of 1976 759 The Election of 1984 770 The Election of 1988 794 The Election of 2008
xxii Maps, Figures, and Tables
xxiii
FEATURE ESSAYS PAGE
384 “Forty Acres and a Mule” 398 Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West 426 Shopping in a New Society 442 Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears 482 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 508 The 400 Million Customers of China 528 The Triangle Fire 556 Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business
Pioneer 574 Measuring the Mind 596 Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black
Nationalism 632 Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice
PAGE
658 The Face of the Holocaust 682 America Enters the Middle East 694 The Reaction to Sputnik 722 Unintended Consequences: The Second
Great Migration 756 The Christian Right 786 An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding
Global Warming
LAW AND SOCIETY ESSAYS PAGE
460 Plessy v. Ferguson: The Shaping of Jim Crow 608 The Scopes “Monkey” Trial: Contesting
Cultural Differences 760 Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s
Reproductive Rights
Features
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xxv
America: Past and Present (tenth edition) is now tied more closely than ever to the innovative website, MyHistoryLab , which helps stu- dents learn more in their history course ( www.myhistorylab.com ). MyHistoryLab icons connect the main narrative in each chapter of the book to a powerful array of MyHistoryLab resources, including primary source documents, analytical video segments, interactive maps, and more. A MyHistoryLab Media Assignments feature now appears at the end of each chapter, capping off the study resources for the chapter. MyHistoryLab also includes both eText and audio- book versions of America: Past and Present , so that students can read or listen to their textbook any time they have access to the Internet.
America: Past and Present (tenth edition) now uses the latest New MyHistoryLab , which off ers the most advanced Study Plan ever. Students get personalized study plans for each chapter, with content arranged from less complex thinking—like remembering facts—to more complex critical thinking—like understanding connections in history and analyzing primary sources. Assessments and learning applications in the Study Plan link directly to the America: Past and Present eText for reading and review.
America: Past and Present (tenth edition) includes several new study aids designed to help improve student understanding
of each chapter. Learning Objective Questions now appear at the head of each chapter to help focus attention on the most important information. Each chapter closes with a complete Study Resources section, containing a Time Line, Chapter Review, Key Terms and Defi nitions, and Critical Th inking Questions.
America: Past and Present (tenth edition) contains stronger coverage of African American history. A new feature essay in Chapter 16 addresses the short-lived order of “40 Acres and a Mule” for every freedman. A major new section in Chapter 19 describes the spread of Jim Crow in both the South and North aft er Reconstruction.
America: Past and Present (tenth edition) includes a new fea- ture essay in Chapter 18 on the rise of the department store in the late nineteenth century and how this aff ected women and changed the way many Americans shopped.
A new feature essay in Chapter 32 discusses why global warming has become such a controversial issue in the United States and how Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has aff ected this dispute.
Chapter 32 has also been updated to provide a full account of the election of 2008 and the Obama administration through 2011.
New to the Tenth Edition Volume 2
ROBERT A. DIVINE
Robert A. Divine, George W. Littlefi eld Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1954. A specialist in American diplo- matic history, he taught from 1954 to 1996 at the University of Texas, where he was honored by both the student associ- ation and the graduate school for teach-
ing excellence. His extensive published work includes Th e Illusion of Neutrality (1962); Second Chance : Th e Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (1967); and Blowing on the Wind (1978). His most recent work is Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (2000), a comparative analysis of twentieth-century American wars. He is also the author of Eisenhower and the Cold War (1981) and editor of three volumes of essays on the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. His book, Th e Sputnik Challenge (1993), won the Eugene E. Emme Astronautical Literature Award for 1993. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and has given the Albert Shaw Lectures in Diplomatic History at Johns Hopkins University.
T. H. BREEN
T. H. Breen, William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University, received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. He has taught at Northwestern since 1970. Breen’s major books include The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (1974); Puritans and Adventurers:
Change and Persistence in Early America (1980); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); and, with Stephen Innes of the University of Virginia, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1980). His Imagining the Past (1989) won the 1990 Historic Preservation Book Award. Marketplace of Revolution received the Colonial Wars Book Award for the “best” book on the American Revolution in 2004. In addition to receiving sev- eral awards for outstanding teaching at Northwestern, Breen has been the recipient of research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. He has served as the Fowler
Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University (1987– 1988); the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University (1990–1991); the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (2000–2001); and was a recipient of the Humboldt Prize (Germany). His most recent book is American Insurgents: Th e Revolution of the People Before Independence (2010).
R. HAL WILLIAMS
R. Hal Williams is a professor of history at Southern Methodist University. He received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1963 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968. His books include The Democratic Party and California Politics, 1880–1896 (1973), Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (1978), and Th e Manhattan Project:
A Documentary Introduction to the Atomic Age (1990). A specialist in American political history, he taught at Yale University from 1968 to 1975 and came to SMU in 1975 as chair of the Department of History. From 1980 to 1988, he served as dean of Dedman College, the School of Humanities and Sciences, at SMU, where he is currently dean of Research and Graduate Studies. In 1980, he was a visiting professor at University College, Oxford University. Williams has received grants from the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he has served on the Texas Committee for the Humanities. He has recently completed Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896 , which published in 2010. Hal Williams thanks Linda and Lise Williams for support at crucial moments; Susan Harper; Billie Stovall, the core of SMU’s Interlibrary Loan sys- tem; and above all, Peggy Varghese who helped in every way.
ARIELA J. GROSS
Ariela J. Gross is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Double Character: Slavery and Mastery in the Antebellum Southern Courtroom (2000) and What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (2008), winner of the
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About the Authors
2009 Willard Hurst Prize for sociolegal history from the Law and Society Association. She has also published numerous law review articles and book chapters, including most recently, “When Is the Time of Slavery? Th e History of Slavery in Contemporary Legal and Political Argument,” in the California Law Review . She received her B.A. from Harvard University, her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and her Ph.D. from Stanford University, and she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship at the Huntington Library, and a Frederick J. Burkhardt Fellowship from the American Council for Learned Societies. She has been a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University and the École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales.
H. W. BRANDS
H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of numerous works of history and international affairs, including The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (1993), Into the Labyrinth: Th e United States and the Middle East (1994), The
Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (1995), TR: The Last Romantic (a biography of Theodore Roosevelt) (1997), What America Owes the World: Th e Struggle for the Soul of Foreign Policy (1998), Th e First American: Th e Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (2000), Th e Strange Death of American Liberalism (2001), Th e Age of Gold: Th e California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (2002), Woodrow Wilson (2003), Andrew Jackson (2005), Traitor to His Class: Th e Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (2008), and American Colossus: Th e Triumph of Capitalism, 1865–1900 (2010). His writing has received popular and critical acclaim; several of his books have been bestsellers, and Th e First American and Traitor to His Class were fi nalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures frequently across North America and in Europe. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times , the Wall Street Journal , the Washington Post , the Los Angeles Times , Atlantic Monthly , and elsewhere. He is a regular guest on radio and television, and has participated in several historical doc- umentary fi lms.
Author Responsibility
Although this book is a joint eff ort, each author took primary responsibility for writing one section. T. H. Breen contributed the fi rst eight chapters, going from the earliest Native American period to the second decade of the nineteenth century. Ariela J. Gross worked on Chapters 9 through 16 , carrying the narrative through the Reconstruction era. R. Hal Williams was responsible for Chapters 17 through 24 , focusing on the industrial transformation, urbanization, and the events culminating in World War I. Th e fi nal eight chapters, bringing the story through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War and its aft ermath, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and culminating in the historic election of Barack Obama, were the work of H. W. Brands. Each contributor reviewed and revised the work of his or her colleagues and helped shape the material into its fi nal form.
About the Authors xxvii
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Contents and Learning Objectives
Smalls immediately became a hero to those antislavery Northerners who were seeking evidence that the slaves were willing and able to serve the Union. The Planter was turned into a Union army transport, and Smalls was made its captain after being commissioned as an officer. During the remainder of the war, he rendered conspic- uous and gallant service as captain and pilot of Union vessels off the coast of South Carolina.
Like a number of other African Americans who had fought valiantly for the Union, Smalls went on to a distinguished political career during Reconstruction, serving in the South Carolina constitutional conven- tion, in the state legislature, and for several terms in the U.S. Congress. He was also a shrewd business- man and became the owner of extensive properties in Beaufort, South Carolina, and its vicinity. (His first pur- chase was the house of his former master, where he had spent his early years as a slave.) As the leading citizen of Beaufort during Reconstruction and for some years thereafter, he acted like many successful white Americans, combining the acquisition of wealth with the exercise of political power.
The electoral organization Smalls established resembled in some ways the well-oiled “machines” being established in northern towns and cities. It was so effective that he was able to control local govern- ment and get himself elected to Congress even after the election of 1876 had placed the state under the
Robert Smalls and Black Politicians During Reconstruction
During the Reconstruction period immediately following the Civil War, African Americans struggled to become equal citizens of a democratic republic. They produced a number of remarkable leaders who showed that blacks were as capable as other Americans of voting, holding office, and legislating for a complex and rapidly chang- ing society. Among these leaders was Robert Smalls of South Carolina. Although virtually forgotten by the time of his death in 1915, Smalls was perhaps the most famous and widely respected southern black leader of the Civil War and Reconstruction era. His career reveals some of the main features of the African American expe- rience during that crucial period.
Born a slave in 1839, Smalls had a white father whose identity has never been clearly established. But his white ancestry apparently gained him some advantages, and as a young man he was allowed to live and work independently, hiring his own time from a master who may have been his half brother. Smalls worked as a sailor and trained himself to be a pilot in Charleston Harbor.
When the Union navy blockaded Charleston in 1862, Smalls, who was then working on a Confederate steam- ship called the Planter , saw a chance to win his freedom in a particularly dramatic way. At three o’clock in the morning on May 13, 1862, when the white officers of the Planter were ashore, he took command of the ves- sel and its slave crew, sailed it out of the heavily for- tified harbor, and surrendered it to the Union navy.
THE PRESIDENT VERSUS CONGRESS PG. 368 What confl icts arose among Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress during Reconstruction?
RECONSTRUCTING SOUTHERN SOCIETY PG. 374 What problems did southern society face during Reconstruction?
RETREAT FROM RECONSTRUCTION PG. 379 Why did Reconstruction end?
REUNION AND THE NEW SOUTH PG. 382 Who benefi ted and who suffered from the reconciliation of the North and South?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY “Forty Acres and a Mule”
The Agony of Reconstruction 16
Chapter 16 The Agony of ReconstructionListen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
With the help of several black crewmen, Robert Smalls—then twenty-three years old—commandeered the Planter , a Confederate steamship used to transport guns and ammunition, and surrendered it to the Union vessel, USS Onward . Smalls provided distinguished service to the Union during the Civil War and after the war went on to become a successful politician and businessman.
Read the Document Pearson Profiles, Robert Smalls
368 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
Yet the Reconstruction Era also saw major transformations in American society in the wake of the Civil War—new ways of orga- nizing labor and family life, new institutions within and outside of the government, and new ideologies regarding the role of insti- tutions and government in social and economic life. Many of the changes begun during Reconstruction laid the groundwork for later revolutions in American life.
The President vs. Congress
What conflicts arose among Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress during Reconstruction?
Th e problem of how to reconstruct the Union in the wake of the South’s military defeat was one of the most diffi cult and perplexing challenges ever faced by American policy makers. Th e Constitution provided no fi rm guidelines, for the framers had not anticipated a division of the country into warring sections. Aft er emancipation became a northern war aim, the problem was compounded by a new issue: How far should the federal government go to secure freedom and civil rights for four million former slaves?
The debate that evolved led to a major political crisis. Advocates of a minimal Reconstruction policy favored quick restoration of the Union with no protection for the freed slaves beyond the prohibition of slavery. Proponents of a more radical policy wanted readmission of the southern states to be dependent on guarantees that “loyal” men would displace the Confederate elite in positions of power and that blacks would acquire basic rights of American citizenship. Th e White House favored the minimal approach, whereas Congress came to endorse the more radical and thoroughgoing form of Reconstruction. Th e result- ing struggle between Congress and the chief executive was the most serious clash between two branches of government in the nation’s history.
Wartime Reconstruction Tension between the president and Congress over how to recon- struct the Union began during the war. Occupied mainly with achieving victory, Lincoln never set forth a fi nal and comprehen- sive plan for bringing rebellious states back into the fold. But he did take initiatives that indicated he favored a lenient and concil- iatory policy toward Southerners who would give up the struggle and repudiate slavery. In December 1863, he issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which off ered a full pardon to all Southerners (with the exception of certain classes of Confederate leaders) who would take an oath of allegiance to the Union and acknowledge the legality of emancipation. Th is Ten Percent Plan provided that once 10 percent or more of the voting population of any occupied state had taken the oath, they were authorized to set up a loyal government. By 1864, Louisiana and Arkansas, states that were wholly or partially occupied by Union troops, had established Unionist governments. Lincoln’s policy was meant to shorten the war. First, he hoped to weaken the southern cause by making it easy for disillusioned or lukewarm Confederates to switch sides. Second, he hoped to further his emancipation policy by insisting that the new governments abolish slavery.
control of white conservatives bent on depriving blacks of political power. Organized mob violence defeated him in 1878, but he bounced back to win by decision of Congress a contested congressional election in 1880. He did not leave the House of Representatives for good until 1886, when he lost another contested election that had to be decided by Congress. It revealed the chang- ing mood of the country that his white challenger was seated despite evidence of violence and intimidation against black voters.
In their efforts to defeat him, Smalls’ white oppo- nents frequently charged that he had a hand in the corruption that was allegedly rampant in South Carolina during Reconstruction. But careful histori- cal investigation shows that he was, by the standards of the time, an honest and responsible public servant. In the South Carolina convention of 1868 and later in the state legislature, he was a conspicuous champion of free and compulsory public education. In Congress, he fought for the enactment and enforcement of federal civil rights laws. Not especially radical on social questions, he sometimes bent over backward to accom- modate what he regarded as the legitimate interests and sensibilities of South Carolina whites. Like other middle-class black political leaders in Reconstruction- era South Carolina, he can perhaps be faulted in hind- sight for not doing more to help poor blacks gain access to land of their own. But in 1875, he sponsored congres- sional legislation that opened for purchase at low prices the land in his own district that had been confiscated by the federal government during the war. As a result, blacks were able to buy most of it, and they soon owned three-fourths of the land in Beaufort and its vicinity.
Robert Smalls spent the later years of his life as U.S. collector of customs for the port of Beaufort, a beneficiary of the patronage that the Republican party continued to provide for a few loyal southern blacks. But the loss of real political clout for Smalls and men like him was one of the tragic consequences of the fall of Reconstruction.
For a brief period of years, black politicians such as Robert Smalls exercised more power in the South than they would for another century. A series of political developments on the national and regional stage made Reconstruction “an unfi nished revolution,” promising but not delivering true equality for newly freed African Americans. National party politics, shift ing priorities among Northern Republicans, white Southerners’ commitment to white supremacy, backed by legal restrictions, as well as massive extralegal violence against blacks, all combined to stifl e the promise of Reconstruction.
The President vs. Congress 369
quarrel with Congress would have worsened or been resolved. Given Lincoln’s past record of political fl exibility, the best bet is that he would have come to terms with the majority of his party.
Andrew Johnson at the Helm Andrew Johnson, the man suddenly made president by an assas- sin’s bullet, attempted to put the Union back together on his own authority in 1865. But his policies eventually set him at odds with Congress and the Republican party and provoked the most seri- ous crisis in the history of relations between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.
Johnson’s background shaped his approach to Reconstruction. Born in dire poverty in North Carolina, he migrated as a young
Congress was unhappy with the president’s Reconstruction exper- iments and in 1864 refused to seat the Unionists elected to the House and Senate from Louisiana and Arkansas. A minority of congressio- nal Republicans—the strongly antislavery Radical Republicans — favored protection for black rights (especially black male suff rage) as a precondition for the readmission of southern states. But a larger group of congressional moderates opposed Lincoln’s plan, not on the basis of black rights but because they did not trust the repentant Confederates who would play a major role in the new governments. Th ey feared that the old ruling class would return to power and cheat the North of the full fruits of its impending victory.
Congress also believed the president was exceeding his author- ity by using executive powers to restore the Union. Lincoln oper- ated on the theory that secession, being illegal, did not place the Confederate states outside the Union in a constitutional sense. Since individuals and not states had defi ed federal authority, the president could use his pardoning power to certify a loyal electorate, which could then function as the legitimate state government.
Th e dominant view in Congress, however, was that the southern states had forfeited their place in the Union and that it was up to Congress to decide when and how they would be readmitted. Th e most popular justifi cation for congressional responsibility was based on the clause of the Constitution providing that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” By seceding, Radicals argued, the Confederate states had ceased to be republican, and Congress had to set the conditions to be met before they could be readmitted.
Aft er refusing to recognize Lincoln’s 10 percent gov- ernments, Congress passed a Reconstruction bill of its own in July 1864. Known as the Wade-Davis Bill , this legisla- tion required that 50 percent of the voters take an oath of future loyalty before the restoration process could begin. Once this had occurred, those who could swear they had never willingly supported the Confederacy could vote in an election for delegates to a constitutional convention. Th e bill in its fi nal form did not require black suff rage, but it did give federal courts the power to enforce eman- cipation. Faced with this attempt to nullify his own pro- gram, Lincoln exercised a pocket veto by refusing to sign the bill before Congress adjourned. He justifi ed his action by announcing that he did not want to be committed to any single Reconstruction plan. Th e sponsors of the bill responded with an angry manifesto, and Lincoln’s relations with Congress reached their low.
Congress and the president remained stalemated on the Reconstruction issue for the rest of the war. During his last months in offi ce, however, Lincoln showed some willingness to compromise. He persisted in his eff orts to obtain full rec- ognition for the governments he had nurtured in Louisiana and Arkansas but seemed receptive to the setting of other conditions—perhaps including black suff rage—for readmis- sion of those states where wartime conditions had prevented execution of his plan. However, he died without clarifying his intentions, leaving historians to speculate whether his
In this cartoon, President Andrew Johnson (left) and Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania, are depicted as train engineers in a deadlock on the tracks. Indeed, neither Johnson nor Stevens would give way on his plans for Reconstruction.
Read the Document Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments (1865, 1868, 1870)
370 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
No one expected Johnson to succeed to the presidency; it is one of the strange accidents of American history that a southern Democrat, a fervent white supremacist, came to preside over a Republican administration immediately aft er the Civil War.
Some Radical Republicans initially welcomed Johnson’s ascent to the nation’s highest offi ce. Th eir hopes make sense in the light of Johnson’s record of fi erce loyalty to the Union and his appar- ent agreement with the Radicals that ex-Confederates should be severely treated. More than Lincoln, who had spoken of “malice toward none and charity for all,” Johnson seemed likely to punish southern “traitors” and prevent them from regaining political infl u- ence. Only gradually did the deep disagreement between the presi- dent and the Republican Congressional majority become evident.
Th e Reconstruction policy that Johnson initiated on May 29, 1865, created some uneasiness among the Radicals, but most Republicans were willing to give it a chance. Johnson placed North Carolina and eventually other states under appointed provisional governors cho- sen mostly from among prominent southern politicians who had opposed the secession movement and had rendered no conspicu- ous service to the Confederacy. Th e governors were responsible for calling constitutional conventions and ensuring that only “loyal” whites were permitted to vote for delegates. Participation required taking the oath of allegiance that Lincoln had prescribed earlier. Once again, Confederate leaders and former offi ceholders who had
man to eastern Tennessee, where he made his living as a tailor. Lacking formal schooling, he did not learn to read and write until adult life. Entering politics as a Jacksonian Democrat, he became known as an eff ective stump speaker. His railing against the planter aristocracy made him the spokesman for Tennessee’s nonslave- holding whites and the most successful politician in the state. He advanced from state legislator to congressman to governor and in 1857 was elected to the U.S. Senate.
When Tennessee seceded in 1861, Johnson was the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union and con- tinued to serve in Washington. But his Unionism and defense of the common people did not include antislavery sentiments. Nor was he friendly to blacks. While campaigning in Tennessee, he had objected only to the fact that slaveholding was the privilege of a wealthy minority. He revealed his attitude when he wished that “every head of family in the United States had one slave to take the drudgery and menial service off his family.”
During the war, while acting as military governor of Tennessee, Johnson endorsed Lincoln’s emancipation policy and carried it into eff ect. But he viewed it primarily as a means of destroying the power of the hated planter class rather than as a recognition of black humanity. He was chosen as Lincoln’s running mate in 1864 because it was thought that a proadministration Democrat, who was a southern Unionist in the bargain, would strengthen the ticket.
“Slavery Is Dead?” asks this 1866 cartoon by Thomas Nast. To the cartoonist, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the North’s victory in the Civil War meant little difference to the treatment of the freed slaves in the South. Freed slaves convicted of crimes often endured the same punishments as had slaves—sale, as depicted in the left panel of the cartoon, or beatings, as shown on the right.
Read the Document The Mississippi Black Code (1865)
The President vs. Congress 371
Most Republicans wanted fi rm guarantees that the old south- ern ruling class would not regain regional power and national infl uence by devising new ways to subjugate blacks. Th ey favored a Reconstruction policy that would give the federal government authority to limit the political role of ex-Confederates and provide some protection for black citizenship.
Republican leaders—with the exception of a few extreme Radicals such as Charles Sumner—lacked any fi rm conviction that blacks were inherently equal to whites. Th ey did believe, how- ever, that in a modern democratic state, all citizens must have the same basic rights and opportunities, regardless of natural abilities. Principle coincided easily with political expediency; southern blacks, whatever their alleged shortcomings, were likely to be loyal to the Republican party that had emancipated them. Th ey could be used, if necessary, to counteract the infl uence of resurgent ex-Confederates, thus preventing the Democrats from returning to national dominance through control of the South.
Th e disagreement between the president and Congress became irreconcilable in early 1866, when Johnson vetoed two bills that had passed with overwhelming Republican support. Th e fi rst extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau —a temporary agency set up to aid the former slaves by providing relief, education, legal help, and assistance in obtaining land or employment. Th e second was a civil rights bill meant to nullify the Black Codes and guarantee to freed- men “full and equal benefi t of all laws and proceedings for the secu- rity of person and property as is enjoyed by white citizens.”
Johnson’s vetoes shocked moderate Republicans who had expected the president to accept the relatively modest measures as a way of heading off more radical proposals, such as black suf- frage and a prolonged denial of political rights to ex-Confeder- ates. Presidential opposition to policies that represented the bare minimum of Republican demands on the South alienated moder- ates in the party and ensured a wide opposition to Johnson’s plan of Reconstruction. Johnson succeeded in blocking the Freedmen’s Bureau bill, although a modifi ed version later passed. But the Civil Rights Act won the two-thirds majority necessary to override his veto, signifying that the president was now hopelessly at odds with most of the congressmen from what was supposed to be his own party. Never before had Congress overridden a presidential veto.
Johnson soon revealed that he intended to abandon the Republicans and place himself at the head of a new conservative party uniting the small minority of Republicans who supported him with a reviving Democratic party that was rallying behind his Reconstruction policy. In preparation for the elections of 1866, Johnson helped found the National Union movement to promote his plan to readmit the southern states to the Union without fur- ther qualifications. A National Union convention meeting in Philadelphia in August 1866 called for the election to Congress of men who endorsed the presidential plan for Reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the Republican majority on Capitol Hill, fearing that Johnson would not enforce civil rights legislation or that the courts would declare such federal laws unconstitutional, passed the Fourteenth Amendment . Th is, perhaps the most important of all the constitutional amendments, gave the federal govern- ment responsibility for guaranteeing equal rights under the law to all Americans. Section 1 defi ned national citizenship for the fi rst time as extending to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” Th e states were prohibited from abridging the rights
participated in the rebellion were excluded. To regain their political and property rights, those in the exempted categories had to apply for individual presidential pardons. Johnson made one signifi cant addition to the list of the excluded: all those possessing taxable prop- erty exceeding $20,000 in value. In this fashion, he sought to prevent his longtime adversaries—the wealthy planters—from participating in the Reconstruction of southern state governments.
Once the conventions met, Johnson urged them to do three things: Declare the ordinances of secession illegal, repudiate the Confederate debt, and ratify the Thirteenth Amendment abolish- ing slavery. Aft er governments had been reestablished under con- stitutions meeting these conditions, the president assumed that the Reconstruction process would be complete and that the ex-Con- federate states could regain their full rights under the Constitution.
Th e results of the conventions, which were dominated by prewar Unionists and representatives of backcountry yeoman farmers, were satisfactory to the president but troubling to many congressional Republicans. Rather than quickly accepting Johnson’s recommen- dations, delegates in several states approved them begrudgingly or with qualifications. Furthermore, all the resulting constitu- tions limited suff rage to whites, disappointing the large number of Northerners who hoped, as Lincoln had, that at least some African Americans—perhaps those who were educated or had served in the Union army—would be given the right to vote. Johnson on the whole seemed eager to give southern white majorities a free hand in determining the civil and political status of the freed slaves.
Republican uneasiness turned to disillusionment and anger when the state legislatures elected under the new constitutions pro- ceeded to pass Black Codes subjecting former slaves to a variety of special regulations and restrictions on their freedom. (For more on the Black Codes, see p. 376 .) To Radicals, the Black Codes looked suspiciously like slavery under a new guise. More upsetting to north- ern public opinion in general, a number of prominent ex-Confeder- ate leaders were elected to Congress in the fall of 1865.
Johnson himself was partly responsible for this turn of events. Despite his lifelong feud with the planter class, he was generous in granting pardons to members of the old elite who came to him, hat in hand, and asked for them. When former Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens and other proscribed ex-rebels were elected to Congress although they had not been pardoned, Johnson granted them special amnesty so they could serve.
Th e growing rift between the president and Congress came into the open in December, when the House and Senate refused to seat the recently elected southern delegation. Instead of endorsing Johnson’s work and recognizing the state governments he had called into being, Congress established a joint committee, chaired by Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine, to review Reconstruction policy and set fur- ther conditions for readmission of the seceded states.
Congress Takes the Initiative The struggle over how to reconstruct the Union ended with Congress doing the job of setting policy all over again. Th e clash between Johnson and Congress was a matter of principle and could not be reconciled. President Johnson, an heir of the Democratic states’ rights tradition, wanted to restore the prewar federal system as quickly as possible and without change except that states would not have the right to legalize slavery or to secede.
372 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
basis. Generally referred to as Radical Reconstruction , the mea- sures actually represented a compromise between genuine Radicals and more moderate Republicans.
Consistent Radicals such as Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Congressmen Th addeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and George Julian of Indiana wanted to reshape southern society before readmitting ex-Confederates to the Union. Th eir program of “regeneration before Reconstruction” required an extended period of military rule, confi scation and redistribution of large landhold- ings among the freedmen, and federal aid for schools to educate blacks and whites for citizenship. But the majority of Republican congressmen found such a program unacceptable because it broke too sharply with American traditions of federalism and regard for property rights and might mean that decades would pass before the Union was back in working order.
The First Reconstruction Act, passed over Johnson’s veto on March 2, 1867, placed the South under the rule of the army by reorganizing the region into fi ve military districts. But mili- tary rule would last for only a short time. Subsequent acts of 1867 and 1868 opened the way for the quick readmission of any state that framed and ratifi ed a new constitution providing for black suff rage. Ex-Confederates disqualifi ed from holding federal offi ce under the Fourteenth Amendment were prohibited from vot- ing for delegates to the constitutional conventions or in the elec- tions to ratify the conventions’ work. Since blacks were allowed to participate in this process, Republicans thought they had found a way to ensure that “loyal” men would dominate the new govern- ments. Radical Reconstruction was based on the dubious assump- tion that once blacks had the vote, they would have the power to protect themselves against white supremacists’ eff orts to deny them their rights. Th e Reconstruction Acts thus signaled a retreat from the true Radical position that a sustained use of federal authority was needed to complete the transition from slavery to freedom and prevent the resurgence of the South’s old ruling class. (Troops were used in the South aft er 1868, but only in a very limited and sporadic way.) Th e majority of Republicans were unwilling to embrace cen- tralized government and an extended period of military rule over civilians, and even Radicals such as Th addeus Stevens supported the compromise as the best that could be achieved. Yet a genuine spirit of democratic idealism did give legitimacy and fervor to the cause of black male suff rage. Enabling people who were so poor and
of American citizens and could not “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person . . . equal protection of the laws.”
Th e other sections of the amendment were important in the context of the time but had fewer long-term implications. Section 2 sought to penalize the South for denying voting rights to black men by reducing the congressional representation of any state that formally deprived a portion of its male citizens of the right to vote. Section 3 denied federal offi ce to those who had taken an oath of offi ce to support the U.S. Constitution and then had sup- ported the Confederacy, and Section 4 repudiated the Confederate debt. Th e amendment was sent to the states with the understand- ing that Southerners would have no chance of being readmitted to Congress unless their states ratifi ed it.
Th e congressional elections of 1866 served as a referendum on the Fourteenth Amendment. Johnson opposed the amend- ment on the grounds that it created a “centralized” government and denied states the right to manage their own aff airs; he also coun- seled southern state legislatures to reject it, and all except Tennessee followed his advice. But the president’s case for state autonomy was weakened by the publicity resulting from bloody race riots in New Orleans and Memphis. Th ese and other reported atrocities against blacks made it clear that the existing southern state governments were failing abysmally to protect the “life, liberty, or property” of ex-slaves.
Johnson further weakened his cause by campaigning for can- didates who supported his policies. In his notorious “swing around the circle,” he toured the nation, slandering his opponents in crude language and engaging in undignifi ed exchanges with hecklers. Enraged by southern infl exibility and the antics of a president who acted as if he were still campaigning in the backwoods of Tennessee, northern voters repudiated the administration. Th e Republican majority in Congress increased to a solid two-thirds in both houses, and the Radical wing of the party gained strength at the expense of moderates and conservatives.
Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted Congress was now in a position to implement its own plan of Reconstruction. In 1867 and 1868, it passed a series of acts that nul- lifi ed the president’s initiatives and reorganized the South on a new
RECONSTRUCTION AMENDMENTS, 1865–1870
Amendment Main Provisions
Congressional Passage (2/3 majority in each house required)
Ratifi cation Process (3/4 of all states required, including ex-Confederate states)
13 Slavery prohibited in United States January 1865 December 1865 (27 states, including 8 southern states)
14 National citizenship; state representa- tion in Congress reduced proportionally to number of voters disfranchised; former Confederates denied right to hold offi ce; Confederate debt repudiated
June 1866 Rejected by 12 southern and border states, February 1867; Radicals make readmission of southern states hinge on ratifi cation; ratifi ed July 1868
15 Denial of franchise because of race, color, or past servitude explicitly prohibited
February 1869 Ratifi cation required for readmis- sion of Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia; ratifi ed March 1870
The President vs. Congress 373
of Radical regimes in the southern states, some congressmen began to call for his impeachment. A preliminary eff ort foundered in 1867, but when Johnson tried to discharge Secretary of War Edwin Stanton—the only Radical in the cabinet—and persisted in his eff orts despite the disapproval of the Senate, the proimpeach- ment forces gained in strength.
In January 1868, Johnson ordered General Grant, who already commanded the army, to replace Stanton as head of the War Department. But Grant had his eye on the Republican presidential nomination and refused to defy Congress. Johnson subsequently appointed General Lorenzo Th omas, who agreed to serve. Faced with this apparent violation of the Tenure of Offi ce Act, the House voted overwhelmingly to impeach the president on February 24, and he was placed on trial before the Senate.
Because seven Republican senators broke with the party leadership and voted for acquittal, the eff ort to convict Johnson and remove him from offi ce fell one vote short of the necessary two-thirds. Th is outcome resulted in part from a skillful defense. Attorneys for the president argued for a narrow interpretation of the constitutional provision that a president could be impeached only for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” asserting that this referred only to indictable off enses. Responding to the charge that Johnson had deliberately violated the Tenure of Offi ce Act, the defense con- tended that the law did not apply to the removal of Stanton because he had been appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson.
Th e prosecution countered with a diff erent interpretation of the Tenure of Offi ce Act, but the core of their case was that Johnson
downtrodden to have access to the ballot box was a bold and inno- vative application of the principle of government by the consent of the governed. Th e problem was fi nding a way to enforce equal suf- frage under conditions then existing in the postwar South.
The Impeachment Crisis Th e fi rst obstacle to enforcement of congressional Reconstruction was resistance from the White House. Johnson thoroughly disap- proved of the new policy and sought to thwart the will of Congress by administering the plan in his own obstructive fashion. He immediately began to dismiss officeholders who sympathized with Radical Reconstruction, and he countermanded the orders of generals in charge of southern military districts who were zeal- ous in their enforcement of the new legislation. Some Radical gen- erals were transferred and replaced by conservative Democrats. Congress responded by passing laws designed to limit presiden- tial authority over Reconstruction matters. One of the measures was the Tenure of Offi ce Act, requiring Senate approval for the removal of cabinet offi cers and other offi cials whose appointment had needed the consent of the Senate. Another measure—a rider to an army appropriations bill—sought to limit Johnson’s authority to issue orders to military commanders.
Johnson objected vigorously to the restrictions on the grounds that they violated the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers. When it became clear that the president was resolute in fi ghting for his powers and using them to resist the establishment
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FLORIDA 1868 1877
GEORGIA 1870 1871
ALABAMA 1868 1874
MISSISSIPPI 1870 1876
LOUISIANA 1868 1877
ARKANSAS 1868 1874
SOUTH CAROLINA 1868 1876
NORTH CAROLINA 1868 1870
TENNESSEE 1866 1869
TEXAS 1870 1873
VIRGINIA 1870 1869
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RECONSTRUCTION During the Reconstruction era, the southern state governments passed through three phases: control by white ex-Confederates; domination by Republican legislators, both white and black; and, finally, the regain of control by conservative white Democrats.
374 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
massive and sustained support from the federal government. To the extent that this was forthcoming, progressive reform could be achieved. When federal support faltered, the forces of reaction and white supremacy were unleashed.
Reorganizing Land and Labor Th e Civil War scarred the southern landscape and wrecked its econ- omy. One devastated area—central South Carolina—looked to an 1865 observer “like a broad black streak of ruin and desolation—the fences are gone; lonesome smokestacks, surrounded by dark heaps of ashes and cinders, marking the spots where human habitations had stood; the fi elds all along the roads widely overgrown with weeds, with here and there a sickly patch of cotton or corn cultivated by negro squatters.” Other areas through which the armies had passed were similarly ravaged. Several major cities—including Atlanta, Columbia, and Richmond—were gutted by fi re. Most factories were dismantled or destroyed, and long stretches of railroad were torn up.
Physical ruin would not have been so disastrous if investment capital had been available for rebuilding. But the substantial wealth represented by Confederate currency and bonds had melted away, and emancipation of the slaves had divested the propertied classes of their most valuable and productive assets. According to some estimates, the South’s per capita wealth in 1865 was only about half what it had been in 1860.
Recovery could not even begin until a new labor system replaced slavery. It was widely assumed in both the North and the South that southern prosperity would continue to depend on cot- ton and that the plantation was the most effi cient unit for producing the crop. Hindering eff orts to rebuild the plantation economy were lack of capital, the deep-rooted belief of southern whites that blacks would work only under compulsion, and the freedmen’s resistance to labor conditions that recalled slavery.
Blacks strongly preferred to determine their own economic relationships, and for a time they had reason to hope the federal government would support their ambitions. Th e freed slaves were placed in a precarious position and were, in eff ect, fi ghting a two- front war. Although they were grateful for the federal aid in ending slavery, freed slaves oft en had ideas about freedom that contra- dicted the plans of their northern allies. Many ex-slaves wanted to hold on to the family-based communal work methods that they utilized during slavery. Freed slaves in areas of South Carolina, for example, attempted to maintain the family task system rather than adopting the individual piecework system pushed by north- ern capitalists. Many ex-slaves opposed plans to turn them into wage laborers who produced exclusively for a market. Finally, freed slaves oft en wanted to stay on the land their families had spent generations farming rather than move elsewhere to assume plots of land as individual farmers.
While not guaranteeing all of the freed slaves’ hopes for eco- nomic self-determination, the northern military attempted to establish a new economic base for the freed men and women. General Sherman, hampered by the huge numbers of black fugi- tives that followed his army on its famous march, issued an order in January 1865 that set aside the islands and coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina for exclusive black occupancy on 40-acre plots. Furthermore, the Freedmen’s Bureau, as one of its many respon- sibilities, was given control of hundreds of thousands of acres of
had abused the powers of his offi ce in an eff ort to sabotage the con- gressional Reconstruction policy. Obstructing the will of the legis- lative branch, they claimed, was suffi cient grounds for conviction even if no crime had been committed. Th e Republicans who broke ranks to vote for acquittal could not endorse such a broad view of the impeachment power. Th ey feared that removal of a president for essentially political reasons would threaten the constitutional balance of powers and open the way to legislative supremacy over the executive. In addition, the man who would have succeeded Johnson—Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, the president pro tem of the Senate—was unpopular with conservative Republicans because of his radical position on labor and c urrency questions.
Although Johnson’s acquittal by the narrowest of margins pro- tected the American presidency from congressional domination, the impeachment episode helped create an impression in the public mind that the Radicals were ready to turn the Constitution to their own use to gain their objectives. Conservatives were again alarmed when Congress took action in 1868 to deny the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction in cases involving the military arrest and imprisonment of anti-Reconstruction activists in the South. But the evidence of congressional ruthlessness and illegality is not as strong as most historians used to think. Modern legal scholars have found merit in the Radicals’ claim that their actions did not violate the Constitution, although in 1926 the Supreme Court held the Tenure of Offi ce Act and a successor law to be unconstitutional.
Their failure to remove Johnson from office embarrassed congressional Republicans, but the episode did ensure that Reconstruction in the South would proceed as the majority in Congress intended. During the trial, Johnson helped infl uence the verdict by pledging to enforce the Reconstruction Acts, and he held to this promise during his remaining months in offi ce. Unable to depose the president, the Radicals had at least succeeded in neutral- izing his opposition to their program.
Reconstructing Southern Society
What problems did southern society face during Reconstruction?
Th e Civil War left the South devastated, demoralized, and desti- tute. Slavery was dead, but what this meant for future relationships between whites and blacks was still in doubt. Th e overwhelming majority of southern whites wanted to keep blacks adrift between slavery and freedom—without rights, in a status resembling that of the “free Negroes” of the Old South. Blacks sought independence from their former masters and viewed the acquisition of land, edu- cation, and the vote as the best means of achieving this goal. Th e thousands of Northerners who went south aft er the war for mate- rialistic or humanitarian reasons hoped to extend Yankee “civili- zation” to what they viewed as an unenlightened and barbarous region. For most of them, this reformation required the aid of the freedmen; not enough southern whites were willing to accept the new order and embrace northern middle-class values.
Th e struggle of these groups to achieve their confl icting goals bred chaos, violence, and instability. Unsettled conditions created many opportunities for corruption, crime, and terrorism. Th is was scarcely an ideal setting for an experiment in interracial democracy, but one was attempted nonetheless. Its success depended on
Reconstructing Southern Society 375
giving them something they allegedly had not earned, and the desire to restore cotton pro- duction as quickly as possible to increase agri- cultural exports and stabilize the economy. Consequently, most blacks in physical posses- sion of small farms failed to acquire title, and the mass of freedmen were left with little or no prospect of becoming landowners. Recalling the plight of southern blacks in 1865, an ex-slave later wrote that “they were set free with- out a dollar, without a foot of land, and without the wherewithal to get the next meal even.”
Despite their poverty and landlessness, ex-slaves were reluctant to settle down and com- mit themselves to wage labor for their former masters. Many took to the road, hoping to fi nd something better. Some were still expecting grants of land, but others were simply trying to increase their bargaining power. One freedman later recalled that an important part of being free was that, “we could move around [and] change bosses.” As the end of 1865 approached, many freedmen had still not signed up for the com- ing season; anxious planters feared that blacks were plotting to seize land by force. Within a few weeks, however, most holdouts signed for the best terms they could get.
One common form of agricultural employ- ment in 1866 was a contract labor system. Under this system, workers committed themselves for a year in return for fi xed wages, a substantial por- tion of which was withheld until aft er the harvest. Since many planters were inclined to drive hard bargains, abuse their workers, or cheat them at the end of the year, the Freedmen’s Bureau assumed the role of reviewing the contracts and enforcing them. But bureau offi cials had diff ering notions of what it meant to protect African Americans from exploitation. Some stood up strongly for the rights of the freedmen; others served as allies of the planters, rounding up available workers, coercing them to sign contracts for low wages, and then helping keep them in line.
Th e bureau’s infl uence waned aft er 1867 (it was phased out completely by 1869), and the experiment with contract wage labor was abandoned. Growing up alongside the contract sys- tem and eventually displacing it was an alternative capital-labor relationship— sharecropping . First in small groups known as “squads” and later as individual families, blacks worked a piece of land independently for a fi xed share of the crop, usually one-half. Th e advantage of this arrangement for credit-starved landlords was that it did not require much expenditure in advance of the harvest. Th e system also forced the tenant to share the risks of crop failure or a fall in cotton prices. Th ese considerations loomed larger aft er disastrous harvests in 1866 and 1867.
African Americans initially viewed sharecropping as a step up from wage labor in the direction of landownership. But during the 1870s, this form of tenancy evolved into a new kind of servitude.
abandoned or confi scated land and was authorized to make 40-acre grants to black settlers for three-year periods, aft er which they would have the option to buy at low prices. By June 1865, forty thousand black farmers were at work on 300,000 acres of what they thought would be their own land. (For more on this, see the Feature Essay, “Forty Acres and A Mule,” pp. 384–385 .)
But for most of them the dream of “forty acres and a mule,” or some other arrangement that would give them control of their land and labor, was not to be realized. President Johnson par- doned the owners of most of the land consigned to the ex-slaves by Sherman and the Freedmen’s Bureau, and proposals for an eff ective program of land confi scation and redistribution failed to get through Congress. Among the considerations prompt- ing most congressmen to oppose land reform were a tenderness for property rights, fear of sapping the freedmen’s initiative by
The Civil War brought emancipation to slaves, but the sharecropping system kept many of them economically bound to their employers. At the end of a year the sharecropper tenants might owe most—or all—of what they had made to their landlord. Here, a sharecropping family poses in front of their cabin. Ex-slaves often built their living quarters near woods in order to have a ready supply of fuel for heating and cooking. The cabin’s chimney lists away from the house so that it can be easily pushed away from the living quarters should it catch fire.
Source: Collection of the New-York Historical Society—Negative number 50475.
Read the Document A Sharecrop Contract (1882)
376 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
against armed white supremacists. In the words of historian William Gillette, “there was simply no federal force large enough to give heart to black Republicans or to bridle southern white violence.”
Republican Rule in the South Hastily organized in 1867, the southern Republican party dominated the constitution making of 1868 and the regimes that came out of it. Th e party was an attempted coalition of three social groups (which varied in their relative strength from state to state). One was the same class that was becoming the backbone of the Republican party in the North—businessmen with an interest in enlisting govern- ment aid for private enterprise. Many Republicans of this stripe were recent arrivals from the North—the so-called carpetbaggers— but some were scalawags, former Whig planters or merchants who were born in the South or had immigrated to the region before the war and now saw a chance to realize their dreams for commercial and industrial development.
Poor white farmers, especially those from upland areas where Unionist sentiment had been strong during the Civil War, were a second element in the original coalition. Th ese owners of small farms expected the party to favor their interests at the expense of the wealthy landowners and to come to their aid with special legislation when—as was oft en the case in this period of economic upheaval— they faced the loss of their homesteads to creditors. Newly enfran- chised blacks were the third group to which the Republicans appealed. Blacks formed the vast majority of the Republican rank and fi le in most states and were concerned mainly with education, civil rights, and landownership.
Under the best of conditions, these coalitions would have been diffi cult to maintain. Each group had its own distinct goals and did not fully support the aims of the other segments. White yeomen, for example, had a deeply rooted resistance to black equality. And for how long could one expect essentially conser- vative businessmen to support costly measures for the elevation or relief of the lower classes of either race? In some states, astute Democratic politicians exploited these divisions by appealing to disaff ected white Republicans.
But during the relatively brief period when they were in power in the South—varying from one to nine years depending on the state—the Republicans made some notable achievements. Th ey established (on paper at least) the South’s fi rst adequate systems of public education, democratized state and local government, and appropriated funds for an enormous expansion of public services and responsibilities.
As important as these social and political reforms were, they took second place to the Republicans’ major eff ort—to foster eco- nomic development and restore southern prosperity by subsidiz- ing the construction of railroads and other internal improvements. But the policy of aiding railroads turned out to be disastrous, even though it addressed the region’s real economic needs and was initially very popular. Extravagance, corruption, and routes laid out in response to local political pressure rather than on sound economic grounds made for an increasing burden of public debt and taxation.
Th e policy did not produce the promised payoff of effi cient, cheap transportation. Subsidized railroads frequently went bankrupt,
Croppers had to live on credit until their cotton was sold, and plant- ers or merchants seized the chance to “provision” them at high prices and exorbitant rates of interest. Creditors were entitled to deduct what was owed to them out of the tenant’s share of the crop, and this left most sharecroppers with no net profi t at the end of the year— more oft en than not with a debt that had to be worked off in subse- quent years. Various methods, legal and extralegal, were eventually devised in an eff ort to bind indebted tenants to a single landlord for extended periods, but considerable movement was still possible.
Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery? While landless African Americans in the countryside were being reduced to economic dependence, those in towns and cities found themselves living in an increasingly segregated society. Th e Black Codes of 1865 attempted to require separation of the races in public places and facilities; when most of the codes were overturned by federal authorities as violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the same end was oft en achieved through private initiative and com- munity pressure. In some cities, blacks successfully resisted being consigned to separate streetcars by appealing to the military during the period when it exercised authority or by organizing boycotts. But they found it almost impossible to gain admittance to most hotels, restaurants, and other privately owned establishments cater- ing to whites. Although separate black, or “Jim Crow,” cars were not yet the rule on railroads, African Americans were oft en denied fi rst- class accommodations. Aft er 1868, black- supported Republican governments passed civil rights acts requiring equal access to pub- lic facilities, but little eff ort was made to enforce the legislation.
Th e Black Codes had other onerous provisions meant to control African Americans and return them to quasi-slavery. Most codes even made black unemployment a crime, which meant blacks had to make long-term contracts with white employers or be arrested for vagrancy. Others limited the rights of African Americans to own property or engage in occupations other than those of servant or laborer. Th e codes were set aside by the actions of Congress, the military, and the Freedmen’s Bureau, but vagrancy laws remained in force across the South.
Furthermore, private violence and discrimination against blacks continued on a massive scale unchecked by state authorities. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of blacks were murdered by whites in 1865–1866, and few of the perpetrators were brought to justice. Th e imposition of military rule in 1867 was designed in part to protect former slaves from such violence and intimidation, but the task was beyond the capacity of the few thousand troops stationed in the South. When new constitutions were approved and states readmitted to the Union under the congressional plan in 1868, the problem became more severe. White opponents of Radical Reconstruction adopted systematic terrorism and organized mob violence to keep blacks away from the polls.
Th e freed slaves, in the face of opposition from both their Democratic enemies and some of their Republican allies, tried to defend themselves by organizing their own militia groups for protec- tion and to assert their political rights. However, the militia groups were not powerful enough to overcome the growing power of the anti-Republican forces. Also, the military presence was progressively reduced, leaving the new Republican regimes to fi ght a losing battle
Reconstructing Southern Society 377
Congress and the nation in 1873 with his eloquent appeals for federal aid to southern education and new laws to enforce equal rights for African Americans.
Claiming Public and Private Rights As important as party politics to the changing political culture of the Reconstruction South were the ways that freed slaves claimed rights for themselves. Th ey did so not only in negotiations with employers and in public meetings and convention halls, but also through the institutions they created and perhaps most impor- tant, the households they formed.
As one black corporal in the Union Army told an audience of ex-slaves, “Th e Marriage covenant is at the foundation of all our rights. In slavery we could not have legalized marriage: now we have it . . . and we shall be established as a people.” Th rough mar- riage, historian Laura Edwards tells us, African Americans claimed citizenship. Freedmen hoped that marriage would allow them to take on the rights that accrued to the independent head of a house- hold, not only political rights, but the right to control the labor of wives and children for the fi rst time.
While they were in eff ect in 1865–1866, many states’ Black Codes included apprenticeship provisions, providing for freed children to be apprenticed by courts to some white person (with preference given to former masters) if their parents were paupers, unemployed, of “bad character,” or even simply if it were found to be “better for the habits and comfort of a child.” Ex-slaves struggled to win their children back from what oft en amounted to reenslave- ment. Freedpeople challenged the apprenticeship system in county courts, and through the Freedmen’s Bureau. As one group of peti- tioners from Maryland asserted, “Our homes are invaded and our little ones seized at the family fi reside.”
While many former slaves lined up eagerly to formalize their marriages, many also retained their own defi nitions of marriage and defi ed the eff orts of the Freedmen’s Bureau to use the marriage relation as a disciplinary tool. Perhaps as many as 50 percent of ex-slaves chose not to marry legally, and whites criticized them heavily for it. African American leaders worried about this refusal to follow white norms. Th e army corporal who had described marriage as “the foundation of all our rights” urged his audience: “Let us conduct ourselves worthy of such a blessing—and all the people will respect us.” Yet many poor blacks continued to recognize as husband and wife people who cared for and supported one another without benefi t of legal sanction. Th e new legal system punished couples who deviated from the legal norm through laws against bastardy, adultery, and fornication. Furthermore, the Freedmen’s Bureau made the marriage of freedpeople a priority because, as historian Noralee Frankel explained, “Th e agency’s over- riding concern was keeping blacks from depending on the federal government for economic assistance.” Once married, the husband became legally responsible for his family’s support.
Some ex-slaves used institutions formerly closed to them like the courts to assert rights against white people as well as other blacks, suing over domestic violence, child support, assault, and debt. Freed women sued their husbands for desertion and alimony in order to enlist the Freedmen’s Bureau to help them claim prop- erty from men. Other ex-slaves mobilized kin networks and other community resources to make claims on property and family.
leaving the taxpayers holding the bag. When the Panic of 1873 brought many southern state governments to the verge of bank- ruptcy, and railroad building came to an end, it was clear the Republicans’ “gospel of prosperity” through state aid to private enterprise had failed miserably. Th eir political opponents, many of whom had originally favored such policies, now saw an opportunity to take advantage of the situation by charging that Republicans had ruined the southern economy.
In general, the Radical regimes failed to conduct public business honestly and effi ciently. Embezzlement of public funds and bribery of state lawmakers or offi cials were common occurrences. State debts and tax burdens rose enormously, mainly because governments had undertaken heavy new responsibilities, but partly because of waste and graft . Th e situation varied from state to state; ruling cliques in Louisiana and South Carolina were guilty of much wrongdoing, yet Mississippi had a relatively honest and frugal regime.
Furthermore, southern corruption was not exceptional, nor was it a special result of the extension of suff rage to uneducated African Americans, as critics of Radical Reconstruction have claimed. It was part of a national pattern during an era when private interests con- sidered buying government favors to be a part of the cost of doing business, and many politicians expected to profi t by obliging them.
Blacks bore only a limited responsibility for the dishonesty of the Radical governments. Although sixteen African Americans served in Congress—two in the Senate—between 1869 and 1880, only in South Carolina did blacks constitute a majority of even one house of the state legislature. Furthermore, no black governors were elected during Reconstruction (although Pinkney B. S. Pinchback served for a time as acting governor of Louisiana). Th e biggest graft ers were opportunistic whites. Some of the most notorious were carpetbaggers, but others were native Southerners. Businessmen off ering bribes included members of the prewar gentry who were staunch opponents of Radical programs. Some black legislators went with the tide and accepted “loans” from those railroad lob- byists who would pay most for their votes, but the same men could usually be depended on to vote the will of their constituents on civil rights or educational issues.
If blacks served or supported corrupt and wasteful regimes, it was because the alternative was dire. Although the Democrats, or Conservatives as they called themselves in some states, made s poradic eff orts to attract African American voters, it was clear that if they won control, they would attempt to strip blacks of their civil and political rights. But opponents of Radical Reconstruction were able to capitalize on racial prejudice and per- suade many Americans that “good government” was synonymous with white supremacy.
Contrary to myth, the small number of African Americans elected to state or national offi ce during Reconstruction demon- strated on the average more integrity and competence than their white counterparts. Most were fairly well educated, having been free or unusually privileged slaves before the war. Among the most capable were Robert Smalls (whose career was described earlier); Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, elected to the U.S. Senate in 1874 aft er rising to deserved prominence in the Republican party of his home state; Congressman Robert Brown Elliott of South Carolina, an adroit politician who was also a consistent champion of civil rights; and Congressman James T. Rapier of Alabama, who stirred
378 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
missionary societies. Th e teachers included both black and white Northerners and educated Southern blacks who were free before emancipation. At the time, having been denied all education dur- ing the antebellum period, most blacks viewed separate school- ing as an opportunity rather than as a form of discrimination. However, these schools were precursors to the segregated public school systems fi rst instituted by Republican governments. By 1870, the Freedmen’s Bureau was sponsoring 4,239 schools and employing 9,300 teachers to teach 247,000 pupils in these all- black schools. Only in city schools of New Orleans and at the University of South Carolina were there serious attempts during Reconstruction to bring white and black students together in the same classrooms. Both the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Northern Missionary Society also established Black colleges, which faced many struggles. Th e nondenominational private schools stressed industrial training but those supported by black churches empha- sized a liberal arts education.
In a variety of ways, African American men and women dur- ing Reconstruction asserted freedom in the “private” realm as well as the public sphere, by claiming rights to their own families and building their own institutions. Th ey did so despite the vigorous
Immediately aft er the war, freed people fl ocked to create insti- tutions that had been denied to them under slavery: churches, fraternal and benevolent associations, political organizations, and schools. Many joined all-black denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which provided freedom from white dominance and a more congenial style of worship. Black women formed all-black chapters of organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and their own women’s clubs to oppose lynching and work for “uplift ” in the black community.
Th e freed slaves were thirsty for education. It is estimated that in 1865, less than two percent of black school-age children in the South attended school and only fi ve percent could read. According to Charlotte Forten, a black teacher from Philadelphia, “I never before saw children so eager to learn . . . Th e majority learn with wonderful rapidity. Many of the grown people are desirous of learning to read. It is wonderful how a people who have been so long crushed to the earth, so embruted as these have been . . . can have so great a desire for knowledge and such a capability of sustaining it.”
The first schools for freed people were all-black institu- tions established by the Freedmen’s Bureau and various northern
The Schools that the Civil War and Reconstruction Created Watch the Video
A Freedmen’s school, one of the more successful endeavors supported by the Freedmen’s Bureau. The bureau, working with teachers from northern abolitionist and missionary societies, founded thousands of schools for freed slaves and poor whites.
Retreat from Reconstruction 379
be the backbone of the greenback movement for years to come, now joined the soft -money clamor for the fi rst time.
Responding to the money and credit crunch, Congress moved in 1874 to authorize a modest issue of new greenbacks. But Grant, infl uenced by the opinions of hard-money fi nanciers, vetoed the bill. In 1875, Congress, led by Senator John Sherman of Ohio, enacted the Specie Resumption Act, which provided for a limited reduc- tion of greenbacks leading to full resumption of specie payments by January 1, 1879. Its action was widely interpreted as defl ation in the midst of depression. Farmers and workers, who were already suff er- ing acutely from defl ation, reacted with dismay and anger.
The Democratic Party could not capitalize adequately on these sentiments because of the infl uence of its own hard-money faction, and in 1876 an independent Greenback Party entered the national political arena. Th e party’s nominee for president, Peter Cooper, received an insignifi cant number of votes, but in 1878 the Greenback Labor Party polled more than a million votes and elected fourteen congressmen. Th e Greenbackers were able to keep the money issue alive into the following decade.
THE ELECTION OF 1868
Candidate
Party
Popular Vote
Electoral Vote*
Grant Republican 3,012,833 214
Seymour Democratic 2,703,249 80
Not voted* 23
*Unreconstructed states did not participate in the election.
Final Efforts of Reconstruction Th e Republican eff ort to make equal rights for blacks the law of the land culminated in the Fifteenth Amendment . Passed by Congress in 1869 and ratifi ed by the states in 1870, the amendment prohibited any state from denying a male citizen the right to vote because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. A more radical version, requiring universal manhood suff rage, was rejected partly because it departed too sharply from traditional views of federal–state relations. States, therefore, could still limit the suf- frage by imposing literacy tests, property qualifi cations, or poll taxes allegedly applying to all racial groups; such devices would eventually be used to strip southern blacks of the right to vote. But the makers of the amendment did not foresee this result. Th ey believed their action would prevent future Congresses or southern constitutional conventions from repealing or nullifying the provi- sions for black male suff rage included in the Reconstruction acts. A secondary aim was to enfranchise African Americans in those northern states that still denied them the vote.
Many feminists were bitterly disappointed that the amend- ment did not also extend the vote to women as well as freedmen. A militant wing of the women’s rights movement, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, was so angered that the Constitution was being amended in a way that, in eff ect, made gen- der a qualifi cation for voting, that they campaigned against ratifi - cation of the Fift eenth Amendment. Another group of feminists led by Lucy Stone supported the amendment on the grounds that
eff orts of their former masters as well as the new government agencies to control their private lives and shape their new identities as husbands, wives, and citizens.
Retreat from Reconstruction
Why did Reconstruction end?
Th e era of Reconstruction began coming to an end almost before it got started. Although it was only a scant three years from the end of the Civil War, the impeachment crisis of 1868 represented the high point of popular interest in Reconstruction issues. Th at year, Ulysses S. Grant was elected president. Many historians blame Grant for the corruption of his administration and for the inconsistency and failure of his southern policy. He had neither the vision nor the sense of duty to tackle the diffi cult challenges the nation faced. From 1868 on, political issues other than southern Reconstruction moved to the forefront of national politics, and the plight of African Americans in the South receded in white consciousness.
Rise of the Money Question In the years immediately following the Civil War, another issue already competing for public attention was the money question: whether to allow “greenbacks”—paper money issued during the war—to continue to circulate or to return to “sound” or “hard” money, meaning gold or silver. Supporters of paper money, known as greenbackers, were stron- gest in the credit-hungry West and among expansion-minded manu- facturers. Defenders of hard money were mostly the commercial and fi nancial interests in the East; they received crucial support from intel- lectuals who regarded government-sponsored infl ation as immoral or contrary to the natural laws of classical economics.
In 1868, the money question surged briefl y to the forefront of national politics. Faced with a business recession blamed on the Johnson administration’s policy of contracting the currency, Congress voted to stop the retirement of greenbacks. Th e Democratic Party, responding to Midwestern pressure, included in its platform for the 1868 national election a plan calling for the redemption of much of the Civil War debt in greenbacks rather than gold. Yet they nominated for president a sound-money supporter, so that the greenback question never became an issue in the 1868 presidential campaign. Grant, already a popular general, won the election hand- ily with the help of the Republican-dominated southern states.
In 1869 and 1870, a Republican-controlled Congress passed laws that assured payment in gold to most bondholders but eased the burden of the huge Civil War debt by exchanging bonds that were soon coming due for those that would not be payable for ten, fi ft een, or thirty years. In this way, the public credit was protected.
Still unresolved, however, was the problem of what to do about the $356 million in greenbacks that remained in circulation. Hard-money proponents wanted to retire them quickly; infl ationists thought more should be issued to stimulate the economy. Th e Grant administra- tion followed the middle course of allowing the greenbacks to fl oat until economic expansion would bring them to a par with gold, thus permitting a painless return to specie payments. But the Panic of 1873, which brought much of the economy to its knees, led to a revival of agitation to infl ate the currency. Debt-ridden farmers, who would
380 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
sought to exercise their political rights. First organized in Tennessee in 1866, the Klan spread rapidly to other states, adopt- ing increasingly lawless and brutal tactics. A grassroots vigilante movement and not a centralized conspiracy, the Klan thrived on local initiative and gained support from whites of all social classes. Its secrecy, decen- tralization, popular support, and utter ruth- lessness made it very diffi cult to suppress. As soon as blacks had been granted the right to vote, hooded “night riders” began to visit the cabins of those who were known to be active Republicans; some victims were only threat- ened, but others were whipped or even mur- dered. One black Georgian related a typical incident: “Th ey broke my door open, took me out of bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead. Th ey said to me, ‘Do you think you will vote for another damned radical ticket?”’
Such methods were fi rst used eff ectively in the presidential election of 1868. Grant lost in Louisiana and Georgia mainly because the Klan—or the Knights of the White Camellia, as the Louisiana variant was called— launched a reign of terror to prevent prospec- tive black voters from exercising their rights. In Louisiana, political violence claimed more than a thousand lives, and in Arkansas, which Grant managed to carry, more than two hun- dred Republicans, including a congressman, were assassinated.
Th ereaft er, Klan terrorism was directed mainly at Republican state governments. Virtual insurrections broke out in Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and parts of South Carolina. Republican governors called out the state militia to fi ght the Klan, but only the Arkansas militia succeeded in bringing it to heel. In Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, Klan activities helped undermine
Republican control, thus allowing the Democrats to come to power in all of these states by 1870.
Faced with the violent overthrow of the southern Republican party, Congress and the Grant administration were forced to act. A series of laws passed in 1870–1871 sought to enforce the Fift eenth Amendment by providing federal protection for black suff rage and authorizing use of the army against the Klan. Th e Force acts , also known as the Ku Klux Klan acts, made interference with voting rights a federal crime and established provisions for government supervision of elections. In addition, the legislation empowered the president to call out troops and suspend the writ of habeas cor- pus to quell insurrection. In 1871–1872, thousands of suspected Klansmen were arrested by the military or U.S. marshals, and the writ was suspended in nine counties of South Carolina that had been virtually taken over by the secret order. Although most of the
this was “the Negro’s hour” and that women could aff ord to wait a few years for the vote. Th is disagreement divided the woman suf- frage movement for a generation to come.
The Grant administration was charged with enforcing the amendment and protecting black men’s voting rights in the recon- structed states. Since survival of the Republican regimes depended on African American support, political partisanship dictated fed- eral action, even though the North’s emotional and ideological commitment to black citizenship was waning.
A Reign of Terror Against Blacks Between 1868 and 1872, the main threat to southern Republican regimes came from the Ku Klux Klan and other secret societies bent on restoring white supremacy by intimidating blacks who
The First Vote View the Closer Look
The First Vote, drawn by A. H. Ward for Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867.
Retreat from Reconstruction 381
traditional Democratic and agrarian hostility to government pro- motion of economic development. Consequently, they were able to bring back to the polls a portion of the white electorate, mostly small farmers, who had not been turning out because they were alienated by the leadership’s apparent concessions to Yankee ideas.
Th is new and more eff ective electoral strategy dovetailed with a resurgence of violence meant to reduce Republican, especially black Republican, voting. Th e new reign of terror diff ered from the previously discussed Klan episode; its agents no longer wore masks but acted quite openly. Th ey were eff ective because the northern public was increasingly disenchanted with federal intervention on behalf of what were widely viewed as corrupt and tottering Republican regimes. Grant used force in the South for the last time in 1874 when an overt paramilitary organization in Louisiana, known as the White League, tried to overthrow a Republican government accused of stealing an election. When another unof- fi cial militia in Mississippi instigated a series of bloody race riots prior to the state elections of 1875, Grant refused the governor’s request for federal troops. As a result, black voters were success- fully intimidated—one county registered only seven Republican votes where there had been a black majority of two thousand— and Mississippi fell to the Democratic-Conservatives. According to one account, Grant decided to withhold troops because he had been warned that intervention might cost the Republicans the crucial state of Ohio in the same off -year elections.
By 1876, Republicans held on to only three southern states: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. Partly because of Grant’s hesitant and inconsistent use of presidential power, but mainly because the northern electorate would no longer tolerate military action to sustain Republican governments and black voting rights, Radical Reconstruction was falling into total eclipse.
Spoilsmen vs. Reformers One reason Grant found it increasingly diffi cult to take strong action to protect southern Republicans was the bad odor surround- ing his stewardship of the federal government and the Republican party. Reformers charged that a corrupt national administration was propping up bad governments in the South for personal and partisan advantage. When Grant intervened in Louisiana in 1872 on behalf of a Republican faction headed by his wife’s brother-in- law, who controlled federal patronage as collector of customs in New Orleans, it created the appearance of corruption, although Grant justifi ed it on the ground that the opposing faction was blocking civil rights legislation for blacks.
Th e Republican party in the Grant era was losing the idealism and high purpose associated with the crusade against slavery. By the beginning of the 1870s, the men who had been the conscience of the party—old-line radicals such as Th addeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Benjamin Wade—were either dead, out of offi ce, or at odds with the administration. New leaders of a diff erent stamp, whom histori- ans have dubbed “spoilsmen” or “politicos,” were taking their place. When he made common cause with hard-boiled manipulators such as senators Roscoe Conkling of New York and James G. Blaine of Maine, Grant lost credibility with reform-minded Republicans.
During Grant’s first administration, an aura of scandal surrounded the White House but did not directly implicate the
accused Klansmen were never brought to trial, were acquitted, or received suspended sentences, the enforcement eff ort was vigorous enough to put a damper on hooded terrorism and ensure relatively fair and peaceful elections in 1872.
A heavy black turnout in these elections enabled the Republicans to hold on to power in most states of the Deep South, despite eff orts of the Democratic-Conservative opposition to cut into the Republican vote by taking moderate positions on racial and eco- nomic issues. Th is setback prompted the Democratic-Conservatives to make a signifi cant change in their strategy and ideology. No lon- ger did they try to take votes away from the Republicans by pro- claiming support for black suff rage and government aid to business. Instead they began to appeal openly to white supremacy and to the
Hannah Irwin Describes Ku Klux Klan Ride
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This 1868 photograph shows typical regalia of members of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret white supremacist organization. Before elections, hooded Klansmen terrorized African Americans to discourage them from voting.
382 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
In 1875, the public learned that federal revenue offi cials had conspired with distillers to defraud the government of millions of dollars in liquor taxes. Grant’s private secretary, Orville E. Babcock, was indicted as a member of the “Whiskey Ring” and was saved from conviction only by the president’s personal intercession. Th e next year, Grant’s secretary of war, William W. Belknap, was impeached by the House aft er an investigation revealed he had taken bribes for the sale of Indian trading posts. He avoided conviction in the Senate only by resigning from offi ce before his trial. Grant fought hard to protect Belknap, to the point of participating in what a later generation might call a cover-up.
Th ere is no evidence that Grant profi ted personally from any of the misdeeds of his subordinates. Yet he is not entirely without blame for the corruption in his administration. He failed to take fi rm action against the malefactors, and, even aft er their guilt had been clearly established, he sometimes tried to shield them from justice. Ulysses S. Grant was the only president between Jackson and Wilson to serve two full and consecutive terms. But unlike other chief executives so favored by the electorate, Grant is com- monly regarded as a failure. Although the problems he faced would have challenged any president, the shame of Grant’s administration was that he made loyalty to old friends a higher priority than civil rights or sound economic principles.
Reunion and the New South
Who benefi ted and who suffered from the reconciliation of the North and South?
Congressional Reconstruction prolonged the sense of sectional divi- sion and confl ict for a dozen years aft er the guns had fallen silent. Its fi nal liquidation in 1877 opened the way to a reconciliation of North and South. But the costs of reunion were high for less privi- leged groups in the South. Th e civil and political rights of African Americans, left unprotected, were progressively and relentlessly stripped away by white supremacist regimes. Lower-class whites saw their interests sacrifi ced to those of capitalists and landlords. Despite the rhetoric hailing a prosperous “New South,” the region remained poor and open to exploitation by northern business interests.
The Compromise of 1877 The election of 1876 pitted Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a Republican governor untainted by the scandals of the Grant era, against Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York, a Democratic reformer who had battled against Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring. Honest government was apparently the electorate’s highest priority. When the returns came in, Tilden had clearly won the pop- ular vote and seemed likely to win a narrow victory in the electoral college. But the result was placed in doubt when the returns from the three southern states still controlled by the Republicans—South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana—were contested. If Hayes were to be awarded these three states, plus one contested electoral vote in Oregon, Republican strategists realized, he would triumph in the electoral college by a single vote.
Th e outcome of the election remained undecided for months, plunging the nation into a major political crisis. To resolve the
president. In 1869, the fi nancial buccaneer Jay Gould enlisted the aid of a brother-in-law of Grant to further his fantastic scheme to corner the gold market. Gould failed in the attempt, but he did manage to save himself and come away with a huge profi t.
Grant’s fi rst-term vice president, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, was directly involved in the notorious Crédit Mobilier scandal. Crédit Mobilier was a construction company that actually served as a fraudulent device for siphoning off profi ts that should have gone to the stockholders of the Union Pacifi c Railroad, which was the benefi ciary of massive federal land grants. To forestall government inquiry into this arrangement, Crédit Mobilier stock was distrib- uted to infl uential congressmen, including Colfax (who was speaker of the House before he was elected vice president). Th e whole busi- ness came to light just before the campaign of 1872.
THE ELECTION OF 1872
Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote*
Grant Republican 3,597,132 286
Greeley Democratic and Liberal Republican
2,834,125 Greeley died before the electoral college voted.
*Out of a total of 366 electoral votes. Greeley’s votes were divided among the four minor candidates.
Republicans who could not tolerate such corruption or had other grievances against the administration broke with Grant in 1872 and formed a third party committed to “honest govern- ment” and “reconciliation” between the North and the South. Led initially by high-minded reformers such as Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri, the Liberal Republicans endorsed reform of the civil service to curb the corruption-breeding patronage sys- tem and advocated laissez-faire economic policies—which meant low tariff s, an end to government subsidies for railroads, and hard money. Despite their rhetoric of idealism and reform, the Liberal Republicans were extremely conservative in their notions of what government should do to assure justice for blacks and other under- privileged Americans.
The Liberal Republicans’ national convention nominated Horace Greeley, editor of the respected New York Tribune . Th is was a curious and divisive choice, since Greeley was at odds with the founders of the movement on the tariff question and was indiff er- ent to civil service reform. Th e Democrats also nominated Greeley, mainly because he promised to end Radical Reconstruction by restoring “self-government” to the South.
But the journalist turned out to be a poor campaigner who failed to inspire enthusiasm from lifelong supporters of either party. Most Republicans stuck with Grant, despite the corruption issue, because they still could not stomach the idea of ex-rebels returning to power in the South. Many Democrats, recalling Greeley’s previ- ous record as a staunch Republican, simply stayed away from the polls. Th e result was a decisive victory for Grant, whose 56 percent of the popular vote was the highest percentage won by any candi- date between Andrew Jackson and Th eodore Roosevelt.
Grant’s second administration seemed to bear out the reformers’ worst suspicions about corruption in high places.
Reunion and the New South 383
With southern Democratic acquiescence, the fi libuster was broken, and Hayes took the oath of offi ce. He immediately ordered the army not to resist a Democratic takeover of state governments in South Carolina and Louisiana. Th us fell the last of the Radical governments, and the entire South was fi rmly under the control of white Democrats. Th e trauma of the war and Reconstruction had destroyed the chances for a renewal of two-party competition among white Southerners.
Northern Republicans soon reverted to denouncing the South for its suppression of black suff rage. But this “waving of the bloody shirt,” which also served as a reminder of the war and northern casualties, quickly degenerated into a campaign ritual aimed at northern voters who could still be moved by sectional antagonism.
“Redeeming” a New South Th e men who came to power aft er Radical Reconstruction fell in one southern state aft er another are usually referred to as the Redeemers . Th ey had diff ering backgrounds and previous loyalties. Some were members of the Old South’s ruling planter class who had warmly sup- ported secession and now sought to reestablish the old order with as few changes as possible. Others, of middle-class origin or outlook, favored commercial and industrial interests over agrarian groups and called for a New South committed to diversifi ed economic develop- ment. A third group was professional politicians bending with the prevailing winds, such as Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, who had been a secessionist, a wartime governor, and a leading scalawag Republican before becoming a Democratic Redeemer.
Although historians have tried to assign the Redeemers a single coherent ideology or view of the world and have debated whether it was Old South agrarianism or New South industrialism they endorsed, these leaders can perhaps best be understood as power brokers mediating among the dominant interest groups of the South in ways that served their own political advantage. In many ways, the “rings” that they established on the state and county level were analogous to the political machines developing at the same time in northern cities. Redeemers did, however, agree on and endorse two basic principles: laissez-faire and white supremacy. Laissez-faire—the notion that government should be limited and should not intervene openly and directly in the economy—could unite planters, frustrated at seeing direct state support going to businessmen, and capital- ist promoters who had come to realize that low taxes and freedom from government regulation were even more advantageous than state subsidies. It soon became clear that the Redeemers responded only to privileged and entrenched interest groups, especially landlords, merchants, and industrialists, and off ered little or nothing to tenants, small farmers, and working people. As industrialization began to gather steam in the 1880s, Democratic regimes became increasingly accommodating to manufacturing interests and hospitable to agents of northern capital who were gaining control of the South’s transpor- tation system and its extractive industries.
White supremacy was the principal rallying cry that brought the Redeemers to power in the fi rst place. Once in offi ce, they found they could stay there by charging that opponents of ruling Democratic cliques were trying to divide “the white man’s party” and open the way for a return to “black domination.” Appeals to racism could also defl ect attention from the economic grievances of groups without political clout.
impasse, Congress appointed a special electoral commission of fi ft een members to determine who would receive the votes of the disputed states. Originally composed of seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and an independent, the commission fell under Republican control when the independent member resigned to run for the Senate and a Republican was appointed to take his place. Th e commission split along party lines and voted eight to seven to award Hayes all of the disputed votes. But this decision still had to be ratifi ed by both houses of Congress. Th e Republican-dominated Senate readily approved it, but the Democrats in the House planned a fi libuster to delay the fi nal counting of the electoral votes until aft er inauguration day. If the fi libuster succeeded, neither candi- date would have a majority and, as provided in the Constitution, the election would be decided by the House, where the Democrats controlled enough states to elect Tilden.
To ensure Hayes’s election, Republican leaders negotiated secretly with conservative southern Democrats, some of whom seemed willing to abandon the fi libuster if the last troops were withdrawn and home rule restored to the South. Eventually an informal bargain was struck, which historians have dubbed the Compromise of 1877 . What precisely was agreed to and by whom remains a matter of dispute, but one thing at least was understood by both sides: Hayes would be president and southern blacks would be abandoned to their fate. In a sense, Hayes did not concede any- thing, because he had already decided to end federal support for the crumbling Radical regimes. But southern negotiators were heartened by fi rm assurances that this would indeed be the policy. Some also were infl uenced by vaguer promises involving federal support for southern railroads and internal improvements.
12
21 15 22
29
7
3 9
6 4
135 5
15 8
35
11
10 11
3
6
5
3
5 5
3
3
8 8*
6
12
8 10 11
4*
7*
10
11
WASH. TERR.
IDAHO TERR.
MONTANA TERR.
WYO. TERR.
UTAH TERR.
ARIZ. TERR.
NEW MEXICO TERR.
INDIAN TERR.
DAKOTA TERR.
Election of 1876
Uncontested Electoral Vote
Electoral Total
DEMOCRATIC Samuel J. Tilden
GREENBACK Peter Cooper
REPUBLICAN Rutherford B. Hayes
Popular Vote
4,300,590
81,737
4,036,298185165
184 184
8,418,625349
*Contested result settled by Special Election Commission in favor of Hayes.
384
Even before Sherman’s order, however, there were experiments across the South with free black labor on plantations formerly held by slaveholders. Two of these so-called “rehearsals for Reconstruction,” at Port Royal, South Carolina, and Davis Bend, Mississippi, show how Reconstruction might have developed had true land reform been implemented.
The efforts to resettle freed people on abandoned plantations began out of the Army’s practical concern to rid itself of the many runaways who were following it and crowding its camps.
In November 1861, General Benjamin F. Butler, in a novel interpretation of international law, declared runaway slaves to be “contraband of war,” whom the Union Army could rightfully seize from their rebel owners.
The “Port Royal Experiment” began as a solution to the problem of what to do with the contrabands. When the U.S. Navy occupied the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia in November 1861, the whites fl ed, leav- ing behind 10,000 slaves who already organized their own labor according to the task system, often with black
Few dreams have died harder than the desire of the freed slaves to own the land on which they labored. The hope of “forty acres and a mule” for every freedman was raised by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s Special Field Order 15, in January 1865, which decreed that 40-acre plots of “abandoned and confi s- cated” land would be set aside for ex-slaves. Yet the order was in effect for less than a year, and few slaves realized the dream of land ownership after emancipation.
“Forty Acres and a Mule” Feature Essay
Serving as a kind of dress rehearsal for Reconstruction, the Port Royal Experiment provides a glimpse of what might have occurred had the freed slaves actually been given “forty acres and a mule.”
Complete the Assignment “Forty Acres and a Mule” on myhistorylab
385
drivers rather than white overseers. The abandoned slaves sacked the plantation houses and cotton gins but had little inclination to return to the fi elds and plant cotton.
To get the black laborers back to the fi elds as soon as possible, Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase recruited Edward L. Pierce to administer Port Royal and show the world that free labor could produce as much cot- ton as slave labor. A motley crew of military offi cers, Treasury agents, investors, and idealistic teachers and missionaries, known as “Gideon’s Band,” followed Pierce south.
Tension soon arose among these groups. For example, Edward Atkinson, agent for six Boston cotton manufacturers, was motivated by both anti-slavery sentiments and profi t. He wrote the pamphlet “Cheap Cotton by Free Labor” to prove that free labor would be more profi table than slav- ery. By contrast, Gideon’s Band were young men “fresh from Harvard, Yale, and Brown” (and twelve women) and included, “clerks, doctors, divinity- students; professors and teachers, underground railway agents and socialist . . . Unitarians, free-thinkers, Methodists, straitlaced, and the other Evangelical sects.” All were motivated by abolitionism and idealism about free labor; none knew anything about cotton production, which led to con- fl icts with plantation superintendents like Atkinson and Edward Philbrick.
The freed slaves believed they had a right to the land on which they had lived and worked for so long without compensation. They celebrated free- dom from white overseers and sang:
No more peck o’ corn for me; No more, no more; . . .
No more driver’s lash for me . . . No more pint o’ salt for me . . . No more hundred lash for me . . . No more mistress’ call for me,
No more, no more, . . . Many thousands go.
Despite the confl icts between the idealists and the capitalists, and the
ex-slaves’ preference for raising food crops rather than cotton, the Port Royal Experiment was a qualifi ed success even for the cotton agents. Although cotton yields were lower than in the 1850s because of the wartime loss of fi ne seed and competition from cotton in Egypt, profi ts were high, and free labor was nearly as productive as slave labor. Philbrick made an $80,000 profi t on a $40,000 investment. Even the phil- anthropic Gideonities earned $6,000- $7,000 each.
Another site of black self- suffi ciency was Davis Bend, the Mississippi plantation belonging to Confederate President Jefferson Davis’s brother Joseph. Joseph Davis had administered it as a “model” plantation, with limited self-government by slaves, including a slave jury for criminal offenses, and unusual material comforts. By 1850, one slave, Benjamin Montgomery, was running the plantation store, managing its cotton gin, and keeping the profi ts.
After whites fl ed southern Mississippi in 1863, General Ulysses S. Grant decided that Davis Bend should become a “Negro paradise,” and the land was leased directly to former slaves, who paid only for tools, mules, and rations. They set up an even more comprehensive self-government that included an elected sheriff and judges. Davis Bend was an impressive suc- cess. By 1865, laborers there had pro- duced nearly 2,000 bales of cotton and earned a profi t of $160,000. During Reconstruction, Davis Bend also pro- duced several elected black offi cials.
On January 12, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and General Sherman met with twenty black lead- ers to hear the concerns of the freed people. The next day, Sherman issued Special Field Order 15, designating the whole Sea Island region “for exclusive Negro settlement.” Yet the experiment on “Sherman land” ended almost before it began. President Andrew Johnson rescinded Sherman’s order in the sum- mer of 1865 and restored the land to its former owners. While the Port Royal Experiment did lead to limited black
land ownership, education, and strong communities, it was not a “rehearsal for Reconstruction” for the South as a whole. Instead, the Reconstruction South followed the model of the occu- pied Deep South during the war, which had maintained large white-owned plantations with the freed people working in gangs under coercive one- year contracts.
When General Oliver O. Howard told the freed people on the Sea Islands that the land was to be restored to its white owners, they were bitter: “we want Homesteads, we were prom- ised Homesteads . . . if the govern- ment . . . now takes away from them all right to the soil they stand upon save such as they can get by again working for your late and their all time enemies . . . we are left in a more unpleasant condition than our for- mer one . . . this is not the condition of really freemen.” Some did not leave without a struggle. Black squatters told Edisto Island owners who returned in February 1866: “You have better go back to Charleston, and go to work there, and if you can do nothing else, you can pick oysters and earn your liv- ing as the loyal people have done – by the sweat of their brows.”
Even Davis Bend was restored to Joseph Davis, although he sold it on long-term credit to Ben Montgomery and his two sons. Davis was a lenient creditor, and Montgomery had a mea- sure of prosperity through the mid- 1870s, until economic reversals led him to bankruptcy in 1879. By then, Joseph Davis had died, and his heirs were less generous: the plantation was sold at foreclosure auction, and the dream of large-scale black self-suffi ciency in Mississippi ended for generations.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How were the attempts to give land to the freed slaves in the South related to the Union war effort?
2. Why did land reform under the Port Royal Experiment and at Davis Bend ultimately fail?
386 CHAPTER 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
from an antebellum minstrel show fi gure fi rst popularized by Th omas “Daddy” Rice, who blackened his face and sang a song called “Jump Jim Crow.” By the 1850s, Jim Crow was a familiar fi gure in minstrel shows, and had become a synonym for black or Negro person in popular white speech. It was a short step to referring to segregated railroad cars for black people as Jim Crow cars. While segregation and disfranchisement began as informal arrangements in the immediate aft ermath of the Civil War, they culminated in a legal regime of separation and exclusion that took fi rm hold in the 1890s.
Th e rise of Jim Crow in the political arena was especially bitter for southern blacks who realized that only political power could ensure other rights. Th e Redeemers promised, as part of the understanding that led to the end of federal intervention in 1877, that they would respect the rights of blacks as set forth in the Fourteenth and Fift eenth Amendments. Governor Wade Hampton of South Carolina was especially vocal in pledging that African Americans would not be reduced to second-class citizenship by the new regimes. But when blacks tried to vote Republican in the “redeemed” states, they encountered renewed violence and intimi- dation. “Bulldozing” African American voters remained common practice in state elections during the late 1870s and early 1880s; those blacks who withstood the threat of losing their jobs or being evicted from tenant farms if they voted for the party of Lincoln were visited at night and literally whipped into line. Th e message was clear: Vote Democratic, or vote not at all.
Th e new governments were more economical than those of Reconstruction, mainly because they cut back drastically on appro- priations for schools and other needed public services. But they were scarcely more honest—embezzlement of funds and bribery of offi cials continued to occur to an alarming extent. Louisiana, for example, suff ered for decades from the fl agrant corruption associ- ated with a state-chartered lottery.
The Redeemer regimes of the late 1870s and 1880s badly neglected the interests of small white farmers. Whites and blacks were suff ering from the notorious crop lien system that gave local merchants who advanced credit at high rates of interest during the growing season the right to take possession of the harvested crop on terms that buried farmers deeper and deeper in debt. As a result, increasing numbers of whites lost title to their homesteads and were reduced to tenancy. When a depression of world cotton prices added to the burden of a ruinous credit system, agrarian protest- ers began to challenge the ruling elite, fi rst through the Southern Farmers’ Alliance of the late 1880s and then by supporting its politi- cal descendant—the Populist Party of the 1890s (see Chapter 20 ) .
The Rise of Jim Crow African Americans bore the greatest hardships imposed by the new order. From 1876 through the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, southern states imposed a series of restrictions on black civil rights known as Jim Crow laws . Th e term “Jim Crow” came
Black and white men serve on a jury together during Reconstruction but they segregate themselves.
Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfi nished Revolution” 387
especially hard hit by terror and oppression just aft er the end of Reconstruction. Still, a majority of blacks in the nation as a whole and even in Turner’s own church refused to give up on the hope of eventual equality in America. But Bishop Turner’s anger and despair were the understandable responses of a proud man to the way that he and his fellow African Americans had been treated in the post–Civil War period.
By the late 1880s, the wounds of the Civil War were healing, and white Americans were seized by the spirit of sectional recon- ciliation. Union and Confederate veterans were tenting together and celebrating their common Americanism. “Reunion” was becoming a cultural as well as political reality. But whites could come back together only because Northerners had tacitly agreed to give Southerners a free hand in their eff orts to reduce blacks to a new form of servitude. Th e “outraged, heart-broken, bruised, and bleeding” African Americans of the South paid the heaviest price for sectional reunion. Reconstruction remained an “unfi nished revolution.” It would be another century before African Americans rose up once more to demand full civil and political rights.
Furthermore, white Democrats now controlled the electoral machinery and were able to manipulate the black vote by stuffi ng ballot boxes, discarding unwanted votes, or reporting fraudulent totals. Some states also imposed complicated new voting require- ments to discourage black participation. Full-scale disfranchise- ment did not occur until literacy tests and other legalized obstacles to voting were imposed in the period from 1890 to 1910, but by that time, less formal and comprehensive methods had already made a mockery of the Fift eenth Amendment.
Nevertheless, blacks continued to vote freely in some locali- ties until the 1890s; a few districts, like the one Robert Smalls represented, even elected black Republicans to Congress dur- ing the immediate post-Reconstruction period. Th e last of these, Representative George H. White of North Carolina, served until 1901. His farewell address eloquently conveyed the agony of south- ern blacks in the era of Jim Crow (strict segregation):
Th ese parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart- broken, bruised, and bleeding but God-fearing people, faithful, industrious, loyal people—rising people, full of potential force . . . . Th e only apology that I have to make for the earnestness with which I have spoken is that I am pleading for the life, the liberty, the future happiness, and manhood suff rage of one-eighth of the entire population of the United States.
Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfi nished Revolution”
Th e career of Henry McNeal Turner sums up the bitter side of the black experience in the South during and aft er Reconstruction. Born free in South Carolina in 1834, Turner became a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church just before the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, he recruited African Americans for the Union army and later served as chaplain for black troops. Aft er the fi ghting was over, he went to Georgia to work for the Freedmen’s Bureau but encountered racial discrimination from white Bureau offi cers and left government service for church work and Reconstruction politics. Elected to the 1867 Georgia constitutional convention and to the state legislature in 1868, he was one of a number of black clergymen who assumed leadership roles among the freedmen. But whites won control of the Georgia legislature and expelled all the black members. Turner’s reaction was an angry speech in which he proclaimed that white men were never to be trusted. As the inhabitant of a state in which blacks never gained the degree of power that they achieved in some other parts of the South, Turner was one of the fi rst black leaders to see the failure of Reconstruction as the betrayal of African American hopes for citizenship.
Becoming a bishop of the AME Church in 1880, Turner emerged as the late nineteenth century’s leading proponent of black emigration to Africa. Because he believed that white Americans were so deeply prejudiced against blacks that they would never grant them equal rights, Turner became an early advocate of black nationalism and a total separation of the races. Emigration became a popular movement among southern blacks, who were
The Promise and Failure of Reconstruction
Watch the Video
In January of 1865, General Sherman's Field Order 15 set aside 400,000 acres for use by former slaves. With help from Gideon’s Band, a ragtag group of Northern teachers and missionaries, as many as 40,000 ex-slaves achieved some success at cotton planting until the new President Johnson returned the land to its former owners.
388 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER REVIEW
The President Versus Congress
What confl icts arose among Lincoln, Johnson, and Congress during Reconstruction?
Both Lincoln and Johnson had their own notions of how Reconstruction should be governed. Radical Republicans who sought more protection for black rights challenged
Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan. Later, when Johnson hesitated to renew the Freedmen’s Bureau and fight the Black Codes, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to ensure equal rights to all Americans. (p. 368 )
Reconstructing Southern Society
What problems did southern society face during Reconstruction?
The immediate problems facing the South were economic and physical devastation, and providing for the mass of freed slaves. While former slaveholders hoped to reduce
ex-slaves to conditions not unlike slavery, northern Republicans wanted to reorganize southern land and labor on a northern free-labor model. Freedmen’s Bureau agents emphasized that ex-slaves had to sign con- tracts and work for wages. The freed slaves hoped instead to own land. Sharecropping was a compromise. (p. 374 )
Retreat from Reconstruction
Why did Reconstruction end?
Although intended to protect civil rights, the Fifteenth Amendment allowed states to limit local suffrage through difficult voting prerequisites. Further, the Ku Klux Klan intimidated black voters and representation. By 1876,
these tactics had defeated the Republicans in most southern states and Reconstruction was nearly dead. (p. 379 )
Reunion and the New South
Who benefi ted and who suffered from the recon- ciliation of North and South?
Reunion came at the expense of African Americans. The Compromise of 1877 restored autonomous government in the South to resolve the 1876 election. The North would
no longer enforce unpopular civil rights, allowing the Redeemers to bring back laissez-faire economics and restore white supremacy through the Jim Crow laws. (p. 382 )
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Study Resources
T I M E L I N E
1863 Lincoln sets forth 10 percent Reconstruction plan 1864 Wade-Davis Bill passes Congress but is pocket-
vetoed by Lincoln
1865 Johnson moves to reconstruct the South on his own initiative; Congress refuses to seat representatives and senators elected from states reestablished under presidential plan (December)
1866 Johnson vetoes Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (February); Johnson vetoes Civil Rights Act; it passes over his veto (April); Congress passes Fourteenth Amendment (June); Republicans increase their c ongressional majority in the fall elections
1867 First Reconstruction Act is passed over Johnson’s veto (March)
1868 Johnson is impeached; he avoids conviction by one vote (February–May); Southern blacks vote and serve
in constitutional conventions; Grant wins presidential election, defeating Horatio Seymour
1869 Congress passes Fifteenth Amendment, granting African Americans the right to vote
1870-1871 Congress passes Ku Klux Klan Acts to protect black voting rights in the South
1872 Grant reelected president, defeating Horace Greeley, candidate of Liberal Republicans and Democrats
1873 Financial panic plunges nation into depression 1875 Congress passes Specie Resumption Act; “Whiskey
Ring” scandal exposed
1876-1877 Disputed presidential election resolved in favor of Republican Hayes over Democrat Tilden
1877 Compromise of 1877 ends military intervention in the South and causes fall of the last Radical governments
y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 16 The Agony of Reconstruction on MyHistoryLab
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Ten Percent Plan Reconstruction plan proposed by President Abraham Lincoln as a quick way to readmit the former Confederate States. It called for pardon of all southerners except Confederate leaders, and readmission to the Union for any state after 10 percent of its voters signed a loyalty oath and the state abolished slavery. p. 368
Radical Republicans Congressional Republicans who insisted on black suffrage and federal protection of civil rights of African Americans. p. 369
Wade–Davis Bill In 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis bill to counter Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. The bill required that a majority of a former Confederate state’s white male population take
STUDY RESOURCES 389
a loyalty oath and guarantee equality for African Americans. President Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill. p. 369
Thirteenth Amendment Ratified in 1865, it prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. p. 371
Black Codes Laws passed by southern states immediately after the Civil War to maintain white supremacy by restricting the rights of the newly freed slaves. p. 371
Freedmen’s Bureau Agency established by Congress in March 1865 to provide freedmen with shelter, food, and medical aid and to help them estab- lish schools and find employment. The Bureau was dissolved in 1872. p. 371
Fourteenth Amendment Ratified in 1868, it provided citizenship to ex-slaves after the Civil War and constitutionally protected equal rights under the law for all citizens. Radical Republicans used it to enact a con- gressional Reconstruction policy in the former Confederate states. p. 371
Radical Reconstruction The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military districts. They required the states to guarantee black male suffrage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of their readmission to the Union. p. 372
Sharecropping After the Civil War, the southern states adopted a sharecropping system as a compromise between former slaves who wanted land of their own and former slave owners who needed labor. The land- owners provided land, tools, and seed to a farming family, who in turn pro- vided labor. The resulting crop was divided between them, with the farmers receiving a “share” of one-third to one-half of the crop. p. 375
Fifteenth Amendment Ratified in 1870, it prohibits the denial or abridgment of the right to vote by the federal or state governments on the basis of race, color, or prior condition as a slave. It was intended to guaran- tee African Americans the right to vote in the South. p. 379
Ku Klux Klan A secret terrorist society first organized in Tennessee in 1866. The original Klan’s goals were to disfranchise African Americans, stop Reconstruction, and restore the prewar social order of the South. The Ku Klux Klan re-formed in the twentieth century to promote white supremacy and combat aliens, Catholics, and Jews. p. 380
Force acts Designed to protect black voters in the South from the Ku Klux Klan in 1870–1871, these laws placed state elections under federal jurisdiction and imposed fines and punished those guilty of interfering with any citizen exercising his right to vote. p. 380
Compromise of 1877 Compromise struck during the contested presidential election of 1876, in which Democrats accepted the election of Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the end of Reconstruction. p. 383
Redeemers A loose coalition of prewar Democrats, Confederate vet- erans, and Whigs who took over southern state governments in the 1870s, supposedly “redeeming” them from the corruption of Reconstruction. p. 383
Jim Crow laws Segregation laws enacted by southern states after Reconstruction. p. 386
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S 1. Do you think Reconstruction may have turned out differently had
Lincoln not been assassinated?
2. Why was it difficult to enforce social and cultural changes using military force?
3. What role did local, grassroots efforts play in reserving federal govern- ment policy? How did people retain that much autonomy even under a strong federal government?
4. Do you think the “Redemption” of southern government was an inevitable backlash to Reconstruction? How could things have turned out differently?
◾
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MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Retreat From Reconstruction The President Vs. Congress
Reconstruction p. 373
The First Vote p. 380
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 16 on MyHistoryLab
The Schools that the Civil War and Reconstruction Created p. 378
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View the Map
View the Closer Look
Watch the Video
Reconstructing Southern Society
The Mississippi Black Code (1865) p. 370
Hannah Irwin Describes Ku Klux Klan Ride p. 381
A Sharecrop Contract (1882) p. 375
Pearson Profiles, Robert Smalls p. 367
Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendment (1865, 1868, 1870) p. 369
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Read the Document Reunion and the New South
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
“Forty Acres and a Mule” p. 384
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The Promise and Failure of Reconstruction p. 387
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Complete the Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
away, they opened fire, then rode closer and fired again and again into his fallen body.
As Lean Bear had feared, in the last three decades of the nineteenth century, a fl ood of settlers ventured into the vast lands across the Mississippi River. Prospectors searched for “pay dirt,” railroads crisscrossed the continent, eastern and foreign capitalists invested in cattle and land bonanzas, and farmers took up the promise of free western lands. In 1867, Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune , told New York City’s unemployed: “If you strike off into the broad, free West, and make yourself a farm from Uncle Sam’s gener- ous domain, you will crowd nobody, starve nobody, and neither you nor your children need evermore beg for something to do.”
With the end of the Civil War, white Americans again claimed a special destiny to expand across the continent. In the process, they crushed the culture of the Native Americans and ignored the contributions of people of other races, such as the Chinese miners and laborers and the Mexican herdsmen. As millions moved west, the states of Colorado, Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah were carved out of the lands across the Mississippi. At the turn of the century, only Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma remained as territories.
The West became a great colonial empire, harnessed to eastern capital and tied increasingly to national and interna- tional markets. Its raw materials, sent east by wagon, train, and ship, helped fuel eastern factories. Western economies relied heavily on the federal government, which subsidized their rail- roads, distributed their land, and spent millions of dollars for the upkeep of soldiers and Indians.
By the 1890s, the lands beyond the Mississippi had under- gone substantial change. In place of buff alo and unfenced vistas,
Lean Bear’s Changing West In 1863, federal Indian agents took a delegation of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache to visit the eastern United States, hoping to impress them with the power of the white man. The visitors were, in fact, impressed. In New York City, they stared at the tall buildings and crowded streets, so different from the wide-open plains with which they were accustomed. They visited the museum of the great showman Phineas T. Barnum, who in turn put them on display.
In Washington, they met with President Abraham Lincoln. Lean Bear, a Cheyenne chief, assured Lincoln that Indians wanted peace but worried about the numbers of white people who were pouring into their country. Lincoln swore friendship, said the Indians would be better off if they began to farm, and promised he would do his best to keep the peace. But, he said, smiling at Lean Bear, “You know it is not always possible for any father to have his children do precisely as he wishes them to do.”
Lean Bear, who had children of his own, understood what Lincoln had had to say in Washington, at least in a way. Just a year later, back on his own lands, he watched as federal troops, Lincoln’s “children,” approached his camp. Wearing a peace medal that Lincoln had given him, Lean Bear rode slowly toward the troops to once again offer his friendship. When he was twenty yards
BEYOND THE FRONTIER PG. 391 What were the challenges of settling the country west of the Mississippi?
CRUSHING THE NATIVE AMERICANS PG. 392 How did white Americans crush the culture of the Native Americans as they moved west?
SETTLEMENT OF THE WEST PG. 400 Why did Americans and others move to the West?
THE BONANZA WEST PG. 403 Why was the West a bonanza of dreams and get-rich-quick schemes?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West
The West: Exploiting an Empire 17
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire
“sea of grassy hillocks” extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. To the west of the Great Plains were the High Plains, rough, semiarid, rising gently to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Running from Alaska to central New Mexico, the Rockies presented a formidable barrier. Th ere were valuable beaver in the streams and gold near Pikes Peak. But most travelers hurried through the northern passes, emerging in the desolate basin of present-day southern Idaho and Utah. Native Americans lived there—the Ute, Paiute, Bannock, and Shoshone tribes—surviving in the harsh environment by digging for roots and gathering seeds and berries. In the west, the loft y Coast Ranges—the Cascades and Sierra Nevada—held back rainfall; beyond were the temperate lands of the Pacifi c coast.
Early explorers such as Zebulon Pike thought the country beyond the Mississippi was uninhabitable, fit only, Pike said, for “wandering and uncivilized aborigines.” Mapmakers agreed; between 1825 and 1860, American maps showed this land as “The Great American Desert.” As a result, settlement paused on
there were cities and towns, health resorts, homesteads, sheep ranches, and, in the arid regions, the beginnings of the irrigated agriculture that would reshape the West in the twentieth century. Ghost towns, abandoned farms, and the scars in the earth left by miners and farmers spoke to the less favorable side of settlement. As the new century dawned, the West had become a place of conquest and exploitation, as well as a mythic land of cowboys and quick fortunes.
Beyond the Frontier
What were the challenges of settling the country west of the Mississippi?
The line of white settlement had reached the edge of the Missouri timber country by 1840. Beyond lay an enormous land of rolling prairies, parched deserts, and rugged, majestic mountains. Emerging from the timber country, travelers fi rst encountered the Great Plains—treeless, nearly fl at, an endless
Kicking Bear recorded the Battle of the Little Bighorn in this pictograph.
392 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
Crushing the Native Americans
How did white Americans crush the culture of the Native Americans as they moved west?
When Greeley urged New Yorkers to move West and “crowd nobody,” he—like almost all white Americans—ignored the fact that large numbers of people already lived there. At the close of the Civil War, Native Americans inhabited nearly half the United States. By 1880, they had been driven onto smaller and smaller reservations and were no longer an independent people. A decade later, even their culture had crumbled under the impact of white domination.
In 1865, nearly a quarter million Native Americans lived in the western half of the country. Tribes such as the Winnebago, Menominee, Cherokee, and Chippewa were resettled there, forced out of their eastern lands by advancing white settlement. Other tribes were native to the region. In the Southwest there were the Pueblo groups, including the Hopi, Zuni, and Rio Grande Pueblos.
the edge of the Plains, and most early settlers headed directly for California and Oregon.
Few rivers cut through the plains; those that did raged in the winter and trickled in the summer. Rainfall usually did not reach fi ft een inches a year, not enough to support extensive agriculture. Th ere was little lumber for homes and fences, and the tools of eastern settlement—the cast-iron plow, the boat, and the ax—were virtually useless on the tough and treeless plains soil. “East of the Mississippi,” historian Walter Prescott Webb noted, “civilization stood on three legs—land, water, and timber; west of the Mississippi not one but two of these legs were withdrawn— water and timber—and civilization was left on one leg—land.”
Hot winds seared the plains in summer, and northers, blizzards, and hailstorms froze them in winter. Wildlife roamed in profusion. Th e American bison, better known as the buff alo, grazed in enormous herds from Mexico to Canada. In 1865, perhaps fi ft een million buff alo lived on the plains, so many they seemed like “leaves in a forest” to an early observer. A single herd sighted in 1871 had four million head.
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PHYSIOGRAPHIC MAP OF THE UNITED STATES In the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, the topography, altitudes, crops, and climate—especially the lack of rain west of the rainfall line shown here—led to changes in a mode of settlement that had been essentially uniform from the Atlantic coast through Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri. The rectangular land surveys and quarter-section lots that were traditional before could not accommodate Great Plains conditions.
Crushing the Native Americans 393
Comanche rode three hundred yards and shot twenty arrows in the time it took a soldier to load his fi rearm once. Th e introduc- tion of the new Colt six-shooters during the 1850s gave govern- ment troops a rapid-fi re weapon but did not entirely off set the Indians’ advantage.
Migratory in culture, the Plains Indians formed tribes of several thousand people but lived in smaller bands of three to five hundred. The Comanche, who numbered perhaps seven thousand, had thirteen bands with such names as Burnt Meat, Making Bags While Moving, and Th ose Who Move Oft en. Each band was governed by a chief and a council of elder men, and Indians of the same tribe transferred freely from band to band. Bands acted independently, making it diffi cult for the U.S. govern- ment to deal with the fragmented tribes.
The Comanche dominated most of the Plains through their exploitation of the horse, their use of violence, and the timely cooperation among their bands. Over the course of two centuries, they crushed the feared Apache, harassed the Spanish and Mexicans, and tormented American immigrants who wanted to establish trading posts in Taos and Santa Fe. Although offi cial maps showed Spanish ownership of the southern and western Plains, the Comanche actually controlled it, their domain known as the Comancheria, or the Comanche empire. Th eir last important chief, Quanah Parker, the son of a Comanche brave and a captive Anglo-Texan, died in 1911.
Whether Comanche or other tribes, all native Americans on the Plains followed and lived off the buff alo. Buff alo provided food, clothing, and shelter; the Indians, unlike later white hunters, used every part of the animal. Th e meat was dried or “jerked” in the hot plains air. Th e skins made tepees, blankets, and robes. Buff alo bones became knives; tendons were made into bowstrings; horns and hooves were boiled into glue. Buff alo “chips”—dried manure—were burned as fuel. All in all, the buff alo was “a gallop- ing department store.”
Warfare among tribes usually took the form of brief raids and skirmishes. Plains Indians fought few prolonged wars and rarely coveted territory. Most conflicts involved only a few warriors intent on stealing horses or “counting coup”—touching an enemy body with the hand or a special stick. Tribes developed a fi erce and trained warrior class, recognized for achievements in battle. Speaking diff erent languages, Native Americans of various tribes were nevertheless able to communicate with one another through a highly developed sign language.
Th e Plains tribes divided labor tasks according to gender. Men hunted, traded, supervised ceremonial activities, and cleared ground for planting. Th ey usually held the positions of authority, such as chief or medicine man. Women were responsible for child rearing and artistic activity. Th ey also performed the camp work, grew vegetables, prepared buff alo meat and hides, and gathered berries and roots. In most tribes, women played an important role in political, economic, and religious activities. Among the Navajo and Zuni, kinship descended from the mother’s side, and Navajo women were in charge of most of the family’s property. In tribes such as the Sioux, there was little diff erence in status. Men were respected for hunting and war, women for their artistic skills with quill and paint.
Peaceful farmers and herders, they had built up complex traditions around a settled way of life.
Th e Pueblo groups were cultivators of corn. Th ey lived on the subdesert plateau of present-day western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. Harassed by powerful neighboring tribes, they built communal houses of adobe brick on high mesas or in cracks in the cliff s. More nomadic were the Camp Dwellers, the Jicarilla Apache and Navajo who roamed eastern New Mexico and western Texas. Blending elements of the Plains and Plateau environments, they lived in tepees or mud huts, grew some crops to supplement their hunting, and moved readily from place to place. Th e Navajo herded sheep and produced beautiful orna- mental silver, baskets, and blankets. Fierce fighters, Apache horsemen were feared by whites and fellow Indians across the southwestern plains.
Farther west were the tribes that inhabited present-day California. Divided into many small bands, they eked out a dif- fi cult existence living on roots, grubs, berries, acorns, and small game. In the Pacifi c Northwest, where fi sh and forest animals made life easier, the Klamath, Chinook, Yurok, and Shasta tribes developed a rich civilization. Th ey built plank houses and canoes, worked extensively in wood, and evolved a complex social and political organization. Settled and determined, they resisted the invasion of the whites.
By the 1870s, most of these tribes had been destroyed or beaten into submission. The powerful Ute, crushed in 1855, ceded most of their Utah lands to the United States and set- tled on a small reservation near Great Salt Lake. The Navajo and Apache fought back fiercely, but between 1865 and 1873 they too were confined to reservations. The Native Americans of California succumbed to the contagious diseases carried by whites during the Gold Rush of 1849. Miners burned their villages, and by 1880, fewer than twenty thousand Indians lived in California.
Life of the Plains Indians In the mid-nineteenth century, nearly two-thirds of the Native Americans lived on the Great Plains. Th e Plains tribes included the Sioux of present-day Minnesota and the Dakotas; the Blackfoot of Idaho and Montana; the Cheyenne, Crow, and Arapaho of the central plains; the Pawnee of western Nebraska; and the Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche of present-day Texas and New Mexico.
Nomadic and warlike, the Plains Indians depended on the buff alo and horse. Th e modern horse, fi rst brought by Spanish explorers in the 1500s, spread north from Mexico onto the plains, and by the 1700s the Plains Indians’ way of life had changed. Th e Plains tribes gave up farming almost entirely and hunted the buff alo, ranging widely over the rolling plains. Th e men became superb warriors and horsemen, among the best light cavalry in the world.
Equipped with stout wooden bows three feet or less in length, Plains Indians were fi erce warriors. Hiding their bod- ies behind their racing ponies, they drove deadly arrows clear through buff alo. Against white troops or settlers, the skillful
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the North Platte and Arkansas Rivers for “as long as waters run and the grass shall grow.”
Th e concentration policy lasted only a few years. Accustomed to hunting widely for buff alo, many Native Americans refused to stay within their assigned areas. White settlers poured into Indian lands, then called on the government to protect them. Indians were pushed out of Kansas and Nebraska in the 1850s, even as white reformers fought to hold those territories open for free blacks. In 1859, gold miners moved into the Pikes Peak country, touching off warfare with the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
In 1864, tired of the fi ghting, the two tribes asked for peace. Certain that the war was over, Chief Black Kettle led his seven hundred followers to camp on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Early on the morning of November 29, 1864, a group of Colorado militia led by Colonel John M. Chivington attacked the sleeping group. “Kill and scalp all, big and little,” Chivington told his men. “Nits make lice.” Black Kettle tried to stop the ambush,
“As Long as Waters Run”: Searching for an Indian Policy Before the Civil War, Americans used the land west of the Mississippi as “one big reservation.” Th e government named the area “Indian Country,” moved eastern tribes there with fi rm treaty guarantees, and in 1834 passed the Indian Intercourse Act, which prohibited any white person from entering Indian country without a license.
Th e situation changed in the 1850s. Wagon trains wound their way to California and Oregon, miners pushed into western goldfi elds, and there was talk of a transcontinental railroad. To clear the way for settlement, the federal government in 1851 aban- doned “One Big Reservation” in favor of a new policy of concen- tration. For the fi rst time, it assigned defi nite boundaries to each tribe. Th e Sioux, for example, were given the Dakota country north of the Platte River, the Crow a large area near the Powder River, and the Cheyenne and Arapaho the Colorado foothills between
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Pueblo
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Little Big Horn 1876
Fetterman massacre
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Native Americans, 1850–1896 View the Map
NATIVE AMERICANS IN THE WEST: MAJOR BATTLES AND RESERVATIONS “They made us many promises, more than I remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.” So said Red Cloud of the Oglala Sioux, summarizing Native American–white relations in the 1870s.
Crushing the Native Americans 395
raising first an American flag and then a white flag. Neither worked. Th e Native American men, women, and children were clubbed, stabbed, and scalped.
Th e Chivington massacre set off angry protests in Colorado and the East. Congress appointed an investigating committee, and the government concluded a treaty with the Cheyenne and Arapaho, condemning “the gross and wanton outrages.” Still, the two tribes were forced to surrender their Sand Creek reservation in exchange for lands elsewhere. Th e Kiowa and Comanche were also ousted from areas they had been granted “forever” only a few years before. As the Sioux chief Spotted Tail said, “Why does not the Great Father put his red children on wheels so that he can move them as he will?”
Before long, the powerful Sioux were on the warpath in the great Sioux War of 1865–1867. Once again, an invasion of gold miners touched off the war, which fl ared even more intensely when the federal government announced plans to connect the various mining towns by building the Bozeman Trail through the heart of the Sioux hunting grounds in Montana. Red Cloud, the Sioux chief, determined to stop the trail. In December 1866, pursued by an army column under Captain William J. Fetterman, he lured the incautious Fetterman deep into the wil- derness, ambushed him, and wiped out all eighty-two soldiers in his command.
The Fetterman massacre, coming so soon after the Chivington massacre, sparked a public debate over the nation’s Indian policy. Like the policy itself, the debate refl ected diff ering white views of the Native Americans. In the East, some reform, humanitarian, and church groups wanted a humane peace pol- icy, directed toward educating and “civilizing” the tribes. Many white people, in the East and West, questioned this approach, convinced that Native Americans were savages unfi t for civi- lization. Westerners, of course, had some reason to fear Indian attacks, and the fears oft en fed on wild rumors of scalped settlers and besieged forts. As a result, Westerners in general favored fi rm control over the Native Americans, including swift punishment of any who rebelled.
In 1867, the peace advocates won the debate. Halting construction on the Bozeman Trail, Congress created a Peace Commission of four civilians and three generals to end the Sioux War and eliminate permanently the causes of Indian wars. Setting out for the West, the Peace Commissioners agreed that only one policy off ered a permanent solution: a policy of “small reservations” to isolate the Native Americans on distant lands, teach them to farm, and gradually “civilize” them.
Th e commissioners chose two areas to hold all the Plains Indians. Fifty-four thousand Native Americans on the north- ern plains would be moved north of the Black Hills in Dakota Territory, far from prospective white settlement. On the southern plains, eighty-six thousand Native Americans would be moved into present-day Oklahoma, a region also considered diffi cult to farm and unattractive to whites. In both areas, tribes would be assigned specifi c reservations where government agents could supervise them.
Th e Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Arapaho agreed to the plan in 1867, the Sioux in 1868. Th e policy was extended beyond the plains, and the Ute, Shoshone, Bannock, Navajo, and Apache tribes also accepted small reservations. “We have now selected and provided reservations for all, off the great road,” an army commander wrote. “All who cling to their old hunting-grounds are hostile and will remain so till killed off .”
Final Battles on the Plains Few Native Americans settled peacefully into life on the new reservations. The reservation system not only changed their age-old customs; it chained them in a situation of poverty and isolation. Soon, young warriors and minor chiefs denounced the treaties and drift ed back to the open countryside. In late 1868, war- fare broke out again, and it took more than a decade of violence
Read the Document Chief Red Cloud’s Speech
Red Cloud was chief of the Oglala Teton Sioux. He was an important leader who opposed white incursions into Native American lives and territory, although he openly advocated peace whenever possible and did not support the more violent actions of Crazy Horse and his followers.
396 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
to beat the Indians into submission. Th e Kiowa and Comanche rampaged through the Texas Panhandle, looting and killing, until the U.S. Army—including the feared “buff alo soldiers,” African American cavalrymen on the western frontier—crushed them in the Red River War of 1874–1875 and ended warfare in the Southwest. (See the Feature Essay, “Blacks in Blue: Th e Buff alo Soldiers in the West ,” pp. 398–399 .)
On the northern plains, fi ghting resulted from the Black Hills Gold Rush of 1875. As prospectors tramped across Native American hunting grounds, the Sioux gathered to stop them. Th ey were led by Rain-in-the-Face, the great war chief Crazy Horse, and the famous medicine man Sitting Bull. Th e army sent several columns of troops aft er the Indians, but one, under flamboyant Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, pushed recklessly ahead, eager to claim the victory. On the morning of June 25, 1876, thinking he had a small band of Native Americans surrounded in their village on the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana, Custer divided his column and took 265 men toward it. Instead of fi nding a small band, he discovered he had stumbled on the main Sioux camp with 2,500 warriors. It was the largest Native American army ever assembled in the United States.
By midafternoon it was over; Custer and his men were dead. Custer was largely responsible for the loss, but “Custer’s Last Stand,” set in blazing headlines across the country, set off
a nationwide demand for revenge. Within a few months, the Sioux were surrounded and beaten, three thousand of them surrendering in October 1876. Sitting Bull and a few followers who had fled to Canada gave up in 1881.
Th e Sioux War ended the major Indian warfare in the West, but occasional outbreaks occurred for several years thereaft er. In 1877, the Nez Percé tribe of Oregon, a people who had warmly welcomed Lewis and Clark in 1805, rebelled against government policy. Hoping to reach Canada, Chief Joseph led the tribe on a courageous fl ight lasting 75 days and covering 1,321 miles. They defeated the pursuing army at every turn but then ran out of food, horses, and ammunition. Surrendering, they were sent to bar- ren lands in the Indian Country of Oklahoma, and there, most of them died from disease.
In 1890, the Teton Sioux of South Dakota, bitter and starv- ing, became restless. Many of them turned to the Ghost Dances , a set of dances and rites that grew from a vision of a Paiute messiah named Wovoka. Performance of the
dances, Wovoka said, would bring back Native American lands and would cause the whites to disappear. All Native Americans would reunite, the earth would be covered with dust, and a new Earth would come upon the old. The vanished buffalo would return in great herds.
Th e army intervened to stop the dancing, touching off vio- lence that killed Sitting Bull and a number of other warriors. Frightened Native Americans fl ed southwest to join other Ghost Dancers under the aging chief Big Foot. Moving quickly, troops of the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old regiment, caught up with Big Foot’s band and took them to the army camp on Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. A Native American, it is thought, fi red the fi rst shot, returned by the army’s new machine guns. Firing a shell a second, they shredded tepees and people. In the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre , about two hundred men, women, and children were killed in the snow.
The End of Tribal Life The final step in Indian policy came in the 1870s and 1880s. Some reformers had long argued against segregating the Native Americans on reservations, urging instead that the nation assimi- late them individually into white culture. Th ese “assimilationists” wanted to use education, land policy, and federal law to eradicate tribal society.
Sioux Ghost Dance Watch the Video
This wood engraving from 1891 depicts a group of Sioux dancers performing, most likely, one of their last ghost dances before the arrest of the warrior chief Sitting Bull.
Crushing the Native Americans 397
Congress began to adopt the policy in 1871 when it ended the practice of treaty making with Native American tribes. Since tribes were no longer separate nations, they lost many of their political and judicial functions, and the power of the chiefs was weakened. In 1882, Congress created a Court of Indian Off enses to try Native Americans who broke government rules, and soon thereaft er it made them answerable in regular courts for certain crimes.
While Congress worked to break down the tribes, educators trained young Native Americans to adjust to white culture. In 1879, fi ft y Pawnee, Kiowa, and Cheyenne youths were brought east to the new Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Other Native American schools soon opened, including the Haskell Institute in Kansas and numerous day schools on the western reservations. Th e schools taught students to fi x machines and farm; they forced young Indians to trim their long hair and made them speak English, banned the wearing of tribal paint or clothes, and forbade tribal ceremonies and dances. “Kill the Indian and save the man,” said Richard H. Pratt, the army offi cer who founded the Carlisle School.
Land ownership was the fi nal and most important link in the new policy. Native Americans who owned land, it was thought, would become responsible, self-reliant citizens. Deciding to give each Native American a farm, Congress in 1887 passed the Dawes Severalty Act , the most important legal development in Indian– white relations in more than three centuries.
Aiming to end tribal life, the Dawes Act divided tribal lands into small plots for distribution among members of the tribe. Each family head received 160 acres, single adults 80 acres, and children 40 acres. Once the land was distributed, any surplus was sold to white settlers, with the profi ts going to Native American schools.
To keep the Indians’ land from falling into the hands of speculators, the federal government held it in trust for twenty-fi ve years. Finally, American citizenship was granted to Native Americans who accepted their land, lived apart from the tribe, and “adopted the habits of civi- lized life.”
Th rough the Dawes Act, 47 million acres of land were distributed to Native Americans and their families. There were another 90 million acres in the reservations, and these lands, oft en the most fertile, were sold to white settlers. Speculators evaded the twenty-five-year rule, leasing rather than purchasing the land from the Native Americans. Many Native Americans knew little about farming. Th eir tools were rudimentary, and in the culture of the Plains Indians, men had not ordinarily participated in farming. In 1934, the government returned to the idea of tribal land ownership, but by then 138 million acres of Indian land had shrunk to 48 million acres, half of which was barren.
Th e fi nal blow to tribal life came not in the Dawes Act but in the virtual extermination of the buff alo, the Plains Indians’ chief resource and the basis for their unique way of life. Th e killing began in the 1860s as the transconti- nental railroads pushed west, and it stepped
up as settlers found they could harm the Indians by harming the buff alo. “Kill every buff alo you can,” an army offi cer said. “Every buff alo dead is an Indian gone.” Th en, in 1871, a Pennsylvania tannery discovered that buff alo hides made valuable leather. Professional hunters such as William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody swarmed across the plains, killing millions of the beasts.
Between 1872 and 1874, professional hunters slaughtered three million buff alo a year. In a frontier form of a factory system, rifl emen, skinners, and transport wagons pushed through the vast herds, which shrank steadily behind them.
By 1883, the buff alo were almost gone. When the government set out to produce the famous “buff alo nickel,” the designer had to go to the Bronx Zoo in New York City to fi nd a buff alo.
By 1900, there were only 250,000 Native Americans in the country. (Th ere were 600,000 within the limits of the present-day United States in 1800, and more than 5 million in 1492, when Columbus fi rst set foot in the New World.) Most of the Indians lived on reservations. Many lived in poverty. Alcoholism and unemployment were growing problems, and Native Americans, no longer able to live off the buff alo, became wards of the state. They lost their cultural distinctiveness. Once possessors of the entire continent, they had been crowded into smaller and smaller areas, overwhelmed by the demand to become settled, literate, and English-speaking. “Except for the internment of the West Coast Japanese during World War II,” said historian Roger L. Nichols, “Indian removal is the only example of large- scale government-enforced migration in American history. For the Japanese, the move was temporary; for the Indians it was not.”
Accounts of the Wounded Knee Massacre Read the Document
In late 1890 troops of the Seventh Cavalry killed more than 200 Native American men, women, and children at a reservation located along Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. A number of longstanding issues on the reservation contributed to the tension prior to the massacre.
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Blacks in Blue The Buffalo Soldiers in the West
Feature Essay
assigned not only to preach but to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. The food was poor; racism was widespread. The army stocked the fi rst black units with worn-out horses, a serious mat- ter to men whose lives depended on the speed and stamina of their mounts. “Since our fi rst mount in 1867 this regi- ment has received nothing but broken down horses and repaired equipment,” an offi cer said in 1870.
Many white offi cers refused to serve with black troops. George Armstrong Custer, the handsome “boy general,” turned down a position in the Ninth and joined the new Seventh Cavalry, headed for disaster at Little
Black troops were fi rst used on a large scale during the Civil War. Organized in segregated units, with white offi cers, they fought with distinction. Nearly 180,000 blacks served in the Union army; 34,000 of them died. When the war ended in 1865, Congress for the fi rst time authorized black troops to serve in the regular peacetime army. In addition to infantry, it created two cav- alry regiments—the Ninth and Tenth, which became known as the famous buffalo soldiers.
Like other black regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry had white offi cers who took special examinations before they could serve. The chaplains were
On Saturday afternoons, youngsters used to sit in darkened movie theaters and cheer the victories of the U.S. Cavalry over the Indians. Typically, the Indians were about to capture a wagon train when army bugles suddenly sounded. Then the blue-coated cavalry charged over the hill. Few in the theaters cheered for the Indians; fewer still noticed the absence of black faces among the charging cavalry. But in fact, more than two thousand African American cavalry- men served on the western frontier between 1867 and 1890. Known as the buffalo soldiers, they made up one-fi fth of the U.S. Cavalry.
Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West on myhistorylab
Although they were not, in fact, treated as well as the white soldiers in their regiments, many African American cavalrymen such as those pictured here were probably drawn into service by hard-sell recruitment posters such as the one shown on the facing page.
Complete the Assignment
399
effect their surrender. In 1886, black cavalrymen surrounded and captured the famous Apache chief Geronimo. In that and other campaigns, several buffalo soldiers won the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Black troops hunted Big Foot and his band before the slaughter at Wounded Knee in 1890 (see p. 396 ) , and they served in many of the West’s most famous Indian battles. While one-third of all army recruits deserted between 1865 and 1890, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry had few desertions. In 1880, the Tenth had the fewest desertions of any regiment in the country.
It was ironic that in the West, black men fought red men to benefi t white men. Once the Indian wars ended, the buffalo soldiers worked to keep illegal settlers out of Indian or govern- ment land—much of which was later opened to settlement. Both regiments saw action in the Spanish-American War, the Ninth at San Juan Hill, the Tenth in the fi ghting around Santiago. Unlike white veterans of the same campaigns, the old buffalo soldiers were forgotten in retirement, although some of them had the satisfaction of settling on the western lands they had done so much to pacify.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did many African American men join the military during this era?
2. Why did so few of these “buffalo soldiers” desert at a time when so many other U.S. soldiers did?
name that soon applied to all African American soldiers in the West.
From 1868 to 1874, the Tenth served on the Kansas frontier. The dull winter days were fi lled with drills and scouting parties outside the post. In spring and summer, the good weather brought forth new forays. Indian bands raided farms and ranches and stampeded cat- tle herds on the way north from Texas. They struck and then melted back into the reservations.
The Ninth Cavalry also had a diffi cult job. Commanded by Colonel Edward Hatch, who had served with Grierson in the Civil War, it was sta- tioned in West Texas and along the Rio Grande. The summers were so hot that men collapsed with sunstroke, the win- ters so cold that water froze in canteens. Native Americans from outside the area frequently raided it. From the north, Kiowa and Comanche warriors rode down the Great Comanche War Trail; Kickapoo crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico. Gangs of Mexican ban- dits and restless Civil War veterans roamed and plundered at will.
From 1874 to 1875, the Ninth fought in the great Red River War, in which the Kiowa and Comanche, fed up with conditions on the reservations, revolted against Grant’s peace policy. Marching, fi ghting, then marching again, the sol- diers harried and wore out the Indians, who fi nally surrendered in the spring of 1875. Herded into a new and deso- late reservation, the Mescalero Apache of New Mexico took to the warpath in 1877 and again in 1879. Each time, it took a year of grueling warfare to
Bighorn. The Army and Navy Journal carried ads that told a similar story:
A FIRST LIEUTENANT OF INFANTRY (white) Stationed at a very desirable post in the Department of the South desires a transfer with an offi cer of the same grade on equal terms if in a white regiment but if in a colored regiment a reasonable bonus would be expected.
There was no shortage of black troops for the offi cers to lead. Blacks enlisted because the army offered some advancement in a closed society. It also paid $13 a month, plus room and board.
In 1867, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry were posted to the West, where they remained for two decades. Under Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson, a Civil War hero, the Tenth went to Fort Riley, Kansas; the regi- ment arrived in the midst of a great Indian war. The Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux were on the warpath. Troopers of the Tenth defended farms, stages, trains, and work crews building railroad tracks to the West. Cornered by a band of Cheyenne, they beat back the attack and won a new name. They had been known as the “brunettes” or “Africans,” but the Cheyenne now called them the buffalo soldiers, a
400 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
Many moved to California for their health. Th e Mormons settled Utah to escape religious persecution. Others followed the mining camps, the advancing railroads, and the farming and cattle frontier.
Whatever the specifi c reason, most people moved West to better their lot. On the whole, their timing was good, for as the nation’s population grew, so did demand for the livestock and the agricultural, mineral, and lumber products of the expanding West. Contrary to older historical views, the West did not act as a major “safety valve,” an outlet for social and economic tensions. Th e poor and unemployed did not have the means to move there and estab- lish farms. “Moreover,” as Douglass C. North, an economic histo- rian, said, “most people moved West in good times . . . in periods of rising prices, of expanding demand, when the prospects for mak- ing money from this new land looked brightest; and this aspect characterized the whole pattern of settlement.”
Men and Women on the Overland Trail Th e fi rst movement west aimed not for the nearby plains but for California and Oregon on the continent’s far shore. It started
Even as the Native Americans lost their identity, they entered the romantic folklore of the West. Dime novels, snapped up by read- ers young and old, told tales of Indian fi ghting on the plains. “Buff alo Bill” Cody turned it all into a profi table business. Beginning in 1883, his Wild West Show ran for more than three decades, playing to millions of viewers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. It fea- tured Plains Indians chasing buff alo, performing a war dance, and attacking a settler’s cabin. In 1885, Sitting Bull himself, victor over Custer at the battle of Little Bighorn, performed in the show.
Settlement of the West
Why did Americans and others move to the West?
Between 1870 and 1900, white—and some African, Hispanic, and Asian—Americans settled the enormous total of 430 million acres west of the Mississippi; they took over more land than had been occupied by Americans in all the years before 1870.
People moved West for many reasons. Some sought adven- ture; others wanted to escape the drab routine of factory or city life.
Railroad and Buffalo View the Closer Look
In 1872, the Northern Pacific Railroad began to build a route that would violate Sioux territory. The government sent an army to protect the surveyors.
Settlement of the West 401
For women, the trail was lonely, and they worked to exhaustion. Before long, some adjusted their clothing to the harsh condi- tions, adopting the new bloomer pants, shortening their skirts, or wearing regular “wash dresses”—so called because they had shorter hemlines that did not drag on the wet ground on washday. Other women continued to wear their long dresses, thinking bloomers “indecent.” Both men and women carried fi rearms in case of Indian attacks, but most emigrants saw few Indians en route.
What they oft en did see was trash, miles of it, for the wagon trains were an early example of the impact of migration and settle- ment on the western environment. On the Oregon and other trails, travelers sidestepped mounds of garbage, tin cans, furniture, cook- ing stoves, kegs, tools, and clothing, all discarded by people who had passed through before. Along a 40-mile trail in the Nevada desert, a migrant tallied two thousand abandoned wagons. On some trails, animals and people stirred up so much dust that drivers wore goggles to protect their eyes.
Th e fi rst stage of the journey was deceptively easy, and travelers usually reached Fort Kearney by late May. Th e second leg led another 300 miles up the Platte River to Fort Laramie on the eastern edge of Wyoming Territory. Th e heat of June had dried the grass, and there was no wood. Anxious to beat the early snowfalls, travelers rested a day or two at the fort, then hurried on to South Pass, 280 miles to the west, the best route through the forbidding Rockies.
Beyond South Pass, some emigrants turned south to the Mormon settlements on the Great Salt Lake, but most headed 340 miles north to Fort Hall on the Snake River in Idaho. It took another three months to cover the remaining 800 miles. California-bound travelers followed the Humboldt River through the summer heat of Nevada.
Under the best of conditions the trip took six months, sixteen hours a day, dawn to dusk, of hard, grueling labor. Walking half- way across the continent was no easy task, and it provided a never- to-be-forgotten experience for those who did it. Th e wagon trains, carrying the dreams of thousands of individuals, reproduced soci- ety in small focus: individualistic, hopeful, mobile, divided by age and gender roles, apprehensive, yet willing to strike out for the dis- tant and new.
Land for the Taking As railroads pushed west in the 1870s and 1880s, locomotive trains replaced wagon trains, but the shift was gradual, and until the end of the century, emigrants oft en combined both modes of travel. Into the 1890s, travelers could be seen making their way across the West by any available means. Early railroad transportation was expen- sive, and the average farm family could not aff ord to buy tickets and ship supplies. Many Europeans traveled by rail to designated outfi t- ting places and then proceeded west with wagons and oxen.
Traffi c fl owed in all directions, belying the image of a simple “westward” movement. Many people did go west, of course, but others, such as migrants from Mexico, became westerners by mov- ing north, and Asian Americans moved eastward from the Pacifi c coast. Whatever their route, they all ended up in the meeting ground of cultures that formed the modern West.
Why did they come? “Th e motive that induced us to part with the pleasant associations and the dear friends of our childhood days,” explained Phoebe Judson, an early emigrant, “was to obtain from the government of the United States a grant of land that ‘Uncle
in the Gold Rush of 1849 to California, and in the next three decades perhaps as many as half a million individuals made the long journey over the Overland Trail leading west. Some walked; others rode horses alone or in small groups. About half joined great caravans, numbering 150 wagons or more, that inched across the two thousand miles between the Missouri River and the Pacifi c coast.
More oft en than not, men made the decision to make the crossing, but, except for the stampedes to the mines, migration usually turned out to be a family aff air. Wives were consulted, though in some cases they had little real choice. Th ey could either go along or live alone at home. While many women regret- ted leaving family and friends, they agreed to the trip, some- times as eagerly as the men. “I would not be left behind,” said Luzena Wilson, whose husband ached to join the Gold Rush to California. “I thought where he could go I could, and where I went I could take my two little toddling babies.” Like the Wilsons, the majority of people traveled in family groups, including in- laws, grandchildren, aunts, and uncles. As one historian said, “Th e quest for something new would take place in the context of the very familiar.”
Individuals and wagon trains set out from various points along the Missouri River. Leaving in the spring and traveling through the summer, they hoped to reach their destination before the fi rst snowfall. During April, travelers gradually assembled in spring camp just across the Missouri River, waiting for the new grass to ripen into forage. Th ey packed and repacked the wagons and elected the trains’ leaders, who would set the line of march, look for water and campsites, and impose discipline. Some trains adopted detailed rules, fearing a lapse into savagery in the wild lands across the Missouri. “Every man to carry with him a Bible and other reli- gious books, as we hope not to degenerate into a state of barbarism,” one agreement said.
Setting out in early May, travelers divided the enormous route into manageable portions. Th e fi rst leg of the journey followed the Platte River west to Fort Kearney in central Nebraska Territory, a distance of about three hundred miles. Th e land was even, with good supplies of wood, grass, and water. From a distance, the white- topped wagons seemed driven by a common force, but, in fact, internal discipline broke down almost immediately. Arguments erupted over the pace of the march, the choice of campsites, the number of guards to post, whether to rest or push on. Elected lead- ers quit; new ones were chosen. Every train was fi lled with indi- vidualists, and as the son of one train captain said, “If you think it’s any snap to run a wagon train of sixty-six wagons with every man in the train having a diff erent idea of what is the best thing to do, all I can say is that some day you ought to try it.”
Men, women, and children had diff erent tasks on the trail. Men concerned themselves almost entirely with hunting buf- falo and antelope, guard duty, and transportation. Th ey rose at 4 a.m. to hitch the wagons, and aft er breakfast began the day’s march. At noon, they stopped and set the teams to graze. Aft er the midday meal, the march continued until sunset. Then, while the men relaxed, the women fi xed dinner and the next day’s lunch, and the children kindled the fi res, brought water to camp, and searched for wood or other fuel. Walking fi ft een miles a day, in searing heat and mountain cold, travelers were exhausted by late aft ernoon.
402 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
which allowed individuals to obtain 640 acres in the arid states for $1.25 an acre, provided they irrigated part of it within three years. Th e act invited fraud. More than 2.6 million acres of land were dis- tributed, much of it fraudulently.
Th e Timber and Stone Act of 1878 applied only to lands “unfi t for cultivation” and valuable chiefl y for timber or stone. It permitted anyone in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington to buy up to 160 acres of forest land for $2.50 an acre. Like ranchers, lumber companies used employees to fi le false claims. By 1900, 3.6 million acres of rich forest land had been claimed under the measure.
Speculators made ingenious use of the land laws. Sending agents in advance of settlement, they moved along choice river bottoms or irrigable areas, accumulating large holdings to be held for high prices. In the arid West, where control of water meant control of the surrounding land, shrewd ranchers plotted their holdings accordingly. In Colorado, one cattleman, John F. Iliff , owned only 105 small parcels of land, but by placing them around the few water holes, he eff ectively dominated an empire stretching over 6,000 square miles.
Water, in fact, became a dominant western issue, since aside from the Pacifi c Northwest, northern California, parts of the Rocky Mountain West, and the eastern half of the Great Plains, much of the trans-Mississippi West was arid, receiving less than twenty inches of rainfall annually. People speculated in water as if it were gold and planned great irrigation systems in Utah, eastern Colorado, and California’s Central Valley to “make the desert bloom.” A sign in Modesto, California, read “Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health.”
Irrigators received a major boost in 1902 when the National Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) set aside most of the proceeds from the sale of public lands in sixteen western states to fi nance irrigation projects in the arid states. Over the next decades, dams, canals, and irrigation systems channeled water into dry areas, cre- ating a “hydraulic” society that was rich in crops and cities (such as Los Angeles and Phoenix), but ever thirstier and in danger of outrunning the precious water on which it all depended.
As benefi ciaries of the government’s policy of land grants for railway construction, the railroad companies were the West’s larg- est landowners. Eager to have immigrants settle on the land they owned near the railroad right-of-way, and eager to boost their freight and passenger business, the companies sent agents to the East and Europe. Attractive brochures touted life in the West.
Railroad lines set up land departments and bureaus of immigration. The land departments priced the land, arranged credit terms, and even gave free farming courses to immigrants. Th e bureaus of immigration employed agents in Europe, met immigrants at eastern seaports, and ran special cars for land seekers heading west.
Half a billion acres of western land were given or sold to specu- lators and corporations. At the same time, only 600,000 homestead patents were issued, covering 80 million acres. Th us, only one acre in every nine initially went to individual pioneers, the intended benefi ciaries of the nation’s largesse. Two-thirds of all homestead claimants before 1890 failed in their eff orts to farm their new land.
Territorial Government As new areas of the West opened, they were organized as territories under the control of Congress and the president. Th e territorial sys- tem started with the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which
Sam’ had promised to give to the head of each family who settled in this new country.” A popular camp song refl ected the same motive:
Come along, come along—don’t be alarmed, Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm.
Uncle Sam owned about one billion acres of land in the 1860s, much of it mountain and desert land unsuited for agriculture. By 1900, the various land laws had distributed half of it. Between 1862 and 1890, the government gave away 48 million acres under the Homestead Act of 1862 , sold about 100 million acres to private citizens and corporations, granted 128 million acres to rail- road companies to tempt them to build across the unsettled West, and sold huge tracts to the states.
Th e Homestead Act of 1862, a law of great signifi cance, gave 160 acres of land to anyone who would pay a $10 registration fee and pledge to live on it and cultivate it for fi ve years. Th e off er set off a mass migration of land-hungry Europeans, dazzled by a country that gave its land away. Americans also seized on the act’s provisions, and between 1862 and 1900, nearly 600,000 families claimed free homesteads under it.
Yet the Homestead Act did not work as Congress had hoped. Few farmers and laborers had the cash to move to the frontier, buy farm equipment, and wait out the year or two before the farm became self-supporting. Tailored to the timber and water condi- tions of the East, the act did not work as well in the semiarid West. In the fertile valleys of the Mississippi, 160 acres provided a gener- ous farm. A farmer on the Great Plains needed either a larger farm for dry farming or a smaller one for irrigation.
The Timber Culture Act of 1873 attempted to adjust the Homestead Act to western conditions. It allowed homesteaders to claim an additional 160 acres if they planted trees on a quarter of it within four years. A moderately successful act, it distributed 10 million acres of land, encouraged needed forestation, and enabled homesteaders to expand their farms to a workable size. Cattle ranchers lobbied for another law, the Desert Land Act of 1877,
Homestead Act of 1862 Read the Document
Between 1862 and 1890, the government gave away 48 million acres under the Homestead Act of 1862. A law of great significance, it gave 160 acres of land to anyone who would pay 10% registration fee and pledge to live on the land, cultivating it for five years.
The Bonanza West 403
Armed and hooded, they cut down fences and scattered the stock of those they viewed as intruders.
Throughout the Southwest, the Spanish Mexican heritage gave a distinctive shape to society. Men headed the families and dominated economic life. Women had substantial economic rights (though few political ones), and they enjoyed a status their English American counterparts did not have. Wives kept full control of property acquired before their marriage; they also held half title to all property in a marriage, which later caused many southwestern states to pass community property laws.
In addition, the Spanish Mexican heritage fostered a modifi ed economic caste system, a strong Roman Catholic infl uence, and the primary use of the Spanish language. Continuous immigration from Mexico kept language and cultural ties strong. Spanish names and customs spread, even among Anglos. David Starr Jordan, arriving from Indiana to become the fi rst president of Stanford University in California, bestowed Spanish names on streets, houses, and a Stanford dormitory. Spanish was the region’s fi rst or second language. Confronted by Sheriff Pat Garrett in a darkened room, New Mexico’s famous outlaw Billy the Kid died asking, “Quién es? Quién es?” (“Who is it? Who is it?”).
The Bonanza West
Why was the West a bonanza of dreams and get- rich-quick schemes?
Between 1850 and 1900, wave aft er wave of newcomers swept across the trans-Mississippi West. Th ere were riches for the taking, hidden in gold-washed streams, spread lushly over grass-covered prairies, or available in the gullible minds of greedy newcomers. Th e nineteenth- century West took shape in the search for mining, cattle, and land bonanzas that drew eager settlers from the East and around the world.
As with all bonanzas, the consequences in the West were uneven growth, boom-and-bust economic cycles, and wasted resources. Society seemed constantly in the making. People moved here and there, following river bottoms, gold strikes, railroad tracks, and other opportunities. “Instant cities” arose. San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Denver were the most spectacular examples, but every cow town and mining camp witnessed similar phenomena of growth. Boston needed more than two centuries to attract one-third of a million people; San Francisco did the same in a little more than twenty years.
Many Westerners had left home to get rich quickly, and they adopted institutions that refl ected that goal. Th e West was an idea as well as a region, and the idea molded them as much as they molded it.
The Mining Bonanza Mining was the fi rst important magnet to attract people to the West. Many hoped to “strike it rich” in gold and silver, but at least half the newcomers had no intention of working in the mines. Instead, they provided food, clothing, and services to the thou- sands of miners. Leland Stanford and Collis P. Huntington, who later built the Central Pacifi c Railroad, set up a general store in Sacramento where they sold shovels and supplies. Stephen J. Field, later a prominent justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, followed the Gold Rush to California to practice law.
established the rules by which territories became states. Washington ran the territories like “a passive group of colonial mandates.” Th e pres- ident appointed the governor and judges in each territory; Congress detailed their duties, set their budgets, and oversaw their activities. Territorial offi cials had almost absolute power over the territories.
Until they obtained statehood, then, the territories depended on the federal government for their existence. The national political parties, especially the Republicans, funneled govern- ment funds into the territorial economies, and in areas such as Wyoming and the Dakotas, where resources were scarce, eco- nomic growth depended on this money. Many early settlers held patronage jobs or hoped for them, traded with government- supported Native Americans, sold supplies to army troops, and speculated in government lands.
In a large portion of the trans-Mississippi West, a generation grew up under territorial rule. Inevitably, these citizens developed distinct ideas about politics, government, and the economy.
The Spanish-Speaking Southwest In the nineteenth century, almost all Spanish-speaking people in the United States lived in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Colorado. Th eir numbers were small—California had only 8,086 Mexican residents in 1900—but the infl uence of their culture and institutions was large. In some respects, the southwest- ern frontier was more Spanish American than Anglo-American.
Pushing northward from Mexico, the Spanish gradually estab- lished the present-day economic structure of the Southwest. Th ey brought with them techniques of mining, stock raising, and irrigated farming. Aft er winning independence in the 1820s, the Mexicans brought new laws and ranching methods as well as chaps and the burro. Both Spanish and Mexicans created the legal framework for distributing land and water, a precious resource in the Southwest. Th ey gave large grants of land to communities for grazing, to individuals as rewards for service, and to the various Native American pueblos.
In Southern California, the Californios, descendants of the original colonizers, began aft er the 1860s to lose their once vast landholdings to drought and mortgages. Some turned to crime and became feared bandidos; others, such as José María Amador, lived in poverty and remembered better days:
When I was but a little boy I drained the chocolate pot,
But now I am a poor man and am condemned to slop.
In 1875, Romualdo Pacheco, an aristocratic native son, served as governor of California and then went on to Congress. But as the Californios died out, Mexican Americans continued the Spanish–Mexican infl uence. In 1880, one-fourth of the residents of Los Angeles County were Spanish speaking.
In New Mexico, Spanish-speaking citizens remained the majority ethnic group until the 1940s, and the Spanish Mexican culture dominated the territory. Contests over land grants became New Mexico’s largest industry; lawyers who dealt in them amassed huge holdings. Aft er 1888, Las Gorras Blancas (“Th e White Caps”), a secret organization of Spanish Americans, attacked the move- ment of Anglo ranchers into the Las Vegas community land grant.
404 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
Th ousands of miners climbed the Sierra Nevada that summer. On the rough slopes of Davidson Mountain, they created Virginia City, the prototype of the tumultuous western mining town.
Th e biggest strike was yet to come. In 1873, John W. Mackay and three partners formed a com- pany to dig deep into the mountain, and at 1,167 feet they hit the Big Bonanza, a seam of gold and silver more than 54 feet wide. It was the richest discovery in the history of mining. Between 1859 and 1879, the Comstock Lode produced gold and silver worth $306 million. Most of it went to fi nanciers and cor- porations. Mackay himself became the richest per- son in the world, earning (according to a European newspaper) $25 a minute, $5 a minute more than Czar Alexander II of Russia.
In the 1860s and 1870s, important strikes were made in Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, and Dakota. Extremely mobile, miners fl ocked from strike to strike, and new camps and mining towns sprang up overnight. “Th e min- ers of Idaho were like quicksilver,” said Hubert Howe Bancroft , an early historian. “A mass of them dropped in any locality, broke up into individual globules, and ran off aft er any atom of gold in their vicinity. Th ey stayed nowhere longer than the gold attracted them.”
Th e fi nal fl ing came in the Black Hills rush of 1874 to 1876. Th e army had tried to keep miners out of the area, the heart of the Sioux hunting grounds, and even sent a scientifi c party under Colonel George Armstrong Custer to disprove the rumors of gold and stop the miners’ invasion. Instead, Custer found gold all over the hills, and the rush was on. Miners, gamblers, despera- does, and prostitutes fl ocked to Deadwood, the most lawless of all the mining camps. Th ere, Martha Jane Canary—a crack shot who, as Calamity Jane, won fame as a scout and teamster—fell in love with “Wild Bill” Hickok. Hickok himself—a western legend who had tamed Kansas cow towns, killed an unknown number of men, and toured in Buff alo Bill’s Wild West Show—died in Deadwood, shot in the back of the head. Hickok was thirty-nine years old.
Towns such as Deadwood, in the Dakota Territory; Virginia City, Nevada; Leadville, Colorado; and Tombstone, Arizona, dem- onstrated a new development process in the frontier experience. Th e farming frontier had developed naturally in a rural setting. On the mining frontier, the germ of a city—the camp—appeared almost simultaneously with the fi rst “strike.” Periodicals, the latest fashions, theaters, schools, literary clubs, and lending libraries came quickly to the camps, providing civilized refi nements not available on other frontiers. Urbanization also created the need for municipal government, sanitation, and law enforcement.
Mining camps were governed by a simple democracy. Soon aft er a strike, the miners in the area met to organize a mining “district” and adopted rules governing behavior in it. Rules regu- lated the size and boundaries of claims, established procedures for settling disputes, and set penalties for crimes. Petty criminals were banished from the district; serious off enders were hanged. In the case of a major dispute, the whole camp gathered, chose legal coun- sel for both sides, and heard the evidence. If all else failed, miners
Th e California Gold Rush of 1849 began the mining boom and set the pattern for subsequent strikes in other regions. Individual prospectors made the fi rst strikes, discovering pockets of gold along streams fl owing westward from the Sierra Nevada. To get the gold, they used a simple process called placer mining , which required little skill, technology, or capital. A placer miner needed only a shovel, a washing pan, and a good claim. As the placers gave out, a great deal of gold remained, but it was locked in quartz or buried deep in the earth. Mining became an expensive business, far beyond the reach of the average miner.
Large corporations moved in to dig the deep shafts and fi nance costly equipment. Quartz mining required heavy rock crushers, mercury vats to dissolve the gold, and large retorts to recapture it. Eastern and European fi nanciers assumed control, labor became unionized, and mining towns took on some of the characteristics of the industrial city. Individual prospectors mean- while dashed on to the next fi nd. Unlike other frontiers, the min- ing frontier moved from west to east, as the original California miners—the “yonder-siders,” they were called—hurried eastward in search of the big strike.
In 1859, fresh strikes were made near Pikes Peak in Colorado and in the Carson River Valley of Nevada. News of both discov- eries set off wild migrations—one hundred thousand miners were in Pikes Peak country by June 1859. Th e gold there quickly played out, but the Nevada fi nd uncovered a thick bluish black ore that was almost pure silver and gold. A quick-witted drift er named Henry T. P. Comstock talked his way into partnership in the claim, and word of the Comstock Lode —with ore worth $3,876 a ton—fl ashed over the mountains.
This photograph from the mid-1800s shows gold miners on the American River in California pausing for a lunch break. Although signifi cantly outnumbered by men, women on the mining frontier took a variety of jobs, including working claims.
John Lester, “Hydraulic Mining” Read the Document
Gold mining regions
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MINING REGIONS OF THE WEST Gold and silver mines dotted the West, drawing settlers and encouraging political organization in many areas.
The Bonanza West 405
licensing fee. As intended, it drove out Mexicans and other foreigners. Riots against Chinese laborers occurred in the 1870s and 1880s in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Reno, and Denver. Responding to pressure, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 , which suspended immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years. Th e number of Chinese in the United States fell drastically.
By the 1890s, the early mining bonanza was over. All told, the western mines contributed billions of dollars to the economy. Th ey had helped fi nance the Civil War and provided needed capi- tal for industrialization. Th e vast boost in silver production from the Comstock Lode changed the relative value of gold and silver, the base of American currency. Bitter disputes over the currency aff ected politics and led to the famous “battle of the standards” in the presidential election of 1896 (see Chapter 20 ) .
Th e mining frontier populated portions of the West and sped its process of political organization. Nevada, Idaho, and Montana were granted early statehood because of mining. Merchants, edi- tors, lawyers, and ministers moved with the advancing frontier, establishing permanent settlements. Women in the mining camps helped to foster family life and raised the moral tone by campaign- ing against drinking, gambling, and prostitution. But not all the eff ects of the mining boom were positive. Th e industry also left behind painful scars in the form of invaded Indian reservations, pitted hills, and lonely ghost towns.
Gold from the Roots Up: The Cattle Bonanza “ Th ere’s gold from the grass roots down,” said California Joe, a guide in the gold districts of Dakota in the 1870s, “but there’s more gold from the grass roots up.” Ranchers began to recognize the potential of the vast grasslands of the West. Th e plains were covered with buff alo or grama grass, a wiry variety with short, hard stems. Cattle thrived on it.
For twenty years aft er 1865, cattle ranching dominated the “open range,” a vast fenceless area extending from the Texas Panhandle north into Canada. Th e techniques of the business came from Mexico. Long before American cowboys moved herds north, their Mexican counterparts, the vaqueros , developed the essential techniques of branding, roundups, and roping. The cattle themselves, the famous Texas longhorns, also came from Mexico. Spreading over the grasslands of southern Texas, the longhorns multiplied rapidly. Although their meat was coarse and stringy, they fed a nation hungry for beef at the end of the Civil War.
Th e problem was getting the beef to eastern markets, and Joseph G. McCoy, a livestock shipper from Illinois, solved it. Looking for a way to market Texas beef, McCoy conceived the idea of taking the cattle to railheads in Kansas. He talked fi rst with the president of the Missouri Pacifi c, who ordered him out of his offi ce, and then with the head of the Kansas Pacifi c, who laughed at the idea. Th e persistent McCoy fi nally signed a contract in 1867 with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. Searching for an appropri- ate rail junction, he settled on the sleepy Kansas town of Abilene, “a very small, dead place,” he remembered, with about a dozen log huts and one nearly bankrupt saloon.
In September 1867, McCoy shipped the fi rst train of twenty cars of longhorn cattle. By the end of the year, a thousand carloads had
formed secret vigilance committees to hang a few off enders as a les- son to the rest. Early visitors to the mining country were struck by the way miners, solitary and competitive, joined together, founded a camp, and created a society.
In 1870, men outnumbered women in the mining districts by more than two to one; there were few children. Prostitutes fol- lowed the camps around the West, and a “respectable” woman was an object of curiosity. Four arrived in Nevada City in 1853, and one observed, “Th e men stand and gaze at us with mouth and eyes wide open, every time we go out.” Some women worked claims, but more oft en they took jobs as cooks, housekeepers, and seamstresses—for wages considerably higher than in the East.
In most camps, between one-quarter and one-half of the population was foreign born. Th e lure of gold drew large num- bers of Chinese, Chileans, Peruvians, Mexicans, French, Germans, and English. Experienced miners, the Latin Americans brought valuable mining techniques. At least six thousand Mexicans joined the California rush of 1849, and by 1852, there were twenty-five thousand Chinese in California. Painstakingly, the Chinese profi tably worked claims others had abandoned. In the 1860s, almost one-third of the miners in the West were Chinese.
Hostility oft en surfaced against foreign miners, particularly the French, Latin Americans, and Chinese. In 1850, California passed a Foreign Miners’ Tax that charged foreign miners a $20 monthly
406 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
followed, all headed for Chicago markets. In 1870, three hundred thousand head of Texas cattle reached Abilene, followed the next year—the peak year—by seven hundred thousand head. Th e Alamo Saloon, crowded with tired cowboys at the end of the drive, now employed seventy-fi ve bartenders, working three 8-hour shift s.
Th e profi ts were enormous. Drivers bought cheap Texas steers for $4 a head and sold them for $30 or $40 a head at the northern railhead. Th e most famous trail was the Chisholm, running from southern Texas through Oklahoma Territory to Ellsworth and Abilene, Kansas, on the Kansas Pacifi c Railroad. Dodge City, Kansas, became the prime shipping center between 1875 and 1879.
Cowboys pushed steers northward in herds of two to three thousand. Novels and fi lms have portrayed the cowboys as white,
but at least a quarter of them were black, and possibly another quar- ter were Mexicans. A typical crew on the trail north might have eight men, half of them black or Mexican. Most of the trail bosses were white; they earned about $125 a month. James “Jim” Perry, a renowned black cowboy who worked for more than twenty years as a rider, roper, and cook for the XIT ranch, said, “If it weren’t for my damned old black face, I’d have been a boss long ago.”
Like miners, cattlemen lived beyond the formal reach of the law and so established their own. Before each drive, Charles Goodnight drew up rules governing behavior on the trail. A cow- boy who shot another was hanged on the spot. Ranchers adopted rules for cattle ownership, branding, roundups, and drives, and they formed associations to enforce them. Th e Wyoming Stock
CATTLE TRAILS Cattle raised in Texas were driven along the cattle trails to the northern railheads, and trains carried them to market.
View the Closer Look Railroad Routes, Cattle Trails, Gold and Silver Rushes
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The Bonanza West 407
Said a folksong from Greer County, Oklahoma,
Hurrah for Greer County! Th e land of the free, Th e land of the bedbug, grasshopper, and fl ea; I’ll sing of its praises, I’ll tell of its fame, While starving to death on my government claim.
Between 1870 and 1900, farmers cultivated more land than ever before in American history. Th ey peopled the plains from Dakota to Texas, pushed the Indians out of their last sanctuary in Oklahoma, and poured into the basins and foothills of the Rockies. By 1900, the western half of the nation contained almost 30 per- cent of the population, compared to less than 1 percent just a half century earlier.
Unlike mining, farm settlement often followed predictable patterns, taking population from states east of the settlement line and moving gradually westward. Crossing the Mississippi, farmers settled first in western Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and South Dakota. The movement slumped dur- ing the depression of the 1870s, but then a new wave of opti- mism carried thousands more west. Several years of above average rainfall convinced farmers that the Dakotas, western Nebraska and Kansas, and eastern Colorado were the “rain belt of the plains.” Between 1870 and 1900, the population on the plains tripled.
In some areas, the newcomers were blacks who had fl ed the South, fed up with beatings and murders, crop liens, and the Black Codes that institutionalized their subordinate sta- tus. In 1879, about six thousand African Americans known as the Exodusters left their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to establish new and freer lives in Kansas, the home of John Brown and the Free-Soil campaigns of the 1850s. Once there, they farmed or worked as laborers; women worked in the fi elds along- side the men or cleaned houses and took in washing to make ends meet. All told, the Exodusters homesteaded 20,000 acres of land, and though they met prejudice, it was not as extreme as they had known at home. “I asked my wife did she know the ground she stands on,” said John Solomon Lewis, a Louisianan, soon aft er arriving. “She said, ‘No!’ I said it is free ground; and she cried like a child for joy.”
Other African Americans moved to Oklahoma, thinking they might establish the fi rst African American state. Whether headed for Oklahoma or Kansas, they picked up and moved in sizable groups that were based on family units; they took with them the customs they had known, and in their new homes they were able, for the fi rst time, to have some measure of self-government.
For blacks and whites alike, farming on the plains presented new problems. Th ere was little surface water, and wells ranged between 50 and 500 feet deep. Well drillers charged up to $2 a foot. Taking advantage of the steady plains winds, windmills brought the water to the surface, but they too were expensive, and until 1900, many farmers could not aff ord them. Lumber for homes and fences was also scarce.
Unable to aff ord wood, farmers oft en started out in dreary sod houses. Cut into 3-foot sections, the thick prairie sod was laid like brick, with space left for two windows and a door. Since glass was scarce, cloth hung over the windows; a blanket was hung from the ceiling to make two rooms. Sod houses were small, provided little light and air, and were impossible to keep
Growers’ Association, the largest and most formidable, had four hundred members owning two million cattle; its reach extended well beyond Wyoming into Colorado, Nebraska, Montana, and the Dakotas. Th roughout this vast territory, the “laws” of the associa- tion were oft en the law of the land.
By 1880, more than six million cattle had been driven to north- ern markets. But the era of the great cattle drive was ending. Farmers were planting wheat on the old buff alo ranges; barbed wire, a recent invention, cut across the trails and divided up the big ranches. Mechanical improvements in slaughtering, refrigerated transporta- tion, and cold storage modernized the industry. Ranchers bred the Texas longhorns with heavier Hereford and Angus bulls, and as the new breeds proved profi table, more and more ranches opened on the northern ranges.
By the mid-1880s, some 4.5 million cattle grazed the High Plains, reminding people of the once great herds of buff alo. Stories of vast profi ts circulated, attracting outside capital. Large invest- ments transformed ranching into big business, oft en controlled by absentee owners and subject to new problems.
By 1885, experienced cattle ranchers were growing alarmed. A presidential order that year forced them out of the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, adding two hundred thousand cattle to the overcrowded northern ranges. Th e winter of 1885 to 1886 was cold, and the following summer was one of the hottest on record. Water holes dried up; the grass turned brown. Beef prices fell.
Th e winter of 1886–1887 was one of the worst in western history. Temperatures dropped to 45 degrees below zero, and cattle that once would have saved themselves by drift ing ahead of the storms came up against the new barbed wire fences. Herds jammed together, pawing the frozen ground or stripping bark from trees in search of food. Cattle died by the tens of thousands. In the spring of 1887, when the snows thawed, ranchers found stacks of carcasses piled up against the fences.
Th e melting snows did, however, produce a lush crop of grass for the survivors. Th e cattle business recovered, but it took diff erent directions. Outside capital, so plentiful in the boom years, dried up. Ranchers began fencing their lands, reducing their herds, and grow- ing hay for winter food. To the dismay of cowboys, mowing machines and hay rakes became as important as chuck wagons and branding irons. “I tell you times have changed,” one cowboy said sadly.
Th e last roundup on the northern ranges took place in 1905. Ranches grew smaller, and some ranchers, at fi rst in the scrub coun- try of the Southwest, then on the plains themselves, switched to rais- ing sheep. By 1900, there were nearly thirty-eight million sheep west of the Missouri River, far more than there were cattle. In Montana, there were six or seven sheep for each cow, and even Wyoming, the great center of the northern ranches, had more sheep than cows.
Ranchers and sheepherders fought bitterly to control the graz- ing lands, but they had one problem in common: the troubles ahead. Homesteaders, armed with barbed wire and new strains of wheat, were pushing onto the plains, and the day of the open range was over.
Sodbusters on the Plains: The Farming Bonanza Like miners and cattle ranchers, millions of farmers moved into the West in the decades aft er 1870 to seek crop bonanzas and new ways of life. Some realized their dreams; many fought just to survive.
408 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
New Farming Methods Farmers adopted new techniques to meet conditions on the plains. For one thing, they needed cheap and eff ective fencing material, and in 1874, Joseph F. Glidden, a farmer from De Kalb, Illinois, provided it with the invention of barbed wire. By 1883, his factory was turning out six hundred miles of barbed wire every day, and farmers were buying it faster than it could be produced.
Dry farming, a new technique, helped compensate for the lack of rainfall. By plowing furrows twelve to fourteen inches deep and creating a dust mulch to fi ll the furrow, farmers loosened the soil and slowed evaporation. Wheat farmers imported European varieties of plants that could withstand the harsh plains winters. Hard-kerneled varieties such as Turkey red wheat from Russia required new milling methods, developed during the 1870s. By 1881, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Kansas City had become milling centers for the rich “new process” fl our.
Farm technology changed long before the Civil War, but later developments improved it. In 1877, James Oliver of Indiana patented a chilled-iron plow with a smooth-surfaced moldboard that did not
clean. When it rained, water seeped through the roof. Yet a sod house cost only $2.78 to build.
Outside, the plains environment sorely tested the men and women who moved there. Neighbors were distant; the land stretched on as far as the eye could see. Always the wind blew. “As long as I live I’ll never see such a lonely country,” a woman said of the Texas plains; a Nebraska woman said, “Th ese unbounded prairies have such an air of desolation—and the stillness is very oppressive.”
In the winters, savage storms swept the open grasslands. Ice caked on the cattle until their heads were too heavy to hold up. Summertime temperatures stayed near 110 degrees for weeks at a time. Fearsome rainstorms, building in the summer’s heat, beat down the young corn and wheat. Th e summers also brought grasshoppers, arriving without warning, fl ying in clouds so huge they shut out the sun. Th e grasshoppers ate everything in sight: crops, clothing, mosquito netting, tree bark, even plow handles. In the summer of 1874, they devastated the whole plains from Texas to the Dakotas, eating everything “but the mortgage,” as one farmer said.
Disappointed with the failures of Reconstruction and fearful of the violence that surrounded them, many southern blacks migrated to Kansas in the 1870s and 1880s. Comparing their trek to the biblical story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, they became known as Exodusters.
CANADA
MEXICO
G r e a t L a k e s
ATLANTIC OCEAN
Gulf of Mexico
PACIFIC OCEAN
0 200 400 kilometers
0 200 400 miles
Sparsely populated or nonproductive land
Predominantly grazing land
Forest with scattered cropland and pasture
Predominantly cropland
Hogs
Sheep
Dairying
Beef cattle
Hay
Rice
Wheat
Corn
Fruit
Cotton
Sugar cane
Tobacco Wine
AGRICULTURAL LAND USE IN THE 1880S New farming technology and new crops enabled more and more land to be put to productive use.
The Bonanza West 409
Grandin Bonanza of 61,000 acres, fi ve times the size of Manhattan Island. Dalrymple hired armies of workers, bought machinery by the carload, and planted on a scale that dazzled the West.
The bonanza farms—thanks to their size and machinery— captured the country’s imagination. Using 200 pairs of harrows, 155 binders, and 16 threshers, Dalrymple produced 600,000 bushels of wheat in 1881. He and other bonanza managers profi ted from the economies of scale, buying materials at wholesale prices and receiving rebates from the railroads. Th en a period of drought began. Rainfall dropped between 1885 and 1890, and the large-scale growers found it hard to compete with smaller farmers who diversifi ed their crops and cultivated more intensively. Many of the large bonanzas slowly disintegrated, and Dalrymple himself went bankrupt in 1896.
Discontent on the Farm Touring the South in the 1860s, Oliver H. Kelley, a clerk in the Department of Agriculture, was struck by the drabness of rural life. In 1867, he founded the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry , known simply as the Grange. Th e Grange pro- vided social, cultural, and educational activities for its members. Its constitution banned involvement in politics, but Grangers oft en ignored the rules and supported railroad regulation and other measures.
clog in the thick prairie soils. Th e spring-tooth harrow (1869) sped soil preparation; the grain drill (1874) opened furrows and scientifi cally fed seed into the ground. Th e lister (1880) dug a deep furrow, planted corn at the bottom, and covered the seed—all in one operation.
Th e fi rst baling press was built in 1866, and the hay loader was patented in 1876. Th e fi rst successful harvester, the cord binder (1878), cut and tied bundles of grain, enabling two men and a team of horses to harvest 20 acres of wheat a day. Invented earlier, thresh- ers grew larger; employing as many as nine men and ten horses, one machine could thresh 300 bushels of grain a day.
In 1890, more than nine hundred corporations manufactured farm machinery. Scientifi c agriculture fl ourished under new dis- coveries linking soil minerals and plant growth. Samuel Johnson of Yale University published How Crops Grow (1868) and How Crops Feed (1870), and one of his students pioneered work on nitrogen, the base of many modern fertilizers. Th e Hatch Act, passed in 1887, supported agricultural experiment stations that spread the discov- eries among farmers. Four years later, the stations employed more than 450 persons and distributed more than 300 published reports annually to some 350,000 readers.
In the late 1870s, huge bonanza farms rose, run by the new machinery and fi nanced with outside capital. Oliver Dalrymple, the most famous of the bonanza farmers, headed an experiment in North Dakota’s Red River Valley in 1875, then moved on to manage the
410 CHAPTER 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
Guthrie to the north had fifteen thousand. Speculators swiftly erected pay toilets, and drinking water cost as much as a beer.
Th e “Boomers” (those who waited for the signal) and “Sooners” (those who had jumped the gun) refl ected the speed of western set- tlement. “Creation!” a character in Edna Ferber’s novel Cimarron declared. “Hell! Th at took six days. Th is was done in one. It was History made in an hour—and I helped make it.”
Conclusion: The Meaning of the West
Between the Civil War and 1900, the West witnessed one of the greatest migrations in history. With the Native Americans driven into smaller and smaller areas, farms, ranches, mines, and cit- ies took over the vast lands from the Mississippi to the Pacifi c.
Th e Grange grew rapidly during the depression of the 1870s, and by 1875, it had more than eight hundred thousand members in twenty thousand local Granges. Most were in the Midwest and South. Th e Granges set up cooperative stores, grain elevators, warehouses, insur- ance companies, and farm machinery factories. Many failed, but in the meantime the organization made its mark. Picking up where the Grange left off , farm-oriented groups such as the Farmers’ Alliance, with branches in both South and West, began to attract followers.
Like the cattle boom, the farming boom ended sharply aft er 1887. A severe drought that year cut harvests, and other droughts followed in 1889 and 1894. Th ousands of new farmers were wiped out on the western plains. Between 1888 and 1892, more than half the population of western Kansas left . Farmers grew angry and restless. Th ey complained about declining crop prices, rising railroad rates, and heavy mortgages.
Although many farmers were unhappy, the peopling of the West in those years transformed American agriculture. Th e states beyond the Mississippi became the garden land of the nation. California sent fruit, wine, and wheat to eastern markets. Under the Mormons, Utah fl ourished with irrigation. Texas beef stocked the country’s tables, and vast wheat fi elds, stretching to the horizon, covered Minnesota, the Dakotas, Montana, and eastern Colorado. All produced more than Americans could consume. By 1890, American farmers were exporting large amounts of wheat and other crops.
Farmers became more commercial and scientifi c. Th ey needed to know more and work harder. Mail-order houses and rural free delivery diminished their isolation and tied them ever closer to the national future. “Th is is a new age to the farmer,” said a statistician in the Department of Agriculture in 1889. “He is now, more than ever before, a citizen of the world.”
The Final Fling As the West fi lled in with people, pressure mounted on the presi- dent and Congress to open the last Indian territory, Oklahoma, to settlers. In March 1889, Congress acted and forced the Creek and Seminole tribes, which had been moved into Oklahoma in the 1820s, to surrender their rights to the land. With arrange- ments complete, President Benjamin Harrison announced the opening of the Oklahoma District as of noon, April 22, 1889.
Preparations were feverish all along the frontier. “From all the West,” historian Ray Allen Billington noted, “the homeless, the speculators, the adventurers, fl ocked to the still forbidden land.” On the morning of April 22, nearly a hundred thousand people lined the Oklahoma borders; “for miles on end horsemen, wagons, hacks, carriages, bicycles, and a host of vehicles beggaring description stood wheel to wheel awaiting the signal.” Fift een Santa Fe trains were jammed with people from platform to roof.
At noon, the starting fl ag dropped. Bugles and cannon signaled the opening of the “last” territory. Horsemen lunged forward; over- loaded wagons collided and overturned. Th e trains steamed slowly forward, forced by army troops to keep a pace that would not give their passengers an undue advantage.
By sunset that day, settlers claimed twelve thousand home- steads, and the 1.92 million acres of the Oklahoma District were offi cially settled. Homesteaders threw up shelters for the night. By evening, Oklahoma City, that morning merely a spot on the prairie with cottonwoods and grass, had ten thousand people;
Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”
Read the Document
During a gathering of historians at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner presented an essay titled “The Significance of the Frontier in American History.” Turner’s article, also known as the Frontier Thesis, argued that the settlement of the frontier made the American nation unique. Turner credited the frontier’s settlement as the primary force in shaping the nation’s democratic institutions.
STUDY RESOURCES 411
on the environment. White English-speaking Americans, they sug- gest, could be said to have conquered the West rather than settled it.
Th e West, in this view, was not settled by a wave of white migrants moving west across the continent (Turner’s “frontier”) but by a set of waves—Anglo, Mexican American, African American, Asian American, and others—moving in many directions and interacting with each other and with Native American cultures to produce the modern West. Nor did western history end in 1890 as Turner would have it. Instead, migration, development, and economic exploitation continued into the twentieth century, illustrated in the fact that the number of people who moved to the West aft er 1900 far exceeded those who had moved there before.
In both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there can be no doubt that the image of the frontier and the West infl uenced American development. Western lands attracted European, Latin American, and Asian immigrants, adding to the society’s talent and diversity. Th e mines, forests, and farms of the West fueled the economy, sent raw materials to eastern factories, and fed the grow- ing cities. Th ough defeated in warfare, the Native Americans and Mexicans infl uenced art, architecture, law, and western folklore. Th e West was the fi rst American empire, and it had a profound impact on the American mind and imagination.
Th e 1890 census noted that for the fi rst time in the country’s his- tory, “there can hardly be said to be a frontier line.” Picking up the theme, Frederick Jackson Turner, a young history instructor at the University of Wisconsin, examined its importance in an infl uential 1893 paper, “Th e Signifi cance of the Frontier in American History.”
“Th e existence of an area of free land,” Turner wrote, “its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.” It shaped customs and character; gave rise to independence, self-confi dence, and individualism; and fostered invention and adaptation. Historians have substantially modified Turner’s thesis by pointing to frontier conservatism and imitativeness, the infl uence of varying racial groups, and the persistence of European ideas and institu- tions. Most recently, they have shown that family and community loomed as large as individualism on the frontier; men, women, and children played very much the same roles as they had back home.
Rejecting Turner almost completely, a group of “new Western historians” has advanced a diff erent and complex view of the West, and one with few heroes and heroines. Emphasizing the region’s racial and ethnic diversity, these historians emphasize the role of women as well as men, trace struggles between economic interests instead of fi ghts between gunslingers, and question the impact of development
1876 Colorado admitted to the Union; Custer and his men defeated and killed by the Sioux at battle of the Little Bighorn (June)
1883 Museum expedition discovers fewer than two hundred buffalo in the West
1886–1887 Severe drought and winter damage cattle and farming bonanzas
1887 Congress passes Dawes Severalty Act, mak- ing Indians individual landowners; Hatch Act provides funds for establishment of agricultural experiment stations
1889 Washington, Montana, and the Dakotas admitted to the Union; Oklahoma Territory opened to settlement
1890 Idaho and Wyoming admitted to the Union; Teton Sioux massacred at battle of Wounded Knee, South Dakota (December)
1893 Young historian Frederick Jackson Turner analyzes closing of the frontier
1902 Congress passes National Reclamation Act (the Newlands Act)
T I M E L I N E
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 17 The West: Exploiting an Empire on MyHistoryLab
1849 Gold Rush to California 1859 More gold and silver discoveries in Colorado
and Nevada
1862 Congress passes Homestead Act encouraging west- ern settlement
1864 Nevada admitted to the Union; Colonel John Chivington leads massacre of Indians at Sand Creek, Colorado
1865–1867 Sioux War against white miners and U.S. Army
1866 “Long drive” of cattle touches off cattle bonanzas 1867 Horace Greeley urges Easterners to “Go West, young
man”; National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (the Grange) founded to enrich farmers’ lives
1867–1868 Policy of “small reservations” for Indians adopted
1873 Congress passes Timber Culture Act; Big bonanza discovered on the Comstock Lode in Nevada
1874 Joseph F. Glidden invents barbed wire; Discovery of gold in Dakota Territory sets off Black Hills Gold Rush
412 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER REVIEW
C H A P T E R R E V I E W Beyond the Frontier
What were the challenges of settling the coun- try west of the Mississippi?
West of the Mississippi River, settlers encountered new conditions, including vast treeless plains and towering mountain ranges. Above all, they left behind the water and
timber on which they had depended in the East, forcing them to devise new ways to deal with the different challenges. (p. 391 )
Crushing the Native Americans
How did white Americans crush the culture of the Native Americans as they moved west?
Native Americans had a complex culture suited to the various environments in which they lived. The United States government and white settlers employed various methods—
political, military, legal, and cultural—to oust the Indians from their lands, “civilize” them, and contain and control them. (p. 392 )
Settlement of the West
Why did Americans and others move to the West?
Americans moved west for many reasons, including a desire to get rich, seek religious freedom, and improve health. The federal government helped out with generous land laws and laws favoring irrigation in the arid West. In
the Southwest a proud culture took shape around Spanish laws and cus- toms, involving water, the rights of women, and the sale, ownership, and use of land. (p. 400 )
The Bonanza West
Why was the West a bonanza of dreams and get-rich-quick schemes?
The West attracted many people seeking a better economic life. Many failed, but others found bonanzas in mining, cattle ranching, and farming. In many of these areas, west-
ern development paralleled trends in the rest of the nation: larger and larger businesses, new uses for technology, and the employment of outside capital. (p. 403 )
Ghost Dances A religious movement that arose in the late nineteenth century under the prophet Wavoka, a Paiute Indian. Its followers believed that dances and rites would cause white men to disappear and restore lands to the Native Americans. The U.S. government outlawed the Ghost Dances, and army intervention to stop them led to the Wounded Knee Massacre. p. 396
Wounded Knee Massacre In December 1890, troopers of the Seventh Cavalry, under orders to stop the Ghost Dance religion among the Sioux, took Chief Big Foot and his followers to a camp on Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. It is uncertain who fired the first shot, but two hundred Native Americans were killed. p. 396
Dawes Severalty Act Legislation passed by Congress in 1887 that aimed to break up traditional Indian life by promoting individual land ownership. It divided tribal lands into small plots that were distributed among members of each tribe. Provisions were made for education and eventual citizenship. The law led to corruption and exploitation and weakened tribal culture. p. 397
Gold Rush of 1849 Prospectors made the first gold strikes along the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California in 1849, touching off a mining boom that set the pattern for subsequent strikes in other regions. p. 401
Overland Trail The route from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast in the last half of the nineteenth century. p. 401
Homestead Act of 1862 Legislation granting 160 acres to anyone who paid a $10 fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for five years. Between 1862 and 1900, nearly 600,000 families claimed homesteads under its provisions. p. 402
National Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) Passed in 1902, this legislation set aside most of the proceeds from the sale of public land in sixteen western states to fund irrigation projects. p. 402
Placer mining Mining that included using a shovel and washing pan to separate gold from the ore in streams and riverbeds. Placer miners worked as individuals or in small groups. p. 404
Comstock Lode Discovered in 1859 near Virginia City, Nevada, this ore deposit was the richest discovery in the history of mining. Named after T. P. Comstock, the deposit produced silver and gold worth more than $306 million. p. 404
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Legislation passed in 1882 that excluded Chinese immigrants for ten years and denied U.S. citizenship to Chinese nationals. It was the first U.S. exclusionary law aimed at a specific racial group. p. 405
Exodusters A group of about 6,000 African Americans who left Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879, for freer lives as farmers or laborers in Kansas. p. 406
Dry farming A farming technique developed to allow farming in the more arid parts of the West where settlers had to deal with far less rainfall than they had east of the Mississippi. Furrows were plowed approximately a foot deep and filled with a dust mulch to loosen soil and slow evaporation. p. 408
Bonanza farms Huge farms covering thousands of acres on the Great Plains. In relying on large size and new machinery, they represented a development in agriculture similar to that taking place in industry. p. 409
National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry Founded by Oliver H. Kelly in 1867, the Grange sought to relieve the drabness of farm life by providing a social, educational, and cultural outlet for its members. It also set up grain elevators, cooperative stores, warehouses, insurance companies, and farm machinery factories. p. 409
Turner’s thesis Put forth by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893, this thesis asserted that the existence of a frontier and its settlement had shaped American character; given rise to individualism, indepen- dence, and self-confidence; and fostered the American spirit of invention and adaptation. Later historians modified the thesis by pointing out the environmental and other consequences of frontier settlement, the federal government’s role in peopling the West, and the clash of races and cultures that took place on the frontier. p. 411
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
STUDY RESOURCES 413
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S 1. What kinds of conditions did settlers find as they moved into lands
west of the Mississippi River, and how had the peoples who already lived there dealt with these conditions?
2. What was the nature of Indian culture on the Plains, and how did it deal with the hordes of settlers moving into the area?
3. By what methods did settlers move west and adjust to the “bonanzas” they found in the West and Southwest?
4. What were the three bonanzas that drew settlers into the West, and in what ways did they lead to the destruction of Native American culture and shape the growth of the area?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
y sto y ab ed a ss g e ts Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 17 on MyHistoryLab
The Bonanza West
Crushing the Native Americans
Native Americans, 1850–1896 p. 394 View the Map ◾
Chief Red Cloud’s Speech p. 395 Read the Document
◾ Sioux Ghost Dance p. 396 Watch the Video
Read the Document Accounts of the Wounded Knee Massacre p. 397
View the Closer Look Railroad and Buffalo p. 400 ◾
Settlement of the West
Homestead Act of 1862 p. 402 Read the Document
Read the Document John Lester, “Hydraulic Mining” p. 404
View the Closer Look Railroad Routes, Cattle Trails, Gold and Silver Rushes p. 407
Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” p. 410
Read the Document ◾ Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West p. 398
◾ Complete the Assignment
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
In the entire exposition, machinery was the focus, and Machinery Hall was the most popular building. Here were the products of an ever- improving civilization. Long lines of the curious waited to see the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell’s new device. (“My God, it talks!” the emperor of Brazil exclaimed.) Thomas A. Edison displayed several recent inventions, while nearby, whirring machines turned out bricks, chewing tobacco, and other products. Fairgoers saw the first public display of the typewriter, Elisha Otis’s new elevator, and the Westinghouse railroad air brake.
But above all, they crowded around the mighty Corliss engine, the focal point of the exposition. A giant steam engine, it dwarfed everything else in Machinery Hall, its twin vertical cylinders towering almost four stories in the air. Alone, it supplied power for the eight thousand other machines, large and small, on the expo- sition grounds. Poorly designed, the Corliss was soon obsolete, but for the moment it captured the nation’s imagination. It symbolized swift movement toward an industrial and urban society. John Greenleaf Whittier, the aging rural poet, likened it to the snake in the Garden of Eden and refused to see it.
A Machine Culture In 1876, Americans celebrated their first century of independence. Survivors of a recent civil war, they observed the centenary proudly and rather self- consciously, in song and speech, and above all in the grand Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Spread over several hundred acres, the exposition occupied 180 buildings and attracted nine million visi- tors, about one-fifth of the country’s population at the time. Significantly, it focused more on the present than the past. Fairgoers strolled through exhibits of life in colonial times, then hurried off to see the main attrac- tions: machines, inventions, and products of the new industrial era. They saw linoleum, a new, easy-to-clean floor covering. For the first time, they tasted root beer, supplied by a young druggist named Charles Hires, and the exotic banana, wrapped in foil and selling for a dime. They saw their first bicycle, an awkward high- wheeled contraption with solid tires.
A Japanese pavilion generated widespread interest in the culture of Japan. There was also a women’s building, the first ever in a major exposition. Inside were displayed paintings and sculpture by women artists, along with rows of textile machinery staffed by female operators.
INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT PG. 416 What enabled the United States to build an industrial economy?
AN EMPIRE ON RAILS PG. 416 How and why did the railroad system grow?
AN INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE PG. 421 What were the main characteristics of the new steel and oil industries?
THE SELLERS PG. 428 Why were the new methods of advertising so important?
THE WAGE EARNERS PG. 428 Who were the wage earners in the new economy?
CULTURE OF WORK PG. 430 How did wage earners organize in this period, and what demands did they make?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Shopping in a New Society
The Industrial Society 18
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 18 The Industrial Society
The Corliss engine, a “mechanical marvel” at the Centennial Exposition, was a prime example of the giantism so admired by the public.
416 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
their main domestic rivals, the southern planters, had lost politi- cal power in the Civil War.
In this atmosphere, entrepreneurs fl ourished. Taking steps crucial for industrialization, they organized, managed, and assumed the fi nancial risks of the new enterprises. Admirers called them captains of industry; foes labeled them robber barons. To some degree, they were both—creative and acquisitive. If sometimes they seemed larger than life, it was because they dealt in concepts, distances, and quantities oft en unknown to earlier generations.
Industrial growth, it must be remembered, was neither a simple nor steady nor inevitable process. It involved human decisions and brought with it large social benefi ts and costs. Growth varied from industry to industry and from year to year. It was concentrated in the Northeast, where in 1890, more than 85 percent of America’s manufactured goods originated. Th e more sparsely settled West provided raw materials, while the South, although making major gains in iron, textiles, and tobacco, had to rebuild aft er wartime devastation. In 1890, the industrial production of the entire South amounted in value to about half that of the state of New York.
Still, industrial development proceeded at an extraordinary pace. Between 1865 and 1914, the real gross national product—the total monetary value of all goods and services produced in a year, with prices held stable—grew at a rate of more than 4 percent a year, increasing about eightfold overall. As Robert Higgs, an economic historian, noted, “Never before had such rapid growth continued for so long.”
An Empire on Rails
How and why did the railroad system grow?
Genuine revolutions happen rarely, but a major one occurred in the nineteenth century: a revolution in transportation and com- munications. When the nineteenth century began, people trav- eled and communicated much as they had for centuries before; when it ended, the railroad, the telegraph, the telephone, and the oceangoing steamship had wrought enormous changes.
Th e steamship sliced in half the time of the Atlantic crossing and, not dependent on wind and tide, introduced new regularity in the movement of goods and passengers. Th e telegraph, fl ashing messages almost instantaneously along miles of wire (four hundred thousand miles of it in the early 1880s), transformed communica- tions, as did the telephone a little later. But the railroad worked the largest changes of all. Along with Bessemer steel, it was the most signifi cant technical innovation of the century.
“Emblem of Motion and Power” The railroad dramatically affected economic and social life. Economic growth would have occurred without it, of course; canals, inland steamboats, and the country’s superb system of interior waterways already provided the outlines of an eff ective transportation network. But the railroad added signifi cantly to the network and contributed advantages all its own.
Th ose advantages included more direct routes, greater speed, greater safety and comfort than other modes of land travel, more dependable schedules, a larger volume of traffi c, and year-round
As Whittier feared, the United States was fast becoming an industrial society. Developments earlier in the century laid the basis, but the most spectacular advances in industrialization came during the three decades aft er the Civil War. At the start of the war, the country lagged well behind industrializing nations such as Great Britain, France, and Germany. By 1900, it had vaulted far into the lead, with a manufacturing output that exceeded the combined output of its three European rivals. Over the same years, cities grew, technology advanced, and farm production rose. Developments in manufacturing, mining, agriculture, transporta- tion, and communications changed society.
In this change, railroads, steel, oil, and other industries, all shaped by the hands of labor, played a leading role. Many Americans eagerly welcomed the new directions. William Dean Howells, a leading novelist, visited the Centennial Exposition and stood in awe before the Corliss. Comparing it to the paintings and sculpture on display, Howells preferred the machine: “It is in these things of iron and steel,” he said, “that the national genius most freely speaks.”
Industrial Development
What enabled the United States to build an industrial economy?
American industry owed its remarkable growth to several considerations. It fed on an abundance of natural resources: coal, iron, timber, petroleum, and waterpower. An iron manufacturer likened the nation to “a gigantic bowl fi lled with treasure.” Labor was also abundant, drawn from American farm families and the hosts of European immigrants who fl ocked to American mines, cities, and factories. Nearly eight million immigrants arrived in the 1870s and 1880s; another fi ft een million came between 1890 and 1914—large fi gures for a nation whose total population in 1900 was about seventy-six million people.
Th e burgeoning population led to expanded markets, which new devices such as the telegraph and telephone helped to exploit. Th e swift ly growing urban populations devoured goods, and the railroads, spreading pell-mell across the land, linked the cities together and opened a national market. Within its boundaries, the United States had the largest free trade market in the world, while tar- iff barriers partially protected its producers from outside competition.
Expansive market and labor conditions buoyed the confi dence of investors, European and American, who provided large amounts of capital. Technological progress, so remarkable in these years, doomed some older industries (tallow, for example) but increased productivity in others, such as the kerosene industry, and created entirely new industries as well. Th rough inventions such as the harvester and the combine, it also helped foster a fi rm agricultural base, on which industrialization depended.
Eager to promote economic growth, government at all levels—federal, state, and local—gave manufacturers money, land, and other resources. Other benefi ts, too, fl owed from the American system of government: stability, commitment to the concept of private property, and, initially at least, a reluctance to regulate industrial activity. Unlike their European counterparts, American manufacturers faced few legal or social barriers, and
An Empire on Rails 417
service. A day’s land travel on stagecoach or horseback might cover fi ft y miles. Th e railroad covered fi ft y miles in about an hour, seven hundred miles in a day. It went where canals and rivers did not go—directly to the loading platforms of great factories or across the arid West. As construction crews pushed tracks onward, vast areas of the continent opened for settlement.
Consequently, American railroads diff ered from European ones. In Europe, railroads were usually built between cities and towns that already existed; they carried mostly the same goods that earlier forms of transportation had. In the United States, they did that and more: Th ey oft en created the very towns they then served, and they ended up carrying cattle from Texas, fruit from Florida, and other goods that had never been carried before.
Linking widely separated cities and villages, the railroad ended the relative isolation and self-suffi ciency of the country’s “island communities.” It tied people together, brought in out- side products, fostered greater interdependence, and encouraged economic specialization. Under its stimulus, Chicago supplied meat to the nation, Minneapolis supplied grain, and St. Louis, beer. For these and other communities, the railroad made pos- sible a national market and in so doing pointed the way toward mass production and mass consumption, two of the hallmarks of twentieth-century society.
It also pointed the way toward later business development. Th e railroad, as Alfred D. Chandler, a historian of business, has written,
was “the nation’s fi rst big business”; it worked out “the modern ways of fi nance, management, labor relations, competition, and govern- ment regulation.”
A railroad corporation, far-fl ung and complex, was a new kind of business. It stretched over thousands of miles, employed thousands of people, dealt with countless customers, and required a scale of organization and decision making unknown in earlier business. Railroad managers never met most customers or even many employees; thus arose new problems in marketing and labor relations. Year by year, railroad companies consumed large quanti- ties of iron, steel, coal, lumber, and glass, stimulating growth and employment in numerous industries.
No wonder, then, that the railroad captured so completely the country’s imagination. Walt Whitman, a poet who celebrated American achievement, chanted the locomotive’s praises:
Th y black cylindric body, golden brass and silvery steel, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Th y great protruding head-light fi x’d in front, Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous
twinkle of thy wheels, Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of
the continent, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fierce-throated beauty!
Like no form of transportation before it, the railroad could meet the challenge presented by the varied topography of the land west of the Mississippi River—from the Great Plains to the vast deserts, from the deep gorges to the Rocky Mountains.
Watch the Video Railroads and Expansion
418 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Atlantic and Pa cific
Union Pacific
Santa Fe
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ut he
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ic
Southern Pacific
Central Pacific
Northern Pa cific
WASH. TERR.
OREGON
CALIF.
NEVADA
IDAHO TERRITORY
UTAH TERRITORY
ARIZONA TERRITORY NEW MEXICOTERRITORY
COLORADO TERRITORY
WYOMING TERRITORY
MONTANA TERRITORY
DAKOTA TERRITORY
NEBRASKA
KANS.
OKLA.
TEXAS LA.
ARK.
MO.
ILL.
MINN.
WIS.
IND.
MICH.
KY.
TENN.
MISS. ALA.
FLA.
GA.
S.C.
N.C.
VA. W. VA.
OHIO
PA.
N.Y.
MD. DEL.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
N.J.
VT.
N.H.
MAINE
MASS.
CONN.
R.I.
0 200 400 kilometers
0 200 400 miles Area forfeited by railroads
Approximate area of land actually received by railroads
Land reserved for grants to railroads
FEDERAL LAND GRANTS TO RAILROADS AS OF 1871 Besides land, the government provided loans of $16,000 for each mile built on level ground, $32,000 for each mile built on hilly terrain, and $48,000 for each mile in high mountain country.
For nearly a hundred years—the railroad era lasted through the 1940s—children gathered at depots, paused in the fields to wave as the fast express fl ashed by, listened at night to far-off whistles, and wondered what lay down the tracks. Th ey lived in a world grown smaller.
Building the Empire When Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865, the country already had thirty-fi ve thousand miles of track, and much of the railroad system east of the Mississippi River was in place. Farther west, the rail network stood poised on the edge of settlement. Although southern railroads were in shambles from the war, the United States had nearly as much railroad track as the rest of the world.
Aft er the Civil War, rail construction increased by leaps and bounds. From 35,000 miles in 1865, the network expanded to 93,000 miles in 1880; 166,000 in 1890; and 193,000 in 1900— more than in all Europe, including Russia. Mileage peaked at 254,037 miles in 1916, just before the industry began its long decline into the mid-twentieth century.
To build such an empire took vast amounts of capital—more than $4.5 billion by 1880, before even half of it was complete. American and European investors provided some of the money; government supplied the rest. In all, local governments gave rail- road companies about $300 million, and state governments added $228 million more. Th e federal government loaned nearly $65 million to a half dozen western railroads and donated millions of acres of the public domain. Between 1850 and 1871, some eighty railroads received more than 170 million acres of land.
Almost 90 percent of the federal land grants lay in twenty states west of the Mississippi River. Federal land grants helped build 18,738 miles of track, less than 8 percent of the system. Th e land was frequently distant and diffi cult to market. Railroad companies sometimes sold it to raise cash, but more oft en they used it as secu- rity for bonds or loans.
Beyond doubt, the grants of cash and land promoted waste and corruption. Th e companies built fast and wastefully, eager to collect the subsidies that went with each mile of track. Wanting quick profi ts, some owners formed separate construction com- panies to which they awarded lavish contracts. In this way, the notorious Crédit Mobilier, a construction company controlled by an inner ring on the Union Pacifi c, enriched its owners in the 1860s, while the Contract and Finance Company did the same on the Central Pacifi c. Th e Crédit Mobilier bribed congressmen and state legislators to avoid investigation of its activities. Th e grants also enabled railroads to build into territories that were pledged to the Indians, thus contributing to the wanton destruc- tion of Indian life.
Yet, on balance, the grants probably worked more benefi ts than evils. As Congress had hoped, the grants were the lure for railroad building across the rugged, unsettled West, where it would be years before the railroads’ revenues would repay their construction. Farmers, ranchers, and merchants poured into the newly opened areas, settling the country and boosting the value of government and private land nearby. Th e grants seemed neces- sary in a nation which, unlike Europe, expected private enterprise to build the railroads. In return for government aid, Congress required the railroads to carry government freight, troops, and
An Empire on Rails 419
mail at substantially reduced rates— resulting in savings to the government of almost $1 billion between 1850 and 1945. In no other cases of federal subsidies to carriers—canals, highways, and airlines—did Congress exact specifi c benefi ts in return.
Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines Th e early railroads may seem to have linked diff erent regions, but in fact they did not. Built with little regard for through traffi c, they were designed more to protect local interests than to tap outside markets. Many extended less than fi ft y miles. To avoid cooper- ating with other lines, they adopted confl icting schedules, built separate depots, and above all, used diff erent gauges. Gauges, the distance between the rails, ranged from 4 feet 8½ inches, which became the standard gauge, to 6 feet. Without special equipment, trains of one gauge could not run on tracks of another.
Th e Civil War showed the value of fast long-distance transporta- tion, and aft er 1865, railroad managers worked to provide it. In a burst of consolidation, the large companies swallowed the small; integrated rail networks became a reality. Railroads also adopted standard sched- ules, signals, and equipment and fi nally, in 1886, the standard gauge. In 1866, in a dramatic innovation to speed traffi c, railroad companies introduced fast freight lines that pooled cars for service between cities.
In the Northeast, four great trunk lines took shape, all intended to link eastern seaports with the rich traffi c of the Great Lakes and western rivers. Like a massive river system, trunk lines drew traffi c from dozens of tributaries (feeder lines) and carried it to major markets. Th e Baltimore and Ohio (B & O), which reached Chicago in 1874, was one; the Erie Railroad, which ran from New York to Chicago, was another. Th e Erie competed bit- terly with the New York Central Railroad, the third trunk line,
10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000
Miles of Track
1830–1840
1871–1880
1881–1890
1891–1900
1901–1910
1911–1920
1861–1870
1841–1850
1851–1860
RAILROAD CONSTRUCTION, 1830–1920
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
and its owner, Cornelius Vanderbilt—the “Commodore”—a crusty old multimillionaire from the shipping business.
Nearly seventy years old when he first entered railroading, Vanderbilt wasted no time. In 1867, he took over the New York Central and merged it with other lines to pro- vide a track from New York City to Buff alo and Chicago. When he died in 1877, his Central operated more than 4,500 miles of track.
J. Edgar Th omson and Th omas A. Scott built the fourth trunk line, the Pennsylvania Railroad, which initially ran from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Restless and energetic, they dreamed of a rail empire stretching through the South and West. An aggressive business leader, Scott expanded the Pennsylvania sys- tem to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago in 1869; New York City in 1871; and Baltimore and Washington soon thereaft er.
In the war-damaged South, consolidation took longer. As Reconstruction waned, north- ern and European capital rebuilt and inte- grated the southern lines, especially during the 1880s, when rail construction in the South led the nation. By 1900, the South had fi ve large
systems linking its major cities and farming and industrial regions. Four decades aft er the secession crisis, these systems tied the South into a national transportation network.
Over that rail system, passengers and freight moved in relative speed, comfort, and safety. Automatic couplers (1867), air brakes (1869), refrigerator cars (1867), dining cars, heated cars, electric switches, and stronger locomotives transformed railroad service. George Pullman’s lavish sleeping cars became popular. Handsome depots, such as New York’s Grand Central and Washington’s Union Station, were erected at major terminals. Passenger miles per year increased from fi ve billion in 1870 to sixteen billion in 1900.
In November 1883, the railroads even changed time. Ending the crazy quilt jumble of local times that caused scheduling dif- fi culties, the American Railway Association divided the country into four time zones and adopted the modern system of standard time. Congress took thirty-fi ve years longer; it adopted standard time in 1918, in the midst of World War I.
Rails Across the Continent Th e dream of a transcontinental railroad, linking the Atlantic and Pacifi c Oceans, stretched back many years but had always been lost to sectional quarrels over the route. In 1862 and 1864, with the South out of the picture, Congress moved to build the fi rst transcontinental railroad. It chartered the Union Pacifi c Railroad Company to build westward from Nebraska and the Central Pacifi c Railroad Company to build eastward from the Pacifi c coast. For each mile built, the two companies received from Congress 20 square miles of land in alternate sections along the track. For each mile, they also received a thirty-year loan of $16,000, $32,000, or $48,000, depending on the diffi culty of the terrain over which they built.
420 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Pacifi c presidents hammered in a golden spike (both missed it on the fi rst try), and the dreamed-of connection was made. Th e telegraph fl ashed the news east and west, setting off wild celebrations. A photo- graph was taken, but it included none of the Chinese who had worked so hard to build the road; they were all asked to step aside.
Th e transcontinental railroad symbolized American unity and progress. Along with the Suez Canal, completed the same year, it helped knit the world together. Th ree more railroads reached the coast in 1883: the Northern Pacifi c, running from Minnesota to Oregon; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, connecting Kansas City and Los Angeles; and the powerful Southern Pacifi c, running from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New Orleans. Ten years later, James J. Hill’s superbly built Great Northern Railway extended from Minneapolis–St. Paul to Seattle, Washington.
Problems of Growth Overbuilding during the 1870s and 1880s caused serious prob- lems for the railroads. Lines paralleled each other, and where they did not, speculators such as Jay Gould oft en laid one down to force a rival line to buy it at infl ated prices. While many managers
Construction began simultaneously at Omaha and Sacramento in 1863, lagged during the war, and moved vigorously ahead aft er 1865. It became a race, each company vying for land, loans, and potential markets. General Grenville M. Dodge, a tough Union army veteran, served as construction chief for the Union Pacifi c, while Charles Crocker, a former Sacramento dry goods merchant, led the Central Pacific crews. Dodge organized an army of ten thousand workers, many of them ex-soldiers and Irish immigrants. Pushing rapidly westward, he encountered frequent attacks from Native Americans defending their lands, but he had the advantage of building over fl at prairie.
Crocker faced more trying conditions in the high Sierra Nevada along California’s eastern border. Aft er several experi- ments, he decided that Chinese laborers worked best, and he hired six thousand of them, most brought directly from China. “I built the Central Pacifi c,” Crocker enjoyed boasting, but the Chinese crews in fact did the awesome work. Under the most diffi cult conditions, they dug, blasted, and pushed their way slowly east.
On May 10, 1869, the two lines met at Promontory, Utah, near the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake. Dodge’s crews had built 1,086 miles of track, Crocker’s 689. Th e Union Pacifi c and Central
Seattle
Portland
Sacramento
San Francisco
Los Angeles
Salt Lake City
Promontory Point
Denver
El Paso
Fort Worth
Kansas City
Omaha
St. Paul
Chicago
St. Louis
Memphis
Indianapolis
Detroit
Cincinnati
Birmingham Atlanta
New Orleans
Savannah
Charleston
Wilmington
Washington, D.C.
Pittsburgh
Philadelphia New York
Boston
PACIFIC TIME MOUNTAIN TIME CENTRAL TIME EASTERN TIME
Missouri Pacific
Kansas Pacific
Atc
hi so
n, To
pe ka & Santa Fe
Cen tral Pacif
ic Union Pacific
0 250 500 kilometers
0 250 500 miles
Railroads in Operation
By 1870
By 1890
RAILROADS, 1870 AND 1890 In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, railroads expanded into Texas, the far Southwest, and the Northwest, carrying settlers, businesses, and government to the far-flung areas.
An Industrial Empire 421
An Industrial Empire
What were the main characteristics of the new steel and oil industries?
Th e new industrial empire was based on a number of dramatic innovations, including steel, oil, and inventions of all kinds that transformed ordinary life. In this process, steel was as important as the railroads. Harder and more durable than other kinds of iron, steel wrought changes in manufacturing, agriculture, trans- portation, and architecture. It permitted construction of longer bridges, taller buildings, stronger railroad track, deadlier weap- ons, better plows, heavier machinery, and faster ships. Made in great furnaces by strong men, it symbolized the tough, oft en brutal nature of industrial society. From the 1870s onward, steel output became the worldwide accepted measure of industrial progress, and nations around the globe vied for leadership.
Th e Bessemer process, developed in the late 1850s by Henry Bessemer in England and independently by William Kelly in the United States, made increased steel production possible. Both Bessemer and Kelly discovered that a blast of air forced through molten iron burned off carbon and other impurities, resulting in steel of a more uniform and durable quality. Th e discovery trans- formed the industry. While earlier methods produced amounts a person could lift , a Bessemer converter handled 5 tons of molten metal at a time. Th e mass production of steel was now possible.
Carnegie and Steel Bessemer plants demanded extensive capital investment, abun- dant raw materials, and sophisticated production techniques. Using chemical and other processes, the plants required research
worked to improve service, Gould and others bought and sold railroads like toys, watered their stock, and milked their assets. By 1885, almost one-third of railroad stock represented “water,” that is, stock distributed in excess of the real value of the assets.
Competition was severe, and managers fought desperately for traffi c. Th ey off ered special rates and favors: free passes for large shippers; low rates on bulk freight, carload lots, and long hauls; and, above all, rebates—secret, privately negotiated reductions below published rates. Fierce rate wars broke out frequently, convincing managers that ruthless competition helped no one. Rebates made more enemies than friends.
Managers such as Albert Fink, the brilliant vice president of the Louisville & Nashville, tried fi rst to arrange pooling agree- ments, a way to control competition by sharing traffic. Fink directed the Eastern Trunk Line Association (1877), which divided westbound traffi c among the four trunk lines. Similar associations pooled traffi c in the South and West, but none survived the intense pressures of competition. Legally unenforceable, pools were hand- shake agreements among individuals who did not always keep their word. Customers grew adept at bargaining for rebates and other privileges, and railroads rarely felt able to refuse them.
Failing to cooperate, railroad owners next tried to consolidate. Th rough purchase, lease, and merger, they gobbled up competitors and built “self-sustaining systems” that dominated entire regions. But many of the systems, expensive and unwieldy, collapsed in the Panic of 1893. By mid-1894, a quarter of the railroads were bankrupt. Th e victims of the panic included such legendary names as the Erie, B & O, Santa Fe, Northern Pacifi c, and Union Pacifi c.
Needing money, railroads turned naturally to bankers, who fi nally imposed order on the industry. J. Pierpont Morgan, head of the New York investment house of J. P. Morgan and Company, took the lead. Massively built, with eyes so piercing they seemed like the head- lights of an onrushing train, Morgan was the most powerful fi gure in American fi nance. He liked effi ciency, combination, and order. He disliked “wasteful” competition. In 1885, during a bruising rate war between the New York Central and the Pennsylvania, Morgan invited the combatants to a conference aboard his palatial steam yacht, Corsair . Cruising on Long Island Sound, he arranged a traffi c- sharing agreement and collected a million-dollar fee. Bringing peace to an industry could be profi table. It also satisfi ed Morgan’s passion for stability.
Aft er 1893, Morgan and a few other bankers refi nanced ailing railroads, and in the process they took control of the industry. Th eir methods were direct: Fixed costs and debt were ruthlessly cut, new stock was issued to provide capital, rates were stabilized, rebates and competition were eliminated, and control was vested in a “vot- ing trust” of handpicked trustees. Between 1894 and 1898, Morgan reorganized—critics said “Morganized”—the Southern Railway, the Erie, the Northern Pacifi c, and the B & O. In addition, he took over a half dozen other important railroads. By 1900, he was a dominant fi gure in American railroading.
As the new century began, the railroads had pioneered the pat- terns followed by most other industries. Seven giant systems con- trolled nearly two-thirds of the mileage, and they in turn answered to a few investment banking fi rms such as the House of Morgan. For good and ill, a national transportation network, centralized and relatively effi cient, was now in place.
Millions of tons
30
35
25
20
15
10
5
1880
1914
Germany France Great Britain
Russia United States
INTERNATIONAL STEEL PRODUCTION, 1880–1914
422 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
departments, which became critical components of later American industries. Costly to build, they limited entry into the industry to the handful who could aff ord them.
Great steel districts arose in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Alabama—in each case around large coal deposits that fueled the huge furnaces. Pittsburgh became the center of the industry, its giant mills employing thousands of workers. Output shot up. In 1874, the United States produced less than half the amount of pig iron produced in Great Britain. By 1890, it took the lead, and in 1900, it produced four times as much as Britain.
Iron ore abounded in the fabulous deposits near Lake Superior, the greatest deposits in the world. In the mines of the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, giant steam shovels loaded ore onto railroad cars for transport to ships on the Great Lakes. Powered lift s, self-loading devices, and other innovations sped the process. “By the turn of the century,” historian Peter Temin noted, “the transport of Lake ores had become an intricate ballet of large and complex machines.”
Like the railroads, steel companies grew larger and larger. In 1880, only nine companies could produce more than 100,000 tons a year. By the early 1890s, several companies exceeded 250,000 tons, and two—including the great Carnegie Steel Company— produced more than one million tons a year. As operations expanded, managers needed more complex skills. Product development, marketing, and consumer preferences became important. Competition was fi erce, and steel companies, like the railroads, tried secret agreements, pools, and consolida- tion. During the 1880s and 1890s, they moved toward vertical inte- gration, a type of organization in which a single company owns and controls the entire process from the unearthing of the raw materials to the manufacture and sale of the fi nished product. Such companies combined coal and iron mines, transportation compa- nies, blast furnaces, and rolling mills into integrated networks.
Andrew Carnegie emerged as the undisputed master of the industry. Born in Scotland, he came to the United States in 1848 at the age of twelve. Settling near Pittsburgh, he went to work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, earning $1.20 a week. He soon took a job in a telegraph offi ce, where in 1852 his hard work and skill caught the eye of Th omas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Starting as Scott’s personal telegrapher, Carnegie spent a total of twelve years on the Pennsylvania, a training ground for company managers. By 1859, he had become a divisional superintendent. He was twenty-four years old.
Soon rich from shrewd investments, Carnegie plunged into the steel industry in 1872. On the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh, he built the giant J. Edgar Th omson Steel Works, named aft er the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, his biggest customer. With his warmth and salesmanship, he attracted able partners and subor- dinates such as Henry Clay Frick and Charles M. Schwab, whom he drove hard and paid well. Although he had written magazine articles defending the rights of workers, Carnegie kept the wages of the labor- ers in his mills low and disliked unions. With the help of Frick, he crushed a violent strike at his Homestead works in 1892 (see p. 434 ) .
In 1878, he won the steel contract for the Brooklyn Bridge. During the next decade, as city building boomed, he converted the huge Homestead works near Pittsburgh to the manufacture of structural beams and angles, which went into the New York City elevated railway, the fi rst skyscrapers, and the Washington
Read the Document
Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (1889)
Monument. Carnegie profi ts mounted: from $2 million in 1888 to $40 million in 1900. Th at year, Carnegie Steel alone produced more steel than Great Britain. Employing twenty thousand people, it was the largest industrial company in the world.
In 1901, Carnegie sold it. Believing that wealth brought social obligations, he wanted to devote his full time to philanthropy. He found a buyer in J. Pierpont Morgan, who in the late 1890s had put together several steel companies, including Federal Steel, Carnegie’s chief rival. Carnegie Steel had blocked Morgan’s well-known desire for control, and in mid-1900, when a war loomed between the two interests, Morgan decided to buy Carnegie out. In early January 1901, Morgan told Charles M. Schwab, “Go and fi nd his price.” Schwab cor- nered Carnegie on the golf course; Carnegie listened, and the next day he handed Schwab a note, scribbled in blunt pencil, asking almost a half billion dollars. Morgan glanced at it and said, “I accept this price.”
The machinery dwarfs the workers in this colored engraving of steel making using the Bessemer process at Andrew Carnegie’s Pittsburgh steel works. Men worked twelve hours a day in the blazing heat and deafening roar of the machines.
An Industrial Empire 423
latest technology. He attracted exceptional lieutenants—although, as one said, he could see farther ahead than any of them, “and then see around the corner.”
“Nothing in haste, nothing ill-done,” Rockefeller oft en said to himself. “Your future hangs on every day that passes.” Paying care- ful attention to detail, he counted the stoppers in barrels, short- ened barrel hoops to save metal, and, in one famous incident, reduced the number of drops of solder on kerosene cans from forty to thirty-nine. In large-scale production, Rockefeller realized, even small reductions meant huge savings. Research uncovered other ways of lowering costs and improving products, and Herman Frasch, a brilliant Standard Oil chemist, solved problem aft er prob- lem in the refi ning of oil.
In the end, Rockefeller triumphed over his competitors by marketing products of high quality at the lowest unit cost. But he employed other, less savory methods as well. He threatened rivals and bribed politicians. He employed spies to harass the customers of competing refi ners. Above all, he extorted railroad rebates that lowered his transportation costs and undercut com- petitors. By 1879, he controlled 90 percent of the country’s entire oil-refi ning capacity.
Vertically integrated, Standard Oil owned wells, timberlands, barrel and chemical plants, refi neries, warehouses, pipelines, and fl eets of tankers and oil cars. Its marketing organization served as the model for the industry. Standard exported oil to Asia, Africa, and South America; its fi ve-gallon kerosene tin, like Coca-Cola bottles and cans of a later era, was a familiar sight in the most distant parts of the world.
To manage it all, the company developed a new plan of busi- ness organization, the trust , which had profound signifi cance for American business. In 1881, Samuel C. T. Dodd, Standard’s attor- ney, set up the Standard Oil Trust, with a board of nine trustees empowered “to hold, control, and manage” all Standard’s properties. Stockholders exchanged their stock for trust certifi cates, on which dividends were paid. On January 2, 1882, the fi rst of the modern trusts was born. As Dodd intended, it immediately centralized control of Standard’s far-fl ung empire.
Competition almost disappeared; profits soared. A trust movement swept the country as industries with similar problems— whiskey, lead, and sugar, among others—followed Standard’s example. Th e word trust became synonymous with monopoly, amid vehement protests from the public. Antitrust became a watchword for a generation of reformers from the 1880s through the era of Woodrow Wilson. But Rockefeller’s purpose had been management of a monopoly, not monopoly itself, which he had already achieved.
During the 1890s, Rockefeller helped pioneer another form of industrial consolidation, the holding company. Taking advan- tage of an 1889 New Jersey law that allowed companies to pur- chase other companies, he moved Standard Oil to New Jersey and bought up his own subsidiaries to form a holding company. Th e trust, he had learned, was somewhat cumbersome, and it was under attack in Congress and the courts. Holding companies off ered the next step in industrial management. Th ey were sim- ply large-scale mergers, in which a central corporate organization purchased the stock of the member companies and established direct formal control.
Drawing other companies into the combination, on March 3, 1901, Morgan announced the creation of the United States Steel Corporation. Th e new fi rm was capitalized at $1.4 billion, the fi rst billion-dollar company. It absorbed more than 200 other com- panies, employed 168,000 people, and produced 9 million tons of iron and steel a year. It controlled three-fi ft hs of the country’s steel business. Soon there were other giants, including Bethlehem Steel, Republic Steel, and National Steel. As the nineteenth century ended, steel products—rare just thirty years before—had altered the landscape. Huge fi rms, investment bankers, and professional managers dominated the industry.
Rockefeller and Oil Petroleum worked comparable changes in the economic and social landscape, although mostly aft er 1900. Distilled into oil, it lubricated the machinery of the industrial age. Th ere seemed little use for gasoline (the internal combustion engine had only just been developed), but kerosene, another major distillate, brought inexpensive illumination into almost every home. Whale oil, cot- tonseed oil, and even tallow candles were expensive to burn; con- sequently, many people went to bed at nightfall. Kerosene lamps opened the evenings to activity, altering the patterns of life.
Like other changes in these years, the oil boom happened with surprising speed. In the mid-1850s, petroleum was a bother- some, smelly fl uid that occasionally rose to the surface of springs and streams. Clever entrepreneurs bottled it in patent medicines; a few scooped up enough to burn. Other entrepreneurs soon found that drilling reached pockets of oil beneath the earth. In 1859, Edwin L. Drake drilled the fi rst oil well near Titusville in northwest Pennsylvania, and the “black gold” fever struck. Chemists soon discovered ways to transform petroleum into lubricating oil, grease, paint, wax, varnish, naphtha, and paraffi n. Within a few years, there was a world market in oil.
At fi rst, growth of the oil industry was chaotic. Early drillers and refi ners produced for local markets, and since drilling wells and even erecting refi neries cost little, competition fl ourished. Output fl uctuated dramatically; prices rose and fell, with devastating eff ect. Refi neries—usually a collection of wooden shacks and tanks— were centered in Cleveland and Pittsburgh, near the original oil- producing regions.
A young merchant from Cleveland named John D. Rockefeller imposed order on the industry. “I had an ambition to build,” he later recalled, and beginning in 1863 at the age of twenty-four, he built the Standard Oil Company, soon to become one of the titans of cor- porate business. Like Morgan, Rockefeller considered competition wasteful, small-scale enterprise ineffi cient, and consolidation the path of the future. Consolidation “revolutionized the way of doing business all over the world,” he said. “Th e time was ripe for it. It had to come, though all we saw at the moment was the need to save ourselves from wasteful conditions.”
Methodically, Rockefeller absorbed or destroyed competi- tors in Cleveland and elsewhere. As ruthless in his methods as Carnegie, he lacked the steel master’s spontaneous charm. He was distant and taciturn, a man of deep religious beliefs who taught Bible classes at Cleveland’s Erie Street Baptist Church. Like Carnegie, he demanded effi ciency, relentless cost cutting, and the
424 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Some of the inventions transformed communications. In 1866, Cyrus W. Field improved the transatlantic cable linking the tele- graph networks of Europe and the United States. By the early 1870s, land and submarine cables ran to Brazil, Japan, and the China coast; in the next two decades, they reached Africa and spread across South America. Diplomats and business leaders could now “talk” to their counterparts in Berlin or Hong Kong. Even before the tele- phone, the cables quickened the pace of foreign aff airs, revolution- ized journalism, and allowed businesses to expand and centralize.
Th e typewriter (1867), stock ticker (1867), cash register (1879), calculating machine (1887), and adding machine (1888) helped business transactions. High-speed spindles, automatic looms, and electric sewing machines transformed the clothing industry, which for the fi rst time in history turned out ready-made clothes for the masses. In 1890, the Census Bureau fi rst used machines to sort and tabulate data on punched cards, a portent of a new era of informa- tion storage and processing.
In 1879, George Eastman patented a process for coating gelatin on photographic dry plates, which led to celluloid fi lm and motion pictures. By 1888, he was marketing the Kodak camera, which weighed 35 ounces, took 100 exposures, and cost $25. Even though early Kodaks had to be returned to the factory, camera and all, for fi lm developing, they revolutionized photography. Now almost any- one could snap a picture.
Other innovations changed the diet. Th ere were new processes for fl our, canned meat, vegetables, condensed milk, and even beer (from an off shoot of Louis Pasteur’s discoveries about bacteria). Packaged cereals appeared on breakfast tables. Refrigerated railroad cars, ice-cooled, brought fresh fruit from Florida and California to all parts of the country. In the 1870s, Gustavus F. Swift , a Chicago meat packer, hit on the idea of using the cars to distribute meat nationwide. Setting up “disassembly” factories to butcher meat (Henry Ford later copied them for his famous “assembly” lines), he started an “era of cheap beef,” as a newspaper said.
No innovation, however, rivaled the importance of the tele- phone and the use of electricity for light and power. Th e telephone
was the work of Alexander Graham Bell, a shrewd and genial Scot who settled in Boston in 1871. Interested in the problems of the deaf, Bell experi- mented with ways to transmit speech electrically, and aft er several years he had developed electrifi ed metal disks that, much like the human ear, converted sound waves to electrical impulses and back again. On March 10, 1876, he transmitted the fi rst sentence over a telephone: “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Later that year, he exhibited the new device to excited crowds at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.
In 1878—the year a telephone was installed in the White House—the fi rst telephone exchange opened in New Haven, Connecticut. Fighting off competitors who challenged the patent, the young Bell Telephone Company dominated the growing industry. By 1895, there were about 310,000 phones; a decade later, there were ten million—about one for every ten people. American Telephone and Telegraph Company, formed by the Bell interests in
Other companies followed suit, including American Sugar Refining, the Northern Securities Company, and the National Biscuit Company. Merger followed merger. By 1900, 1 percent of the nation’s companies controlled more than one-third of its industrial production. A decade later, a congressional investigation showed that two individuals, Rockefeller and Morgan, between them con- trolled businesses worth more than $22 billion.
In 1897, Rockefeller retired with a fortune of nearly $900 million, but for Standard Oil and petroleum in general, the most expansive period was yet to come. Th e great oil pools of Texas and Oklahoma had not yet been discovered. Plastics and other oil-based synthet- ics were several decades in the future. Th ere were only four usable automobiles in the country, and the day of the gasoline engine, auto- mobile, and airplane lay just ahead.
The Business of Invention “ America has become known the world around as the home of invention,” boasted the commissioner of patents in 1892. It had not always been so; until the last third of the nineteenth cen- tury, the country had imported most of its technology. Th en an extraordinary group of inventors and tinkerers—”specialists in invention,” Th omas A. Edison called them—began to study the world around them. Some of their inventions gave rise to new industries; a few actually changed the quality of life.
In the very act of inventing, Edison and others drew on a deeper “invention,” a realization that people could mold nature to their own ends. Th ey could create out of “fi rst nature,” as one environmental historian has noted, a “second nature,” shaped as they wished.
Th e number of patents issued to inventors refl ected the trend. During the 1850s, fewer than 2,000 patents were issued each year. By the 1880s and 1890s, the fi gure reached more than 20,000 a year. Between 1790 and 1860, the U.S. Patent Offi ce issued just 36,000 patents; in the decade of the 1890s alone, it issued more than 200,000.
19,591
64,302
124,672
195,104
221,277
1850–1859 1860–1869 1870–1879 1880–1889 1890–1899
PATENTS ISSUED, BY DECADE, 1850–1899
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
An Industrial Empire 425
Read the Document Thomas Edison, “The Success of the Electric Light”
1885, became another of the vast holding companies, consolidating more than a hundred local systems.
If the telephone dissolved communication barriers as old as the human race, Th omas Alva Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” invented processes and products of comparable signifi cance. Born in 1847, Edison had little formal education, although he was an avid reader. Like Carnegie, he went into the new fi eld of telegraphy. Tinkering in his spare time, he made several important improve- ments, including a telegraph capable of sending four messages over a single wire. Gathering teams of specialists to work on specifi c prob- lems, Edison built the fi rst modern research laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey. It may have been his most important invention.
Th e laboratory, Edison promised, would turn out “a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so.” In 1877, it turned out a big thing. Worried about a telephone’s high cost, Edison set out to invent a “telephone repeater,” which became the phonograph. Th ose unable to aff ord a phone, he thought, could record their voices for replay from a central telephone station. Using tin foil wrapped around a grooved, rotating cylinder, he shouted the verses of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and then listened in awe as the machine played them back. “I was never so taken aback in all my life,” he later said. “Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the fi rst time.”
In 1896, records made of hard rubber and shellac appeared on the market; the following year, a phonograph sold for $20. In 1904, someone had the idea of record- ing on both sides of the disk, and the pho- nograph record in its modern form was born. For the fi rst time in history, people could listen again and again to a favorite symphony or piano solo. Th e phonograph made human experience repeatable in a way never before possible.
In 1879 came an even larger triumph, the incandescent lamp. Sir Joseph William Swan, an English inventor, had already experimented with the carbon fi lament, but Edison’s task involved more than fi nding a durable fi lament. He set out to do noth- ing less than change light. A trial-and-error inventor, Edison tested sixteen hundred materials before producing, late in 1879, the carbon fi lament he wanted. Th en he had to devise a complex system of conductors, meters, and generators by which electricity could be divided and distributed to homes and businesses.
With the financial backing of J. P. Morgan, he organized the Edison Illuminating Company and built the Pearl Street power station in New York City, the testing ground of the new apparatus. On September 4, 1882, as Morgan and others watched, Edison threw a switch and lit the House of Morgan, the stock exchange, the New York Times , and a number of
other buildings. Amazed, a Times reporter marveled that writ- ing stories in the offi ce at night “seemed almost like writing in daylight.” Power stations soon opened in Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. By 1900, there were 2,774 stations, lighting some two million electric lights around the country. In a nation alive with light, the habits of centuries changed. A fl ick of the switch lit homes and factories at any hour of the day or night.
In a rare blunder, Edison based his system on low-voltage direct current, which could be transmitted only about two miles. George Westinghouse, the inventor of the railroad air brake, demonstrated the advantages of high-voltage alternating current for transmission over great distances. In 1886, he formed the Westinghouse Electric Company and with the inventor Nikola Tesla, a Hungarian immi- grant, developed an alternating-current motor that could convert electricity into mechanical power. Electricity could light a lamp or illuminate a skyscraper, pull a streetcar or drive an entire rail- road, run a sewing machine or power a mammoth assembly line. Transmitted easily over long distances, it freed factories and cit- ies from location near water or coal. Electricity, in short, brought a revolution.
Buried under pavement or strung from pole to pole, wires of every description—trolley, telephone, and power—marked the birth of the modern city.
In the late 1870’s the electric light and power transfer were only at inventive stages, having been explored unsuccessfully by a number of inventors. At that time Thomas Edison, with his ideas and proven analytical abilities, undertook the problem. It was Edison’s interest in technological systems that led him to a general system of incandescent lighting in the fall of 1878.
426
Of all the innovations that changed the way people lived between the 1870s and 1920s, one of the most important was the rise and development of the depart- ment store, those sprawling urban empires of goods and services that fueled the mass consumption of the new society.
A signifi cant invention in itself, the department store took advantage of myriad other changes in American and
European society, especially the indus- trial transformation that led to the mass production of consumer goods in variet- ies and amounts never seen before.
That industrial revolution in turn drew on breakthroughs in transporta- tion, including a vast railroad network that linked cities and villages and ended the relative isolation and self- suffi ciency of the nation’s “island com- munities.” The railroads tied people
together, brought in products from outside, fostered greater interdepen- dence, and encouraged economic specialization.
In the cities, new streetcar sys- tems, another revolution in transpor- tation, carried shoppers directly to stores, workplaces, and other destina- tions, regardless of the weather. As a New York City department store sug- gested one winter, “Ladies, if walking is
Shopping in a New Society Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment Shopping in a New Society on myhistorylab
Macy’s was founded by Rowland Hussey Macy, who between 1843 and 1855 opened four retail dry goods stores, including the original Macy’s store in downtown Haverhill, Massachusetts, established in 1851 to serve the mill industry employees of the area.
427
too bad, just take the cars.” The advice took hold. The word “commuter” fi rst entered the language in the 1870s.
As machines turned out a plethora of new products, it became vital to sell them, and a “new science of marketing” spread. Printer’s Ink , the fi rst major advertising journal, began publishing in 1881. The rotary press, invented in 1875, initiated a new era in newspaper advertising. Woodcuts, halftones, and photo- engraving added illustrations to catch the consumer’s eye.
Liking the results, businesses spent more on advertising every year. In 1870, they spent about $50 million; in 1900, about $95 million; in 1920, over $500 million. (By the 1970s, it was $22.4 billion.) Ads and billboards sprouted up everywhere, touting ciga- rettes, cars, perfumes, and cosmetics. Advertising agents, using new statis- tical sampling techniques, developed modern concepts of market testing and research. “When people see your name constantly in the paper,” Printer’s Ink argued, “ they begin to believe they know you and it is but a short step from advertising to patronage.”
Refl ecting common values, depart- ment stores fl ourished in Europe as well as in America, particularly in Paris. Emile Zola, the famed French novelist, said the department store democratized luxury, offering the public for the fi rst time in history free admission to displays of material goods. “Shop,” he and others pointed out, had become a verb.
In the United States, R. H. Macy in New York City, John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, and Marshall Field in Chicago turned the department store into a national institution. There, peo- ple learned to “browse,” a relatively new concept, and to buy. Innovations in pricing, display, and advertising helped customers develop wants they had not known they had. In 1870, Wanamaker took out the fi rst full-page newspaper ad, and by 1891, Macy, too, had turned to full- page advertisements, often placed on pages next to an article of special interest to women.
The ads were hard to resist:
Follow the crowd [an 1885 ad in a New York newspaper said] and it will always take
you to R. H. MACY & CO. What better evidence do you wish
that ours is The All Around Store of New York City? Ride our
bicycles, read our books, cook in our
saucepans, dine off our china, wear our silks, get under our blankets, smoke our
cigars, drink our wines – Shop at Macy’s – and life will Cost You Less and Yield You More Than You Dreamed Possible.
Even the surroundings often evoked a dream. Cash registers, a new invention, rang up every sale, and by the 1880s, electric lights highlighted the goods. Electric elevators and esca- lators carried shoppers to new heights. Plate-glass windows, a product of dis- coveries in the technology of glassmak- ing, fl ooded the stores with daylight. Windows on the street levels became “show windows,” a term developed in the United States. “Window-shopping,” another new word, became popular.
Looking through those windows, store owners soon noted, were women, hundreds of them, and it was around women that they built their businesses. “Woman is a shopper,” as an indus- try journal noted. “Out of that fact has come the modern department store.”
In these years, growing numbers of women worked in factories, telephone exchanges, and business offi ces, and they could spend their wages on items they desired. By 1880, 2.6 million women were in the work force; in 1890, 4 million. In 1900, more than 5 million women— one fi fth of all adult women—worked outside the home.
Within limits, of course, that meant money in women’s pockets, and the new department stores tailored their advertising and wares to appeal to women. They also did everything they
could to make their stores safe, clean, and appealing. In 1892, Macy’s built a new ladies’ waiting room, calling it the “most luxurious and beautiful depart- ment devoted to the comfort of ladies to be found in a mercantile establish- ment in the city.” Soon there were ladies’ lunch rooms; dressing rooms specially lit to show off evening gowns in broad daylight; and shelves of hats, glass, and china with monograms and other special designs. It was not unusual for a department store to stock 1,300 types of women’s shoes.
The department store, along with advertising, brand names, and other innovations, brought Americans of all backgrounds into a national mar- ket. Even as the country itself grew, a homogeneity of goods bound it together, touching cities and farms, East and West, rich and poor. A com- mon language of consumption turned Americans into a community of con- sumers, who were surrounded by goods unavailable just decades before and able to purchase them. They had learned to make, want, and buy.
These are lessons not forgotten. The department store even today accounts for more than one-tenth of all annual commercial sales in the United States.
The spread of the World Wide Web has added, like transportation and communication innovations in an earlier era, another route for con- sumers to buy the alluring products of the department stores. The so-called “Cyber-Monday” of the 2011 Christmas season enticed those who preferred to shop and spend their money buy- ing goods online. According to the New York Times , on “Cyber-Monday” shoppers bought $1.25 billion worth of goods over the Internet. Somehow, one suspects, this would not have sur- prised Macy, Wanamaker, and their nineteenth-century colleagues.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What conditions between the 1870s and 1920s led to the rise of the department store?
2. What changes did department stores bring in people’s lives?
428 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Advertising, brand names, chain stores, and mail-order houses brought Americans of all varieties into a national market. Even as the country grew, a certain homogeneity of goods bound it together, touching cities and farms, East and West, rich and poor. Th ere was a common language of consumption.
Th e market, some contemporaries thought, also bridged eth- nic and other diff erences. A prominent English economist wrote in 1919, “Widely as the Scandinavians are separated from the Italians, and the native Americans from the Poles, in sentiment, in modes of living, and even in occupations, they are yet purchasers of nearly the same goods. . . . Th ey buy similar clothes, furniture, and implements.”
Th e theory had severe limits; ethnic and racial diff erences remained entrenched in the society. But Americans had become a community of consumers, surrounded by goods unavailable just a few decades before, and able to purchase them. Th ey had learned to make, want, and buy. (See Feature Essay, “Shopping in a New Society” on pp 426-427).
The Wage Earners
Who were the wage earners in the new economy?
Although entrepreneurs were important, it was the labor of millions of men and women that built the new industrial society. In their individual stories, nearly all unrecorded, lay much of the achievement, drama, and pain of these years.
In a number of respects, their lot improved during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Real wages rose, working conditions improved, and the workers’ infl uence in national aff airs increased. Between 1880 and 1914, wages of the average worker rose about $7 a year. Like others, workers also benefi ted from expanding health and educational services.
Working Men, Working Women, Working Children Still, life for workers was not easy. Before 1900, most wage earners worked at least ten hours a day, six days a week. If skilled, they earned about 20 cents an hour; if unskilled, just half that. On aver- age, workers earned between $400 and $500 a year. It took about $600 for a family of four to live decently. Construction workers, machinists, government employees, printers, clerical workers, and western miners made more than the average. Eastern coal min- ers, agricultural workers, garment workers, and unskilled factory hands made considerably less.
Th ere were few holidays or vacations, and there was little respite from the grueling routine. Skilled workers could turn the system to their own ends—New York City cigar makers, for example, paid someone to read to them while they worked— but the unskilled seldom had such luxury. Th ey were too easily replaced. “A bit of advice to you,” said a guidebook for immigrant Jews in the 1890s: “do not take a moment’s rest. Run, do, work, and keep your own good in mind.”
Work was not only grueling; it was very dangerous. Safety standards were low, and accidents were common, more
The Sellers
Why were the new methods of advertising so important?
Th e increased output of the industrial age alone was not enough to ensure huge profi ts. Th e products still had to be sold, and that gave rise to the new “science” of marketing. Some business leaders—such as Swift in meatpacking, James B. Duke in tobacco, and Rockefeller in oil—built extensive marketing organizations of their own. Others relied on retailers, merchandising techniques, and advertis- ing, developing a host of methods to convince consumers to buy.
In 1867, businesses spent about $50 million on advertising; in 1900, they spent more than $500 million, and the fi gure was increasing rapidly. Th e fi rst advertising agency, N. W. Ayer and Son, of Philadelphia, began to service businesses in the mid-1870s, and it was followed by numerous imitators. Th e rotary press (1875) churned out newspapers and introduced a new era in newspaper advertising. Woodcuts, halft ones, and photoengraving added illus- trations to catch the consumer’s eye.
Bringing producer and consumer together, nationwide adver- tising was the fi nal link in the national market. From roadside signs to newspaper ads, it pervaded American life.
R. H. Macy in New York, John Wanamaker in Philadelphia, and Marshall Field in Chicago turned the department store into a national institution. Th ere people could browse (a relatively new concept) and buy. Innovations in pricing, display, and advertising helped customers develop wants they did not know they had. In 1870, Wanamaker took out the fi rst full-page newspaper ad, and Macy, an aggressive advertiser, touted “goods suitable for the mil- lionaire at prices in reach of the millions.”
The “chain store”—an American term—spread across the country. Th e A & P grocery stores, begun in 1859, numbered sixty-seven by 1876, all marked by a familiar red-and-gold facade. By 1915, there were a thousand of them. In 1880, F. W. Woolworth, bored with the family farm, opened the fi rst “Five and Ten Cent Store” in Utica, New York. He had fi ft y-nine stores in 1900, the year he adopted the bright red storefront and heaping counters to lure customers in and persuade them to buy.
In similar fashion, Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward sold to rural customers through mail-order catalogs—a means of selling that depended on eff ective transportation and a high level of customer literacy.
As a traveler for a dry goods fi rm, Aaron Montgomery Ward had seen an unfulfi lled need of people in the rural West. He started the mail-order trend in 1872, with a one-sheet price list off ered from a Chicago loft . By 1884, he off ered almost ten thousand items in a catalog of 240 pages.
Richard W. Sears also saw the possibilities in the mail-order business. Starting with watches and jewelry, he gradually expanded his list. In the early 1880s, he moved to Chicago and with Alvah C. Roebuck founded Sears, Roebuck and Company. Sears sold anything and everything, prospering in a business that relied on mutual faith between unseen customers and distant distributors. Sears catalogs, soon more than fi ve hundred pages long, exploited four-color illustration and other new techniques. By the early 1900s, Sears distributed six million catalogs annually.
The Wage Earners 429
families,” a box manufacturer said, “for we don’t pay the girls a living wage in this trade.”
Most working women were young and single. Many began working at sixteen or seventeen, worked a half dozen years or so, married, and quit. In 1900, only 5 percent of all married women were employed outside the home, although African American women were an important exception.
Among them, 25 percent of married women worked in 1900, usually on southern farms or as low-paid laundresses or domestic servants. As clerical work expanded, women learned new skills such as typing and stenography. Moving into formerly male occupations, they became secretaries, book- keepers, typists, telephone operators, and clerks in the new department stores.
A few women—very few—became ministers, lawyers, and doctors. Arabella Mansfi eld, admitted to the Iowa bar in 1869, was the fi rst woman lawyer in the country. But change was slow, and in the 1880s, some law schools still were refusing to admit women because they “had not the mentality to study law.” Among women entering the professions, the overwhelming majority became nurses, schoolteachers, and librarians. In such professions, a pro- cess of “feminization” occurred: Women became a majority of the workers, a small number of men took the management roles, and most men left for other jobs, lowering the profession’s status.
In most jobs, status and pay were divided unequally between men and women. Many of both sexes thought a woman’s place
was in the home, “queen of a little house—no matter how humble—where there are chil- dren rolling on the fl oor.” When employed in factories, women tended to occupy jobs that were viewed as natural extensions of house- hold activity. Th ey made clothes and textiles, processed food, and made cigars, tobacco, and shoes. In the women’s garment industry, which employed large numbers of women, they were the sewers and finishers, doing jobs that paid less; men were the higher-paid cutters and pressers.
In Th e Long Day: Th e Story of a New York Working Girl as Told by Herself (1906), the “working girl,” a young schoolteacher, earned $2.50 a week, paid $1.00 for her room, and had $1.50 for food, clothes, transportation, and any social life. For breakfast, she had bread, butter, and coff ee; for lunch, bread and butter; for dinner, potato soup, bread, and butter. In Pittsburgh, a worker in a pickle factory said of her day: “I have stood ten hours; I have fi tted 1,300 corks; I have hauled and loaded 4,000 jars of pickles. My pay is seventy cents.” Exhausted, such workers fell into bed at night and crawled out again at dawn to begin another “long day.”
In general, adults earned more than chil- dren, the skilled more than the unskilled, native born more than foreign born,
common in fact than in any other industrial nation in the world at that time.
On the railroads, 1 in every 26 workers was injured and 1 in every 399 was killed each year. Th ousands suff ered from chronic illness, unknowing victims of dust, chemicals, and other pollut- ants. In the early 1900s, physician Alice Hamilton established a link between jobs and disease, but meanwhile, illness weakened or struck down many a breadwinner.
Th e breadwinner might be a woman or a child; both worked in increasing numbers. In 1870, about 15 percent of women over the age of 16 were employed for wages; in 1900, 20 percent (5.3 million women) were. Of 303 occupations listed in the 1900 cen- sus, women were represented in 296.
Th e textile industry was their largest single employer. Between 1870 and 1900, the number of working children rose nearly 130 percent to 1.8 million. In 1900, 1 out of every 10 girls and 1 out of every 5 boys between the ages of 10 and 15 held jobs. In Paterson, New Jersey, an important industrial city, about half of all boys and girls aged 11 to 14 had jobs.
There were so many children in the labor force that when people spoke of child labor, they often meant boys and girls under the age of fourteen. Boys were paid little enough, but girls made even less. Girls, it was argued, were headed for mar- riage; those who worked were just doing so in order to help out their families. “We try to employ girls who are members of
Mother Jones, “The March of the Mill Children”
Many children in the late nineteenth century grew up in the nation’s factories, working long hours for low wages in often dangerous conditions. These girls bundling brooms at an Indiana manufacturing plant were photographed by Lewis Hine.
Read the Document
430 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Culture of Work
How did wage earners organize in this period, and what demands did they make?
Among almost all groups, industrialization shattered age-old patterns, including work habits and the culture of work, as Herbert G. Gutman, a social historian, noted. It made people adapt “older work routines to new necessities and strained those wedded to premodern patterns of labor.” Adaptation was diffi cult and oft en demeaning. Virtually everyone went through it, and newcomers repeated the experiences of those who came before.
Men and women fresh from farms were not accustomed to the factory’s disciplines. Now they worked indoors rather than out, paced themselves to the clock rather than the movements of the sun, and followed the needs of the market rather than the natural rhythms of the seasons. Th ey had supervisors and hierarchies and strict rules.
Protestants more than Catholics or Jews, and whites more than blacks and Asians. On average, women made a little more than half as much as men, according to contemporary estimates. In some cases, employers defended the diff erences—the foreign born, for example, might not speak English—but most simply reflected bias against race, creed, or gender. In the industrial society, white, native-born Protestant men—the bulk of the male population— reaped the greatest rewards.
Blacks labored on the fringes, usually in menial occupations. Th e last hired and fi rst fi red, they earned less than other workers at almost every level of skill. On the Pacifi c coast, the Chinese—and later the Japanese—lived in enclaves and suff ered periodic attacks of discrimination. In 1879, the Workingmen’s party of California got a provision in the state constitution forbidding corporations to employ Chinese, and in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese workers for ten years.
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1884) Read the Document
This report documents the poor working and living conditions of women workers in Massachusetts. Of special concern in the report, and to reformers of the time, were the unsanitary conditions in which many of the women lived. The forthcoming economic depression of the 1890s would force even more women into such working conditions.
Culture of Work 431
slowly through the 1870s, until Terence V. Powderly, the new Grand Master Workman elected in 1879, ended the secrecy and embarked on an aggressive recruitment program. Wanting to unite all labor, the Knights welcomed everyone who “toiled,” regardless of skill, creed, sex, or color. Unlike most unions, it organized women work- ers, and at its peak, it had sixty thousand black members.
Harking back to the Jacksonians, the Knights set the “pro- ducers” against monopoly and special privilege. As members they excluded only “nonproducers”—bankers, lawyers, liquor dealers, and gamblers. Since employers were “producers,” they could join; and since workers and employers had common inter- ests, the Knights maintained that workers should not strike. Th e order’s platform included the eight-hour day and the aboli- tion of child labor, but more oft en it focused on uplift ing, uto- pian reform. Powderly, the eloquent and idealistic leader, spun dreams of a new era of harmony and cooperation. He wanted to sweep away trusts and end drunkenness. Workers should pool their resources, establish worker-run factories, railroads, and mines, and escape from the wage system. “Th e aim of the Knights of Labor—properly understood—is to make each man his own employer,” Powderly said.
Membership grew steadily—from 42,000 in 1882 to 110,000 in 1885. In March 1885, ignoring Powderly’s dislike of strikes, local Knights in St. Louis, Kansas City, and other cities won a victory against Jay Gould’s Missouri Pacifi c Railroad, and membership soared. It soon reached almost 730,000, but nei- ther Powderly nor the union’s loose structure could handle the growth. In 1886, the wily Gould struck back, crushing the Knights on the Texas and Pacifi c Railroad. Th e defeat punc- tured the union’s growth and revealed the ineff ectiveness of its national leaders. Tens of thousands of unskilled laborers, who had recently rushed to join, deserted the ranks. Th e Haymarket Riot turned public sympathy against unions like the Knights. By 1890, the order had shrunk to 100,000 members, and a few years later, it was virtually defunct.
Even as the Knights waxed and waned, another organization emerged that was to endure. Founded in 1886, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was a loose alliance of national craft unions. It organized only skilled workers along craft lines, avoided politics, and worked for specifi c practical objectives. “I have my own philosophy and my own dreams,” said Samuel Gompers, the founder and longtime president, “but fi rst and foremost I want to increase the workingman’s welfare year by year.”
Born in a London tenement in 1850, Gompers was a child of the union movement. Settling in New York, he worked as a cigar maker, took an active hand in union activities, and experimented for a time with socialism and working-class politics. As leader of the AFL, he adopted a pragmatic approach to labor’s needs. Gompers accepted capitalism and did not argue for fundamental changes in it. For labor he wanted simply a recognized place within the system and a greater share of the rewards.
Unlike Powderly, Gompers and the AFL assumed that most workers would remain workers throughout their lives. Th e task, then, lay in improving lives in “practical” ways: higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. Th e AFL off ered some attractive assurances to employers. As a trade union, the AFL would use the strike and boycott, but only to achieve limited gains;
As industries grew larger, work became more impersonal. Machines displaced skilled artisans, and the unskilled tended the machines for employers they never saw. Workers picked up and left their jobs with startling frequency, and factories drew on a churn- ing, highly mobile labor supply. Historian Stephan Th ernstrom, who carefully studied the census records, found that only about half the people recorded in any census still lived in the same community ten years later. “Th e country had an enormous reservoir of restless and footloose men, who could be lured to new destinations when opportunity beckoned.”
Th ernstrom and others have also found substantial economic and social mobility. Th e rags-to-riches stories of Horatio Alger had always said so, and careers of men such as Andrew Carnegie— the impoverished immigrant boy who made good—seemed to confirm it. The actual record was considerably more lim- ited. Most business leaders in the period came from well-to-do or middle-class families of old American stock. Of 360 iron and steel barons in Pittsburgh, Carnegie’s own city, only fi ve fi t the Carnegie characteristics, and one of those was Carnegie himself. Still, if few workers became steel magnates, many workers made major progress during their lifetimes. Th ernstrom discovered that a quarter of the manual laborers rose to middle-class positions, and working-class children were even more likely to move up the lad- der. In Boston, about half the Jewish immigrants rose from manual to middle-class jobs, and English, Irish, and Italian immigrants were not far behind.
Th e chance for advancement played a vital role in American industrial development. It gave workers hope, wedded them to the system, and tempered their response to the appeal of labor unions and working-class agitation. Very few workers rose from rags to riches, but a great many rose to better jobs and higher status.
Labor Unions Weak throughout the nineteenth century, labor unions never included more than 2 percent of the total labor force or more than 10 percent of industrial workers. To many workers, unions seemed “foreign,” radical, and out of step with the American tra- dition of individual advancement. Craft , ethnic, and other diff er- ences fragmented the labor force, and its extraordinary mobility made organization diffi cult. Employers opposed unions. “I have always had one rule,” said an executive of U.S. Steel. “If a worker sticks up his head, hit it.”
As the national economy emerged, however, national labor unions gradually took shape. Th e early unions oft en represented skilled workers in local areas, but in 1866, William H. Sylvis, a Pennsylvania iron molder, united several unions into a single national organization, the National Labor Union. Like many of the era’s labor leaders, Sylvis sought long-range humanitarian reforms, such as the establishment of workers’ cooperatives, rather than spe- cifi c bread-and-butter goals. A talented propagandist, he attracted many members—some 640,000 by 1868—but he died in 1869, and the organization did not long survive him.
The year Sylvis died, Uriah S. Stephens and a group of Philadelphia garment workers founded a far more successful orga- nization, the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, known simply as the Knights of Labor . A secret fraternal order, it grew
432 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
there were 6.3 million women at work, only 125,000 of them were in unions.
The AFL did not expressly forbid black workers from joining, but member unions used high initiation fees, tech- nical examinations, and other means to discourage black membership. The AFL’s informal exclusion practices were, all in all, a sorry record, but Gompers defended his policy toward blacks, women, and the unskilled by pointing to the dangers that unions faced. Only by restricting membership, he argued, could the union succeed.
Labor Unrest Workers used various means to adjust to the factory age. To the dismay of managers and “effi ciency” experts, the employees oft en dictated the pace and quality of their work and set the tone of the workplace. Friends and relatives of newly arrived immigrants found jobs for them, taught them how to deal with factory condi- tions, and humanized the workplace.
Workers also formed their own institutions to deal with their jobs. Overcoming diff erences of race or ethnic origin, they oft en banded together to help each other. Th ey joined social or fraternal organizations, and their unions did more than argue
if treated fairly, the organization would provide a stable labor force. Th e AFL would not oppose monopolies and trusts, as Gompers said, “so long as we obtain fair wages.”
By the 1890s, the AFL was the most important labor group in the country, and Gompers, the guiding spirit, was its president, except for one year, until his death in 1924. Membership expanded from 140,000 in 1886, past 250,000 in 1892, to more than one million by 1901. Th e AFL then included almost one-third of the country’s skilled workers. By 1914, it had more than two million members. Th e great majority of workers—skilled and unskilled— remained unorganized, but Gompers and the AFL had become a signifi cant force in national life.
Few unions allowed women to join. Th e Knights of Labor had a Department of Woman’s Work headed by Leonora M. Barry, a shrewd, enthusiastic organizer who established a dozen women’s locals and investigated the condition of women’s labor. Th e Knights welcomed housewives because they were “producers.” Th e AFL either ignored or opposed women workers. Only two of its national affi liates—the Cigar Makers’ Union and the Typographical Union— accepted women as members; others prohibited them outright, and Gompers himself oft en complained that women workers undercut the pay scales for men. Working conditions improved aft er 1900, but even then, unions were largely a man’s world. In 1910, when
Women delegates at a national meeting of the Knights of Labor in 1886. Women belonged to separate associations affiliated with local all-male unions.
Leonora M. Barry, Report to the Knights of Labor (1887) Read the Document
Culture of Work 433
of 1894, and the Supreme Court upheld use of the injunction in In re Debs (1895). Court decisions also aff ected the legal protection off ered to workers. In Holden v. Hardy (1898), the Court upheld a law limiting working hours for miners because their work was dangerous and long hours might increase injuries. In Lochner v. New York (1905), however, it struck down a law limiting bakery workers to a sixty-hour week and ten-hour day. Because baking was safer than mining, the Court saw no need to interfere with the right of bakers to sell their labor freely.
As employers’ attitudes hardened, strikes and violence broke out. Th e United States had the greatest number of violent confrontations between capital and labor in the industrial world. Between 1880 and 1900, there were more than 23,000 strikes involving 6.6 million workers.
The worst incident took place at Haymarket Square in Chicago, where workers had been campaigning for an eight-hour workday. In early May 1886, police, intervening in a strike at the McCormick Harvester works, shot and killed two workers. Th e next evening, May 4, labor leaders called a protest meeting at Haymarket Square near downtown Chicago. Th e meeting was peaceful, even a bit dull. About three thousand people were there; police ordered them to disperse, and someone threw a dynamite
for higher wages. Unions off ered companionship, news of job openings, and much needed insurance plans for sickness, acci- dent, or death. Workers went to the union hall to play cards or pool, sing union songs, and hear older workers tell of past labor struggles. Unions provided food for sick members, and there were dances, picnics, and parades. “Th e night I joined the Cattle Butchers’ Union,” a young Lithuanian said, “I was led into the room by a negro member. With me were Bohemians, Germans and Poles . . . . We swore to be loyal to our union above everything else except the country, the city and the State—to be faithful to each other—to protect the women workers—to do our best to understand the history of the labor movement, and to do all we could to help it on.”
Many employers believed in an “iron law of wages” in which supply and demand, not the welfare of their workers, dictated wages. “If I wanted boiler iron,” a steelmaker said, “I would go out on the market and buy where I could get it the cheapest, and if I wanted to employ men I would do the same thing.” Wanting a docile labor force, employers fi red union members, hired scabs to replace strik- ers, and used a new weapon, the court injunction, to quell strikes.
Th e injunction, which forbade workers to interfere with their employers’ business, was used to break the great Pullman Strike
Organizing American Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century View the Map
Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (Chicago, Pittsburgh, Martinsburg, Baltimore)
Homestead Strike 1892 (Homestead)
Haymarket Riot 1886 (Chicago)
Pullman Strike 1894 (Chicago and nationwide)
AT L A N T I C O C E A N
PA C I F I C O C E A N
G u l f o f M e x i c o
WASHINGTON
OREGON
IDAHO
MONTANA
NEVADA
CALIFORNIA
UTAH
ARIZONA TERRITORY NEW MEXICO
TERRITORY
WYOMING
COLORADO
NORTH DAKOTA
SOUTH DAKOTA
NEBRASKA
KANSAS
OK. TERR.
TEXAS
LOUISIANA
ARK.
MISS.
MISSOURI
IOWA
MINN.
WISCONSIN
MICH.
ILL. IND.
OHIO
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
ALA. GEORGIA
FLORIDA
S.C.
N.C.
VIRGINIA W.V.
PENN.
NEW YORK
MAINE
N.H.
VT.
MASS.
RHODE ISLAND CONNECTICUT
NEW JERSEY DELAWARE
MARYLAND
INDIAN TERR.
Counties reporting strikes between 1870–1900
Major strikes
LABOR STRIKES, 1870–1900 More than fourteen thousand strikes occurred in the 1880s and early 1890s, involving millions of workers.
434 CHAPTER 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
Henry Clay Frick, Carnegie’s partner and manager, cut wages nearly 20 percent at the Homestead steel plant. Th e Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers, an AFL affi liate, struck, and Frick responded by locking the workers out of the plant. Th e workers surrounded it, and Frick, furious, hired a small private army of Pinkerton detec- tives to drive them off . But alert workers spotted the detectives, pinned them down with gunfi re, and forced them to surrender. Th ree detectives and ten workers died in the battle.
A few days later, the Pennsylvania governor ordered the state militia to impose peace at Homestead. On July 23, an anar- chist named Alexander Berkman, who was not one of the strik- ers, walked into Frick’s offi ce and shot him twice, then stabbed him several times. Incredibly, Frick survived, watched the police take Berkman away, called in a doctor to bandage his wounds, and stayed in the offi ce until closing time. “I do not think I shall die,” he told reporters. “But if I do or not, the company will pursue the same policy and it will win.” In late July, the Homestead works reopened under military guard, and in November the strikers gave up.
bomb that instantly killed one policeman and fatally wounded six others. Police fi red into the crowd and killed four people.
The authorities never discovered who threw the bomb, but many Americans—not just business leaders—immediately labeled the incident the Haymarket Riot and demanded action against labor “radicalism.” Cities strengthened their police forces and armories. In Chicago, donors helped to establish nearby Fort Sheridan and the Great Lakes Naval Training Station to curb social turmoil. Uncertain who threw the bomb, Chicago police rounded up eight anarchists, who were convicted of mur- der. Although there was no evidence of their guilt, four were hanged, one committed suicide, and three remained in jail until pardoned by the governor in 1893. Linking labor and anarchism in the public mind, the Haymarket Riot weakened the national labor movement.
Violence again broke out in the unsettled conditions of the 1890s. In 1892, federal troops crushed a strike of silver miners in the Coeur d’Alene district of Idaho. Th at same year, Carnegie and
In the rioting that followed the bomb explosion in Haymarket Square in Chicago, seven police officers and four workers died and more than seventy officers were wounded, many of them by fellow police. August Spies, one of the anarchists convicted of murder and sent to the gallows, said at his trial, “Let the world know that in A.D. 1886, in the state of Illinois, eight men were sentenced to death because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice!” (Actually, seven of the agitators were sentenced to death, the eighth to imprisonment.)
George Engel, Address by a Haymarket Anarchist Read the Document
Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefi ts and Costs 435
Events like the Homestead Strike troubled many Americans who wondered whether industrialization, for all its benefi ts, might carry a heavy price in social upheaval, class tensions, and even out- right warfare. Most workers did not share in the immense profi ts of the industrial age, and as the nineteenth century came to a close, there were some who rebelled against the inequity.
Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefi ts and Costs
In the half century aft er the Civil War, the United States became an industrial nation—the leading one, in fact, in the world. On one hand, industrialization meant “progress,” growth, world power, and in some sense, fulfi llment of the American promise of abundance. National wealth grew from $16 billion in 1860 to $88 billion in 1900; wealth per capita more than doubled. For the bulk of the population, the standard of living—a particularly American concept—rose.
But industrialization also meant rapid change, social insta- bility, exploitation of labor, and growing disparity in income between rich and poor. Industry fl ourished, but control rested in fewer and fewer hands. Maturing quickly, the young system became a new corporate capitalism: giant businesses, interlock- ing in ownership, managed by a new professional class, and sell- ing an expanding variety of goods in an increasingly controlled market. As goods spread through the society, so did a sharpened, aggressive materialism. Workers felt the strains of the shift to a new social order.
In 1902, a well-to-do New Yorker named Bessie Van Vorst decided to see what it was like to work for a living in a factory. Disguising herself in coarse woolen clothes, a shabby felt hat, a cheap piece of fur, and an old shawl and gloves, she went to Pittsburgh and got a job in a canning factory. She worked ten hours a day, six days a week, including four hours on Saturday aft ernoons when she and the other women, on their hands and knees, scrubbed the tables, stands, and entire factory fl oor. For that she earned $4.20 a week, $3 of which went for food alone. “My hands are stiff ,” she said, “my thumbs almost blistered . . . . Cases are emptied and refi lled; bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled
The Gilded Age is associated with an enormous expansion of American industry, American manufacturing, and the growth of the factory system. It’s also the moment when it’s increasingly clear that large numbers of Americans are going to be doing wage labor for all their life.
away . . . and still there are more cases, more jars, more bottles. Oh! the monotony of it!” Th e noise around her was deafening; her head grew dazed and weary.
Van Vorst was lucky—when she tired of the life, she could go back to her home in New York. Th e working men and women around her were not so fortunate. Th ey stayed on the factory fl oor and, by dint of their labor, created the new industrial society.
The Gilded Age: The Rise of
Capitalism, Industrialism, andPoverty Watch the Video
436 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER REVIEW
1883 Railroads introduce standard time zones 1886 Samuel Gompers founds American Federation of
Labor (AFL); Labor protest erupts in violence in Haymarket Riot in Chicago; Railroads adopt standard gauge
1892 Workers strike at Homestead steel plant in Pennsylvania
1893 Economic depression begins 1901 J. P. Morgan announces formation of U.S. Steel
Corporation, nation’s fi rst billion-dollar company
1859 First oil well drilled near Titusville, Pennsylvania 1866 William Sylvis establishes National Labor Union 1869 Transcontinental railroad completed at Promontory,
Utah; Knights of Labor organize
1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone; Centennial Exposition held in Philadelphia
1877 Railroads cut workers’ wages, leading to bloody and violent strike
1879 Thomas A. Edison invents the incandescent lamp 1882 Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company becomes
nation’s fi rst trust; Edison opens fi rst electric gener- ating station in New York
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 18 The Industrial Society on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Industrial Development
What enabled the United States to build an indus- trial economy?
The United States had an abundance of natural resources, plentiful labor from Europe and American farms, numerous inventions, a national market, plentiful capital, favorable
government policies, and entrepreneurs who saw the possibilities in devel- oping a national economy. (p. 416 )
An Empire on Rails
How and why did the railroad system grow?
Through the infusion of foreign and domestic capital, and the help of local, state, and federal government, a railroad system grew that dwarfed those in other countries. It changed the economic, political, and social landscape,
creating a different nation from the country that had come before. (p. 416 )
An Industrial Empire
What were the main characteristics of the new steel and oil industries?
In the late nineteenth century, an industrial empire took shape, centered around steel and oil, leading to the importance of the automobile in the twentieth century.
The result was larger and more complex business organizations and greater concentrations of wealth, capital, and control by a relatively few individuals and companies. (p. 421 )
The Sellers
Why were the new methods of advertising so important?
Advertising, a relatively new industry, helped to sell the goods of the new industrial economy. Americans learned to buy goods they did not even know they wanted. When
bored or troubled, they went to a store—today’s mall—to shop. (p. 428 )
The Wage Earners
Who were the wage earners in the new economy?
The hard work of millions of men and women built the new factory society. Their work was grueling and often dangerous. Men, women, and children often worked for low wages in unsafe conditions. (p. 428 )
Culture of Work
How did wage earners organize in this period, and what demands did they make?
Laborers faced many challenges in the new economy, including work that followed the clock, bigger industries, machines, and wages. Unions formed, including the
American Federation of Labor (AFL), which still exists. Labor unrest for better wages and safer working conditions took peaceful forms, but also resulted in violence that disturbed other Americans. (p. 430 )
STUDY RESOURCES 437
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S trunk lines Four major railroad networks that emerged after the Civil War to connect the eastern seaports to the Great Lakes and western rivers. They reflected the growing integration of transportation across the country that helped spur large-scale industrialization. p. 419
Trust A device to centralize and make more efficient the management of diverse and far-flung business operations. It allowed stockholders to exchange their stock certificates for trust certificates, on which dividends were paid. John D. Rockefeller organized the first major trust, the Standard Oil Trust, in 1882. p. 423
Knights of Labor Founded in 1869, this labor organization pursued broad-gauged reform and practical issues such as improved wages and hours. The Knights welcomed all laborers regardless of race, gender, or skill. p. 431
American Federation of Labor (AFL) Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the AFL organized skilled workers by craft and worked for specific practical objectives, such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. The AFL avoided politics, and while it did not expressly forbid blacks and women from joining, it used exclusionary practices to keep them out. p. 431
Homestead Strike In July 1892, wage-cutting at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Plant in Pittsburgh provoked a violent strike in which three company-hired detectives and ten workers died. Using ruthless force and strikebreakers, company officials broke the strike and destroyed the union. p. 435
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What were eight advantages the United States possessed that helped spur industrial development, and in what ways did these advantages lead to the growth of specific industries?
2. In what ways did the revolution in transportation and communica- tions also spur industrial development?
3. Drawing on the conditions leading to the growth of industry, how did the huge steel and oil industries grow?
4. What role did the culture of work and advances in areas like advertis- ing play in shaping economic growth?
5. In what ways did the hard work of men, women, and children contrib- ute to the growth of industry?
6. How did American workers respond to the demands of industrial growth, and what did their various responses indicate about the dangerous effects of industrialization?
The Sellers
An Industrial Empire
An Empire On Rails
Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (1889) p. 422
Read the Document
Railroads and Expansion p. 417
Culture of Work
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 18 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Shopping in a New Society p. 426
Mother Jones, “The March of the Mill Children” p. 429
Thomas Edison, The Success of the Electric Light p. 425
Read the Document
Read the Document
◾
◾ ◾
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Watch the Video
The Wage Earners
Read the Document Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor (1884) p. 430
Read the Document Leonora M. Barry, Report to the Knights of Labor (1887) p. 432
Organizing American Labor in the Late Nineteenth Century p. 433
View the Map
George Engel, Address by a Haymarket Anarchist p. 434
Read the Document ◾
The Gilded Age: The Rise of Capitalism, Industrialism, and Poverty p. 435
Watch the Video ◾Complete the Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
boarders to make ends meet, the way the mother and father collapsed at the end of a workday that began long before sunup—all reflected the experiences of millions of people living in the nation’s cities.
V ittum and people like her were attempting to respond to the overwhelming challenges of the nation’s burgeoning cities. People poured into cities in the last part of the nineteenth century, lured by glitter and excitement, by friends and relatives who were already there, and, above all, by the greater opportunities for jobs and higher wages. Between 1860 and 1910, the rural population of the United States almost doubled; the number of people living in cities increased sevenfold.
Little of the increase came from natural growth, since urban families had high rates of infant mortality, a declining fertility rate, and a high death rate from injury and disease. Many of the newcomers came from rural America, and many more came from Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In one of the most sig- nifi cant migrations in American history, thousands of African Americans began in the 1880s to move from the rural South to northern cities. By 1900, there were large black communities in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Yet to come was the even greater black migration during World War I.
Two major forces reshaped American society between 1870 and 1920. One was industrialization; the other was urbanization, the headlong rush of people from their rural roots into the modern urban environment. In these years, cities grew upward and outward,
The Overcrowded City One day around 1900, Harriet Vittum, a settlement house worker in Chicago, went to the aid of a young Polish girl who lived in a nearby slum. The girl, aged 15, had discovered she was pregnant and had taken poi- son. An ambulance was on the way, and Vittum, told of the poisoning, rushed over to do what she could.
Quickly, she raced up the three flights of stairs to the floor where the girl and her family lived. Pushing open the door, she found the father, several male boarders, and two or three small boys asleep on the kitchen floor. In the next room, the mother was on the floor among several women boarders and one or two small chil- dren. Glancing out the window, Vittum saw the wall of another building so close she could reach out and touch it.
There was a third room; in it lay the 15-year-old girl, along with two more small children who were asleep. Looking at the scene, Vittum thought about the girl’s life in the crowded tenement. Should she try to save her? Vittum asked herself. Should she even try to bring the girl back “to the misery and hopelessness of the life she was living in that awful place”?
The young girl died, and in later years, Vittum often told her story. It was easy to see why. The girl’s life in the slum, the children on the floor, the need to take in
THE LURE OF THE CITY PG. 439 Why did cities in the United States grow between 1880 and 1900?
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE, 1877–1900 PG. 447 How did the growth of American cities affect social, cultural, and political life?
THE SPREAD OF JIM CROW PG. 454 Why did Jim Crow laws spread across the South after the end of Reconstruction?
THE STIRRINGS OF REFORM PG. 455 How did life in the growing cities lead to ideas of reform?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY Plessy v. Ferguson : The Shaping of Jim Crow
Toward an Urban Society, 1877–1900 19
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 19 Toward an Urban Society, 1877–1900
The kitchen of a tenement apartment was often a multipurpose room. Here the tenement dwellers prepared and ate their meals; the room might also serve as a workroom, and it might be used as sleeping quarters for one or more members of the family. Source: © The Museum of the City of New York, The Byron Collection.
Read the Document Charles Loring Brace, “The Life of the Street Rats” (1872)
attracting millions of newcomers and infl uencing politics, educa- tion, entertainment, and family life. By 1920, they had become the center of American economic, social, and cultural life.
The Lure of the City
Why did cities in the United States grow between 1880 and 1900?
Between 1870 and 1900, the city—like the factory—became a symbol of a new America. Drawn from farms, small towns, and foreign lands, newcomers swelled the population of older
cities and created new ones almost overnight. At the beginning of the Civil War, only one-sixth of the American people lived in cities of eight thousand people or more. By 1900, one-third did; by 1920, one-half. “We live in the age of great cities,” wrote the Reverend Samuel Lane Loomis in 1887. “Each successive year fi nds a stronger and more irresistible current sweeping in towards the centers of life.”
Th e current brought growth of an explosive sort. Th ousands of years of history had produced only a handful of cities with more than a half million in population. In 1900, the United States had six such cities, including three—New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia—with populations greater than one million.
440 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
which concealed the steel framework, were no longer load bearing; they were pierced by many windows that let in fresh air and light. Completed in 1885, the Home Insurance Building in Chicago was the country’s fi rst metal-frame structure.
To a group of talented Chicago archi- tects, the new trends served as a spring- board for innovative forms. Th e leaders of the movement were John Root and Louis H. Sullivan, both of whom were attracted by the chance to rebuild Chicago aft er the great fi re of 1871. Noting that the fi re had fed on fancy exterior ornamentation, Root developed a plain, stripped-down style, bold in mass and form—the keynotes of modern architecture. He had another important insight, too. In an age of business, Root thought, the offi ce tower, more than a church or a government building, symbolized the society, and he designed offi ce buildings that carried out, as he said, “the ideas of modern business life: simplicity, stability, breadth, dignity.”
Sullivan had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and in Paris before settling in Chicago. In 1886, at the age of thirty, he began work on the Chicago Auditorium, one of the last great masonry buildings. “Th en came the fl ash of imagina- tion which saw the single thing,” he later said. “Th e trick was turned; and there swift ly came into being something new under the sun.” Sullivan’s skyscrapers, that “fl ash of imagina- tion,” changed the urban skyline.
In the Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890), the Schiller Building (1892) and the Carson, Pirie, and Scott department store (1899) in Chicago, and the Prudential Building in Buff alo (1895), Sullivan devel- oped the new forms. Architects must discard “books, rules, precedents,” he announced; responding to the new, they should design for a building’s function. “Form follows function,” Sullivan believed, and he passed
the idea on to a talented disciple, Frank Lloyd Wright. Th e modern city should stretch to the sky.
Electric elevators, fi rst used in 1871, carried passengers upward in the new skyscrapers. During the same years, streetcars, another innovation, carried the people outward to expanded boundaries that transformed urban life.
Cities were no longer largely “walking cities,” confi ned to a radius of two or three miles, the distance an individual might walk. Streetcar systems extended the radius and changed the urban map. Cable lines, electric surface lines, and elevated rapid transit brought shoppers and workers into central business districts and sped them home again. Off ering a modest fi ve-cent fare with a free transfer, the mass transit systems fostered commuting and widely separated
Skyscrapers and Suburbs Like so many things in these years, the city was transformed by a revolution in technology. Beginning in the 1880s, the age of steel and glass produced the skyscraper; the streetcar produced the suburbs and new residential patterns.
On the eve of the change, American cities were a crowded jumble of small buildings. Church steeples stood out on the skyline, clearly visible above the roofs of factories and offi ce buildings. Buildings were usually made of masonry, and since the massive walls had to support their own weight, they could be no taller than a dozen or so stories. Steel frames and girders ended that limitation and allowed buildings to soar higher and higher. “Curtain walls,”
The Wainwright Building (1890) in St. Louis Missouri was designed by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. The 10-story red brick office building was one of the first skyscrapers in the world and had many of the modern design features found in Sullivan's buildings of this period.
The Lure of the City 441
glass factories, forty-one iron and steel mills, and twenty-nine oil refi neries. Th e choking air helped prevent lung diseases and malaria—or so the city’s advertising claimed.
Crime was another growing problem. Th e nation’s homicide rate nearly tripled in the 1880s, much of the increase coming in the cities. Aft er remaining constant for many decades, the suicide rate rose steadily between 1870 and 1900, according to a study of Philadelphia. Alcoholism also rose, especially among men, though recent studies have shown that for working-class men, the urban saloon was as much a gathering spot as it was a place to drink. Nonetheless, a 1905 survey of Chicago counted as many saloons as grocery stores, meat markets, and dry goods stores combined.
Strangers in a New Land While some of the new city dwellers came from farms and small towns, many more came from abroad. Most came from Europe, where unemployment, food shortages, and increasing threats of war sent millions fl eeing across the Atlantic to make a fresh start. Oft en they knew someone already in the United States, a friend or relative who had written them about prospects for jobs and freer lives in a new land. Italians fi rst came in large numbers to escape an 1887 cholera epidemic in southern Italy; tens of thousands of Jews sought refuge from the anti-Semitic massacres that swept Russia and czarist-ruled Poland aft er 1880.
business and residential districts sprang up. Th e middle class moved farther and farther out to the leafy greenness of the suburbs.
As the middle class moved out of the cities, the immigrants and working class poured in. Th ey took over the older brownstones, row houses, and workers’ cottages, turning them, under the sheer weight of numbers, into the slums of the central city. In the cities of the past, classes and occupations had been thrown together; with- out streetcars and subways, there was no other choice. Th e street- car city, sprawling and specialized, became a more fragmented and stratifi ed society with middle-class residential rings surrounding a business and working-class core.
Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding In the shadow of the skyscrapers, grimy rows of tenements fi lled the central city. Tenement houses on small city lots crowded people into cramped apartments. In the late 1870s, architect James E. Ware won a competition for tenement design with the “dumbbell tenement.” Rising seven or eight stories in height, the dumbbell tenement packed about thirty four-room apartments on a lot only 25 by 100 feet. Between four and sixteen families lived on a fl oor; two toilets in the hall of each fl oor served their needs. Narrowed at the middle, the tenement resembled a giant dumbbell in shape. Th e indented middle created an air shaft between adjoining build- ings that provided a little light and ventilation. In case of fi re, it also carried fl ames from one story to the next, making the buildings notorious fi retraps. In 1890, nearly half the dwellings in New York City were tenements.
Th at year, more than 1.4 million people lived on Manhattan Island, one of whose wards had a population density of 334,000 people per square mile. Many people lived in alleys and basements so dark they could not be photographed until fl ashlight photog- raphy was invented in 1887. Exploring the city, William Dean Howells, the prominent author, inhaled “the stenches of the neglected street . . . [and] the yet fouler and dreadfuller poverty smell which breathes from the open doorways.”
Howells smelled more than poverty. In the 1870s and 1880s, cities stank. One problem was horse manure, hundreds of tons of it a day in every city. Another was the privy, “a single one of which,” said a leading authority on public health, “may render life in a whole neighborhood almost unendurable in the summer.”
Said one New York City resident, “The stench is some- thing terrible.” Another wrote that “the stink is enough to knock you down.” In 1880, the Chicago Times said that a “solid stink” pervaded the city. “No other word expresses it so well as stink. A stench means something fi nite. Stink reaches the infi nite and becomes sublime in the magnitude of odiousness.” In 1892, one neighborhood of Chicago, covering one-third of a square mile, had only three bathtubs.
Cities dumped their wastes into the nearest body of water, then drew drinking water from the same site. Many built modern purifi ed waterworks but could not keep pace with spiraling growth. In 1900, fewer than one in ten city dwellers drank fi ltered water. Factories, the pride of the era, polluted the urban air. At night, Pittsburgh looked and sounded like “Hell with the lid off ,” accord- ing to contemporary observers. Smoke poured from seventy-three
Group of Emigrants (Women and Children) from Eastern Europe on Deck of the S.S. Amsterdam
View the Closer Look
Francis Eastman Johnston, the photographer of Group Emigrants (Women and Children) from Eastern Europe on Deck of the S.S. Amsterdam (1899), was one of the earliest female photographers and photojournalists. Her photograph above captures the productive promise of Eastern European immigrants coming to the United States during this era seeking economic opportunity, religious freedom, and an escape from deadly epidemics in Europe.
442
better life. They entered the country through several ports, but by far the most—about seven out of every ten— landed in the city of New York.
Until 1892, they landed at a depot known as Castle Garden, a sprawling building on the tip of Manhattan Island. When it could no longer handle the fl ow, the entry site was moved to Ellis Island, close to the Statue of Liberty. Contractors erected a wooden structure, which opened in 1892 and burned down fi ve years later. They then put up the current edifi ce, an imposing red brick building
land, his pockets stuffed with wal- nuts because he was too young to drink the farewell toast.
Unknowingly, he had joined a fl ood of people who were making their way to the United States. Between 1880 and 1920, a period of just forty years, the remarkable total of 23.5 million immigrants arrived in the country. They came from around the world, though mostly from Europe, driven from their homelands by economic, religious, or other troubles, lured across the ocean by the chance for a
Ten years after he left Selo, his small Bulgarian village, for the United States, Michael Gurkin returned to tell of the wonders he had seen, includ- ing “buildings that scratched the sky,” rooms in them that moved up and down, buttons that, pushed, lit a house or a street. Stoyan Christowe, thirteen, lis- tened intently, caught up in the “Americamania,” as he called it, that swept through his village. Soon he was on his way to the new
Ellis Island Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
Feature Essay
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Watch the Video Ellis Island Immigrants
From 1892 to 1924, Ellis Island in New York Harbor was America’s largest and most active immigration station, where over 12 million immigrants, mostly from Europe, were processed. The review process included a personal health inspection and proof of minimal funds. In exceptional cases, an immigrant would be sent home if he or she failed the inspection and could not be treated in the hospital for any medical problems.
443
largely Protestant northern and western Europe to Catholics, Jews, and others from southern and eastern Europe.
Refl ecting such concerns, Congress passed laws to keep certain types of people out. In 1875, it prohibited the entrance of criminals and prostitutes. In 1882, it barred convicts and lunatics and excluded laborers from China, the fi rst measure aimed directly at a racial group. In 1885, it banned the entry of laborers under contract, imported by industries to work at low wages; in 1891, polyga- mists and people with “loathsome” dis- eases; in 1903, anarchists. In 1917, it passed, over Woodrow Wilson’s veto, a literacy test that required immigrants to read a passage in their native tongue.
The great burst of immigration, halted during World War I, ended with the adoption of restrictive legislation in the 1920s. Ellis Island became a deten- tion center for “radicals” and other people awaiting deportation. Once the gateway to the United States, the famous island had become an exit.
Ellis Island closed in 1954 and in 1965, recognizing its historic impor- tance, the government made it a national monument. It reopened in 1990 as a museum of American immigration, attracting more than two million tour- ists a year, many of whom retrace the footsteps of their ancestors who had landed there. Stoyan Christowe’s name is in the records. Starting with a miser- able job in a railroad yard in St. Louis, he went to college, served in military intelligence during World War II, wrote several books, and became a member of the Vermont legislature.
His experience on Ellis Island blended into the nation’s experi- ence. More than one hundred million Americans—about four in every ten— trace their ancestry to those who found a new home through its gates.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What arguments did Americans use to justify limiting immigration during this era?
2. How did the experience on arrival in the U.S. of those who traveled in fi rst or second class differ from that of steerage passengers?
anything seemed out of sort, they put a chalk mark on the immigrant’s coat calling for closer examination.
The next exam was the most feared: a doctor using a tailor’s buttonhook to pull back eyelids to look for signs of dis- eases such as trachoma, a highly conta- gious bacterial eye infection that could lead to blindness. Most immigrants had never heard of trachoma, nor even knew they had the disease, but it alone could strand them in the island’s hos- pital or put them on a boat back home.
No one who went through the exam ever forgot it, as an immigrant poet wrote:
A stranger receives us Harshly and asks: “And your health?” He examines us. His look Assesses us like dogs. He studies in depth Eyes and mouth. No doubt That if he’d probed our hearts He would have seen the wound.
Immigrants with chalk marks were herded to the left, while most went to the right, fi ling by a matron who searched the faces of women for evidence of “loose character.” With so many languages among the arrivals, there were few written signs, and offi - cials used metal barricades to guide people along, “like puppets on con- veyor belts,” Christowe later recalled.
Last there were the inspectors, seated behind desks, asking name, age, occupation, among dozens of other questions. On a busy day, the inspec- tors had two minutes to decide the fate of a newcomer. Those who “failed” went before a feared Board of Special Inquiry for fi nal decision. For most immigrants the whole process took less than fi ve hours; many others, held for proof of funds or further examination, spent days in the dormitories or hospital. Despite the harsh rumors, no more than 3 per- cent in a given year were turned away.
Still, it was becoming harder to get in. People who feared the effect of immigrants on the nation clamored to keep them out. Some worried about the numbers of people who were arriv- ing, others about disease or “radical” political views. Some did not like the shift in immigration after 1890 from
with triple-arch entrances and corner steeples. A small city, it had dormitories, a hospital, a post offi ce, and showers that could bathe eight thousand people a day. It opened in 1900.
The change to Ellis Island repre- sented more than just a shift in site. Entrance at Castle Garden had been fairly informal, since control over immi- gration still rested largely in the hands of the states. Offi cials merely regis- tered newcomers, a process that took about thirty seconds.
In 1891, worried about the grow- ing numbers of people who wanted in, Congress acted to bring immigration under federal control. Ellis Island was given tasks Castle Garden had never had, including mandates to keep out people some Americans considered undesirable. It became, one observer said, “the nearest earthly likeness to the Final Day of Judgement, when we have to prove our fi tness to enter Heaven.”
Many of those who sailed into the harbor, it should be remembered, never passed through the island at all. Arriving in fi rst or second class, they had a fast on-board examination and went ashore, monied enough, it was assumed, not to become wards of the state. But those in third class—”steerage,” as it was known—had a very different experi- ence, and they faced it chock full of fear they would fail some test and be sent back home.
The day they docked, in 1910, Christowe and others washed thor- oughly, hoping to look clean enough to pass inspection. Crowding the ship’s rails, they gazed in wonder at the statue in the harbor, its arm lifted in the air. It was a saint, some guessed; Christopher Columbus, others said. It was a monu- ment to freedom, Christowe was told, with Emma Lazarus’s inviting poem at its base, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Once on the island, those huddled masses were under scrutiny from the moment they landed. Offi cials watched them climb the stairs, look- ing for heart problems or lameness. Physicians administered the “six- second exam,” checking quickly for disabilities or contagious diseases. If
444 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
foreign-born parentage, two-thirds of Boston’s, and one-half of Philadelphia’s. New York City, where most immigrants arrived and many stayed, had more Italians than lived in Naples, more Germans than lived in Hamburg, and twice as many Irish as lived in Dublin. Four out of fi ve New York City residents in 1890 were of foreign birth or foreign parentage.
Beginning in the 1880s, the sources of immigration shift ed dramatically away from northern and western Europe, the chief source of immigration for more than two centu- ries. More and more immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe: Italy, Greece, Austria-Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Between 1880 and 1910, approximately 8.4 million people came from these lands. The new immigrants tended to be Catholics or Jews rather than Protestants. Like their predeces- sors, most were unskilled rather than skilled, and they oft en spoke “strange” languages. Most were poor and uneducated; sticking together in close-knit communities, they clung to their native customs, languages, and religions.
More than any previous group, the so- called new immigrants troubled the main- stream society. Could they be assimilated? Did they share “American” values? Such questions preoccupied such groups as the American Protective Association, a midwestern anti- Catholic organization that expanded in the 1890s and worked to limit or end immigration.
Sneering epithets became part of the national vocabulary: “wop” and “dago” for Italians; “bohunk” for Bohemians, Hungarians, and other Slavs; “greaseball” for Greeks; and “kike” for Jews. “You don’t call . . . an Italian a white man?” a congressman asked a railroad construc- tion boss in 1890. “No, sir,” the boss replied. “An Italian is a Dago.”
Anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism fl ared up again, as they had in the 1850s. Th e Immigration Restriction League, founded in 1894, demanded a literacy test for immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Congress passed such a law in 1896, but President Cleveland vetoed it.
Immigrants and the City Industrial capitalism—the world of factories and foremen and grimy machines—tested the immigrants and placed an enormous strain on their families. Many immigrants came from peasant soci- eties where life proceeded according to outdoor routine and age-old tradition. In their new city homes, they found both new freedoms and new confi nements, a diff erent language, and a novel set of customs and expectations. Historians have only recently begun to discover the remarkable ways in which they learned to adjust.
Like native-born families, most immigrant families were nuclear in structure—they consisted of two parents and their children. Th ough variations occurred from group to group, men and women occupied roles similar to those in native families: Men were wage earners, women were housekeepers and mothers.
All told, the immigration fi gures were staggering. Between 1877 and 1890, more than 6.3 million people entered the United States. In one year alone, 1882, almost 789,000 people came. By 1890, about 15 percent of the population, nine million people, were foreign born.
Most newcomers were job seekers. Nearly two-thirds were males, and the majority were between the ages of fi ft een and forty. Most were unskilled laborers. Most settled on the eastern seaboard. In 1901, the Industrial Relocation Offi ce was established to relieve overcrowding in the eastern cities; opening Galveston, Texas, as a port of entry, it attracted many Russian Jews to Texas and the Southwest. But most immigrants preferred the shorter, more familiar journey to New York. Entering through Ellis Island in New York harbor, as four in every ten immigrants did, most tended to crowd into northern and eastern cities, settling in areas where others of their nationality or religion lived. (See the Feature Essay, “Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears ,” pp. 442 – 443 .)
They were often dazzled by what they saw. They stared at electric lights, indoor plumbing, soda fountains, streetcars, plush train seats for all classes, ice cream, lemons, and bananas. Relatives whisked them off to buy new “American” clothes and showed them the teeming markets, department stores, and Woolworth’s new fi ve- and-ten stores. “It seemed quite advanced compared with our home in Khelm,” said a Polish girl. “Th ere was a sense of safety and hope that we had never felt in Poland.”
Cities had increasingly large foreign-born populations. In 1900, four-fi ft hs of Chicago’s population was foreign born or of
Northern and Western Europe
Southern and Eastern Europe
Asia, Africa, and America
Immigrants (thousands)
600
500
400
300
200
100
1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900
Year of arrival
Note: For purposes of classifi cation, “Northern and Western Europe” includes Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, and Germany. “Southern and Eastern Europe” includes Poland, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria, European Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. “Asia, Africa, and America” includes Asian Turkey, China, Japan, India, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, and all of Africa.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States , Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
Immigration, 1880–1920 View the Map
IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1870–1900
The Lure of the City 445
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FOREIGN-BORN POPULATION, 1890 Immigrants tended to settle in regions where jobs were relatively plentiful or conditions were similar to those they had left in their homelands. Cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West offered job opportunities, while land available for cultivation drew immigrant farmers to the plains and prairies of the nation’s midsection.
Margaret Byington, who studied steelworkers’ homes in Homestead in the early 1900s, learned that the father played a relatively small role in child rearing or managing the family’s fi nances. “His part of the problem is to earn and hers to spend.” In Chicago, social reformer Jane Addams discovered that immigrant women made it “a standard of domestic virtue that a man must not touch his pay envelope, but bring it home unopened to his wife.”
Although patterns varied among ethnic groups, and between economic classes within ethnic groups, immigrants tended to marry within the group more than did the native born. Immigrants also tended to marry at a later age than natives, and they tended to have more children, a fact that worried nativists opposed to immigration.
Immigrants shaped the city as much as it shaped them. Most of them tried to retain their traditional culture for themselves and their children while at the same time adapting to life in their new country. To do this, they spoke their native language, prac- ticed their religious faith, read their own newspapers, and estab- lished special parochial or other schools. Th ey observed traditional holidays and formed a myriad of social organizations to maintain ties among members of the group.
Immigrant associations—there were many of them in every city—off ered fellowship in a strange land. Th ey helped newcom- ers fi nd jobs and homes; they provided important services such as
unemployment insurance and health insurance. In a Massachusetts textile town, the Irish Benevolent Society said, “We visit our sick, and bury our dead.” Some groups were no larger than a neighborhood; others spread nationwide. In 1914, the Deutsch-Amerikanischer Nationalbund, the largest of the associations, had more than two million members in dozens of cities and towns. Many women belonged to and participated in the work of the immigrant associa- tions; in addition, there were groups exclusively for women, such as the Polish Women’s Alliance, the Jednota Ceskyck Dam (Society of Czech Women), and the National Council of Jewish Women.
Th e Polish National Alliance (PNA), a typical immigrant association, was founded in 1880. Like other organizations, it helped new immigrants on their arrival, off ered insurance plans, established libraries and museums, sponsored youth programs, fi elded baseball teams, and organized trips back to Poland. Each year, the PNA published a sought-aft er calendar fi lled with Polish holidays, information, and proverbs. Extolling Poles’ contribu- tions to their new country, it erected monuments to distinguished Americans of Polish descent.
Every major city had dozens of foreign language newspapers, with circulations large and small. Th e fi rst newspaper published in the Lithuanian language appeared in the United States, not in Lithuania. Eagerly read, the papers not only carried news of events
446 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
in the homeland but also reported on local ethnic leaders, told readers how to vote and become citizens, and gave practical tips on adjusting to life in the United States. Th e Swedes, Poles, Czechs, and Germans established eth- nic theaters that performed national plays and music. Th e most famous of these, the Yiddish (Jewish) Theater, started in the 1880s in New York City and lasted more than fi ft y years.
The church and the school were the most important institutions in every immigrant community. Eastern European Jews established syna- gogues and religious schools wherever they settled; they taught the Hebrew language and raised their children in a heritage they did not want to leave behind. Among such groups as the Irish and the Poles, the Roman Catholic church provided spiritual and educational guidance. In the parish schools, Polish priests and nuns taught Polish American children about Polish as well as American culture in the Polish language.
Church, school, and fraternal soci- eties shaped the way in which immi- grants adjusted to life in America. By preserving language, religion, and heri- tage, they also shaped the country itself.
The House That Tweed Built Closely connected with explosive urban growth was the emergence of the powerful city political machine. As cities grew, lines of responsibility in city governments became hope- lessly confused, increasing the oppor- tunity for corruption and greed. Burgeoning populations required streets, buildings, and public services; immigrants needed even more services. In this situation, political party machines played an important role.
Th e machines traded services for votes. Loosely knit, they were headed by a strong, infl uential leader—the “boss”—who tied together a network of ward and precinct captains, each of whom looked aft er his local constituents. In New York, “Honest” John Kelly, Richard Croker, and Charles F. Murphy led Tammany Hall, the famous Democratic party organization that dominated city politics from the 1850s to the 1930s. Other bosses included “Hinky Dink” Kenna and “Bathhouse John” Coughlin in Chicago, James McManes in Philadelphia, and Christopher A. Buckley—the noto- rious “Blind Boss,” who used an exceptional memory for voices to make up for failing eyesight—in San Francisco.
William M. Tweed, head of the famed Tweed Ring in New York, provided the model for them all. Nearly six feet tall, weigh- ing almost three hundred pounds, Tweed rose through the ranks of Tammany Hall. He served in turn as city alderman, member of Congress, and New York State assemblyman. A man of culture and warmth, he moved easily between the rough back alleys of New York and the parlors and clubs of the city’s elite. Behind the scenes, he headed a ring that plundered New York for tens of mil- lions of dollars.
Th e New York County Courthouse—“the house that Tweed built”—was his masterpiece. Nestled in City Hall Park in down- town Manhattan, the three-story structure was designed to cost $250,000, but the bills ran a bit higher. Andrew Garvey, the “prince of plasterers,” charged $500,000 for plasterwork, and then $1 million to repair the same work. His total bill came to
Democracy and Corruption: The Rise of Political Machines Watch the Video
This political cartoon skewers the success of political bosses, such as the depicted Boss (William) Tweed of New York, to manipulate the political process and use patronage to enrich themselves and retain political power in various cities during this period.
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900
How did the growth of American cities affect social, cultural, and political life?
Th e rise of cities and industry between 1877 and the 1890s aff ected all aspects of American life. Mores changed; family ties loosened. Factories turned out consumer goods, and the newly invented cash register rang up record sales. Public and private educational systems burgeoned, illiteracy declined, life expectancy increased. While many people worked harder and harder just to survive, others found they had a greater amount of leisure time. Th e roles of women and children changed in a number of ways, and the fam- ily took on functions it had not had before. Th anks to advancing technology, news fl ashed quickly across the oceans, and for the fi rst time in history, people read of the day’s events in distant lands when they opened their daily newspapers.
“We are in a period,” President Rutherford B. Hayes said in 1878, “when old questions are settled, and the new ones are not yet brought forward.” Old questions—questions of racial, social and economic justice, and of federal-state relations—were not settled, but people wanted new directions. Political issues lost the sharp focus of the Civil War and Reconstruction. For men and women of middle age in 1877, the issues of the Union and slavery had been the overriding public concerns throughout their adult lives. Now, with the end of Reconstruction, it seemed time for new concerns.
In 1877, the country had 47 million people. In 1900, it had nearly 76 million. Nine-tenths of the population was white; just under one-tenth was black. Th ere were 66,000 American Indians, 108,000 Chinese, and 148 Japanese. Th e bulk of the white population,
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 447
$2,870,464.06. (Th e New York Times suggested that the six cents be donated to charity.) In the end, the building cost more than $13 million—and in 1872, when Tweed fell, it was still not fi nished.
Th e role of the political bosses can be overemphasized. Power structures in the turn-of-the-century city were complex, involving a host of people and institutions. Banks, real estate investors, insur- ance companies, architects, and engineers, among others, played roles in governing the city. Viewed in retrospect, many city govern- ments were remarkably successful. With populations that in some cases doubled every decade, city governments provided water and sewer lines, built parks and playgrounds, and paved streets. When it was over, Boston had the world’s largest public library and New York City had the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park, two of the fi nest achievements in city planning and architecture of any era. By the 1890s, New York also had 660 miles of water lines, 464 miles of sewers, and 1,800 miles of paved streets, far more than comparable cities in Europe.
Bosses, moreover, diff ered from city to city. Buckley stayed in power in San Francisco by keeping city tax rates low. “Honest” John Kelly earned his nickname serving as a watchdog over the New York City treasury. Tweed was one of the early backers of the Brooklyn Bridge. Some bosses were plainly corrupt; others believed in honest graft , a term Tammany’s George Washington Plunkitt coined to describe “legitimate” profi ts made from advance knowledge of city projects.
Why did voters keep the bosses in power? Th e answers are complex, but two reasons were skillful political organization and the fact that immigrants and others made up the bosses’ constit- uency. Most immigrants had little experience with democratic government and proved easy prey for well-oiled machines. For the most part, however, the bosses stayed in power because they paid attention to the needs of the least privileged city voters. Th ey off ered valued services in an era when neither government nor business lent a hand.
If an immigrant, tired and bewildered aft er the long crossing, came looking for a job, bosses like Tweed, Plunkitt, or Buckley found him one in city offi ces or local businesses. If a family’s bread- winner died or was injured, the bosses donated food and cloth- ing and saw to it that the family made it through the crisis. If the winter was particularly cold, they provided free coal to heat tene- ment apartments. Th ey ran picnics for slum children on hot sum- mer days and contributed to hospitals, orphanages, and dozens of worthy neighborhood causes.
Most bosses became wealthy; they were not Robin Hoods who took from the rich to give to the poor. Th ey took for themselves as well. Reformers occasionally ousted them. Tweed fell from power in 1872, “Blind Boss” Buckley in 1891, Croker in 1894. But the reformers rarely stayed in power long. Drawn mainly from the middle and upper classes, they had little understanding of the needs of the poor. Before long, they returned to private concerns, and the bosses, who had known that they would all along, cheerily took power again.
“What tells in holdin’ your grip on your district,” the engaging Plunkitt once said, “is to go right down among the poor families and help them in the diff erent ways they need help. . . . It’s philan- thropy, but it’s politics, too—mighty good politics . . . . Th e poor are the most grateful people in the world.”
Urban
Rural50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
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1900189018801870
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
URBAN AND RURAL POPULATION, 1870–1900 (IN MILLIONS)
448 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
the bottle; they puff ed cigarettes behind the barn. Counterbalancing such youthful exuberance was strong pride in virtue and self-control. “Th ank heaven I am absolutely pure,” Th eodore Roosevelt, the future president, wrote in 1880 aft er proposing to Alice Lee. “I can tell Alice everything I have ever done.”
Gentlemen of the middle class dressed in heavy black suits, derby hats, and white shirts with paper collars. Women wore tight corsets, long dark dresses, and black shoes reaching well above the ankles. As with so many things, styles changed dramatically toward the end of the century, spurred in part by new sporting fads such as golf, tennis, and bicycling, which required looser clothing. By the 1890s, a middle-class woman wore a tailored suit or a dark skirt and a blouse, called a shirtwaist, modeled aft er men’s shirts. Her skirts still draped about the ankles, but more and more she removed or loosened the corset, the dread device that squeezed skin and inter- nal organs into fashionable 18-inch waistlines.
Religious and patriotic values were strong. A center of commu- nity life, the church oft en set the tenor for family and social relation- ships. In the 1880s, eight out of ten church members were Protestants; most of the rest were Roman Catholics. Evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody (a former Chicago shoe salesman) and Ira B. Sankey (an organist and singer) conducted mass revival meetings across the country. Enormously successful, Moody preached to millions and sparked a spiritual awakening on American college campuses.
With slavery abolished, reformers turned their attention to new moral and political issues. One group, known as the Mugwumps , worked to end corruption in politics. Drawn mostly from the edu- cated and upper class, they included Th omas Nast, the famous politi- cal cartoonist; George William Curtis, editor of Harper’s Weekly ; and E. L. Godkin, editor of the infl uential Nation . Other zealous reform- ers campaigned for prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors, hoping to end the social evils that stemmed from drunkenness. In 1874, women who advocated total abstinence from alcoholic bev- erages formed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) . Th eir leader, Frances E. Willard, served as president of the group from 1879 until her death in 1898. By then, the WCTU had ten thousand branches and fi ve hundred thousand members.
In New York City, Anthony Comstock formed the Society for the Suppression of Vice, which supervised public morality. At his request, Congress passed the Comstock Law (1873) prohibiting the mailing or transporting of “obscene, lewd or lascivious” articles. Th e law was not successful; within a few years, Comstock reported fi nd- ing 64,094 “articles for immoral use,” 700 pounds of “lead moulds for making obscene matter,” 202,679 obscene photographs, and 26 “obscene pictures, framed on walls of saloons.”
Leisure and Entertainment In the 1870s, people tended to rise early. On getting up, they washed from the pitcher and bowl in the bedroom, fi rst breaking the layer of ice if it was winter. Aft er dressing and eating, they went off to work and school. Without large refrigerators, housewives marketed almost daily. In the evening, families gathered in the “second parlor” or living room, where the children did their lessons, played games, sang around the piano, and listened to that day’s verse from the Bible.
Popular games included cards, dominoes, backgammon, chess, and checkers. Many homes had a packet of “author cards” that
most of whom were Protestant, came from the so-called Anglo- Saxon countries of northern Europe. WASPs—white Anglo-Saxon Protestants—were the dominant members of American society.
Th ough the rush to the cities was about to begin, most people of 1877 still lived on farms or in small towns. Th eir lives revolved around the farm, the church, and the general store. In 1880, nearly 75 percent of the population lived in communities of fewer than 2,500 people. In 1900, in the midst of city growth, 60 percent still did. Th e average family in 1880 had three children, dramatically fewer than at the beginning of the century, and life expectancy was about 43 years. By 1900, it had risen to 47 years, a result of improved health care. For blacks and other minorities, who oft en lived in unsanitary rural areas, life expectancy was substantially lower: 33 years.
Meals tended to be heavy, and so did people. Even breakfast had several courses and could include steak, eggs, fi sh, potatoes, toast, and coff ee. Food prices were low. Families ate fresh homegrown produce in the summer and “put up” their fruits and vegetables for the long winters. Toward the end of the century, eating habits changed. New packaged breakfast cereals became popular; fresh fruit and vegeta- bles came in on fast trains from Florida and California, and com- mercially canned food became safer and cheaper. Th e newfangled icebox, cooled by blocks of ice, kept food fresher and added new treats such as ice cream.
Medical science was in the midst of a major revolution. Louis Pasteur’s recent discovery that germs cause infection and disease created the new science of microbiology and led the way to the development of vaccines and other preventive measures. But tuber- culosis, typhoid, diphtheria, and pneumonia—all now curable— were still the leading causes of death. Infant mortality declined between 1877 and 1900, but the decline was gradual; a great drop did not come until aft er 1920.
Th ere were few hospitals and no hospital insurance. Most patients stayed at home, although medical practice, especially surgery, expanded rapidly. Once brutal and dangerous, surgery in these years became relatively safe and painless. Anesthetics—ether and chloroform—eliminated pain, and antiseptic practices helped prevent postoperative infections. Antiseptic practices at childbirth also cut down on puerperal fever, an infection that for centuries had killed many women and newborn infants. Th e new science of psychology began to explore the mind, hitherto uncharted. William James, a leading American psychologist and philosopher, laid the foundations of modern behavioral psychology, which emphasized the importance of the environment on human development.
Manners and Mores Th e code of Victorian morality, its name derived from the British queen who reigned throughout the period, set the tone for the era. Th e code prescribed strict standards of dress, manners, and sexual behavior. It was both obeyed and disobeyed, and it refl ected the tensions of a generation that was undergoing a change in moral standards.
In 1877, children were to be seen and not heard. Th ey spoke when spoken to, listened rather than chattered—or at least that was the rule. Older boys and girls were oft en chaperoned, although they could always fi nd moments alone. Th ey played post offi ce and spin
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 449
electric sign—“Manhattan Beach Swept by Ocean Breezes”— appeared in 1881, and people went out at night fi lling the streets on their way to the theater, vaudeville shows, and dance halls or just out for an evening stroll.
Changes in Family Life Under the impact of industrialization and urbanization, family relationships were changing. On the farm, parents and children worked more or less together, and the family was a producing unit. In factories and offi ces, family members rarely worked together. In working-class families, mothers, fathers, and children separated at dawn and returned, ready for sleep, at dark. Morris Rosenfeld, a clothing presser lamenting that he was unable to spend more time with his son, wrote a poem titled “My Boy”:
I have a little boy at home, A pretty little son; I think sometimes the world is mine In him, my only one. . . .
‘Ere dawn my labor drives me forth; Tis night when I am free; A stranger am I to my child; And stranger my child to me.
Working-class families of the late nineteenth century, like the family of the young Polish girl that Harriet Vittum saw, oft en lived in complex household units—taking in relatives and boarders to pay the rent. As many as one-third of all households contained people who were not members of the immediate family. Although driven apart by the daily routine, family ties among the working class tended to remain strong, cemented by the need to join forces in order to survive in the industrial economy.
Th e middle-class wife and children, however, became increas- ingly isolated from the world of work. Turning inward, the middle-class family became more self-contained. Older children spent more time in adolescence, and periods of formal schooling were lengthier. Families took in fewer apprentices and boarders. By the end of the century, most middle-class off spring continued to live with their parents into their late teens and their twenties, a larger proportion than today.
Fewer middle-class wives participated directly in their hus- bands’ work. As a result, they and their children occupied what contemporaries called a “separate sphere of domesticity,” set apart from the masculine sphere of income-producing work. Th e family home became a “walled garden,” a place to retreat from the crass materialism of the outside world. Middle-class fathers began to move their families out of the city to the suburbs, commuting to work on the new streetcars and leaving wives and children at home and school.
Th e middle-class family had once functioned in part to trans- mit a craft or skill, arrange marriages, and off er care for dependent kin. Now, as these functions declined, the family took on new emo- tional and ideological responsibilities. In a society that worried about the weakening hold of other institutions, the family became more and more important as a means of social control. It also placed new burdens on wives.
required knowledge of books, authors, and noted quotations. Th e latest fad was the stereopticon or “magic lantern,” which brought three-dimensional life to art, history, and nature. Like author cards and other games, it was instructional as well as entertaining.
Sentimental ballads such as “Silver Th reads Among the Gold” (1873) remained the most popular musical form, but the insis- tent syncopated rhythms of ragtime were being heard, refl ecting the infl uence of the new urban culture. By the time the strains of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) popularized ragtime, critics complained that “a wave of vulgar, fi lthy and suggestive music has inundated the land.” Classical music fl ourished. Th e New England Conservatory (1867), the Cincinnati College of Music (1878), and the Metropolitan Opera (1883) were new sources of civic pride; New York, Boston, and Chicago launched first-rate symphony orchestras between 1878 and 1891.
In the hamlets and small towns of America, traveling circuses were enormously popular. Hamlin Garland, an author who grew up in small Iowa villages, recalled how the circus came “trail- ing clouds of glorifi ed dust and fi lling our minds with the color of romance . . . . It brought to our ears the latest band pieces and taught us the popular songs. It furnished us with jokes. It relieved our dullness. It gave us something to talk about.” Larger circuses, run by entrepreneurs such as P. T. Barnum and James A. Bailey, played the cities, but every town attracted its own smaller version.
Fairs, horse races, balloon ascensions, bicycle tournaments, and football and baseball contests attracted avid fans. Th e years between 1870 and 1900 saw the rise of organized spectator sports, a trend refl ecting both the rise of the city and the new uses of leisure. Baseball’s fi rst professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, appeared in 1869, and baseball soon became the preeminent national sport. Fans sang songs about it (“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”), wrote poems about it (“Casey at the Bat”), and made up riddles about it (“What has eighteen feet and catches fl ies?”). Modern rules were adopted. Umpires were designated to call balls and strikes; catchers wore masks and chest protectors and moved closer to the plate instead of staying back to catch the ball on the bounce. Fielders had to catch the ball on the fl y rather than on one bounce in their caps. By 1890, professional baseball teams were drawing crowds of sixty thousand daily. In 1901, the American League was organized, and two years later the Boston Red Sox beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the fi rst modern World Series.
In 1869, Princeton and Rutgers played the fi rst intercolle- giate football game. Soon, other schools picked up the sport, and by the early 1890s, crowds of fi ft y thousand or more attended the most popular contests. Basketball, invented in 1891, gained a large following. Boxing, a popular topic of conversation in saloons and schoolyards, was outlawed in most states. For a time, champion- ship prizefi ghts were held in secret, with news of the result spread rapidly by word of mouth. Matches were long and bloody, fought with bare knuckles until the invention in the 1880s of the 5-ounce boxing glove. John L. Sullivan, the “Boston Strong Boy” and the era’s most popular champion, won the heavyweight title in 1889 in a brutal 75-round victory over the stubborn Jake Kilrain.
As gas and electric lights brightened the night, and streetcars crisscrossed city streets, leisure habits changed. Delighted with the new technology, people took advantage of an increasing variety of things to do. Th ey stayed home less oft en. New York City’s fi rst
450 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
still far from being socially acceptable, divorce rates more than doubled during the last third of the century. By 1905, one in twelve marriages was ending in divorce.
In the 1870s and 1880s, a growing number of women were asserting their own humanness. Th ey fought for the vote, lobbied for equal pay, and sought self-fulfi llment. Th e new interest in psy- chology and medicine strengthened their causes. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of Women and Economics (1898), joined other women in questioning the ideal of womanly “innocence,” which, she argued, actually meant ignorance. In medical and popular literature, menstruation, sexual intercourse, and childbirth were becoming viewed as natural functions instead of taboo topics.
Edward Bliss Foote’s Plain Home Talk of Love, Marriage, and Parentage , a best-seller that went through many editions between the 1880s and 1900, challenged Victorian notions that sexual inter- course was unhealthy and intended solely to produce children. In Plain Facts for Old and Young (1881), Dr. John H. Kellogg urged parents to recognize the early awakening of sexual feelings in their children. Still, such matters were avoided in many American homes. Rheta Childe Dorr, a journalist, remembered that when a girl reached the age of fourteen, new rules were introduced, “and when you asked for an explanation you met only embarrassed silence.”
Women espoused causes with new fervor. Susan B. Anthony, a veteran of many reform campaigns, tried to vote in the 1872 presi- dential election and was fi ned $100, which she refused to pay. In 1890, she helped form the National American Woman Suffrage Association to work for the enfranchisement of women. On New York’s Lower East Side, the Ladies Anti–Beef Trust Association, which formed to protest increases in the price of meat, established a boycott of butcher shops. When their demands were ignored, the women invaded the shops, poured kerosene on the meat, and set fi re to it. “We don’t riot,” Rebecca Ablowitz told the judge. “But if all we did was to weep at home, nobody would notice it; so we have to do something to help ourselves.”
Educating the Masses Continuing a trend that stretched back a hundred years, child- hood was becoming an even more distinct time of life. Th ere was still only a vague concept of adolescence—the special nature of the teenage years—but the role of children was changing. Less and less were children perceived as “little adults,” valued for the additional fi nancial gain they might bring into the family. Now children were to grow and learn and be nurtured rather than rushed into adulthood.
As a result, schooling became more important, and American children came closer than ever before to universal education. By 1900, thirty-one states and territories (out of fi ft y-one) had enacted laws making school attendance compulsory, though most required attendance only until the age of fourteen. In 1870, there were only 160 public high schools; in 1900, there were 6,000. In the same years, public school budgets rose from $63 million to $253 million; illiteracy declined from 20 percent to just over 10 percent of the population. Still, even as late as 1900, the average adult had only fi ve years of schooling.
Educators saw the school as the primary means to train people for life and work in an industrializing society. Hence
“In the old days,” said a woman in 1907, “a married woman was supposed to be a frump and a bore and a physical wreck. Now you are supposed to keep up intellectually, to look young and well and be fresh and bright and entertaining.” Magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal , which started in 1889, glorifi ed motherhood and the home, but its articles and ads featured women as homebound, child-oriented consumers. While society’s leaders spoke fondly of the value of home- making, the status of housewives declined under the factory system, which emphasized money rewards and devalued household labor.
Underlying all these changes was one of the modern world’s most important trends, a major decline in fertility rates that lasted from 1800 to 1939. Th ough blacks, immigrants, and rural dwellers contin- ued to have more children than white native-born city dwellers, the trend aff ected all classes and races; among white women, the birthrate fell from seven in 1800 to just over four in 1880 to about three in 1900. People everywhere tended to marry later and have fewer children.
Since contraceptive devices were not yet widely used, the decline refl ected abstinence and a conscious decision to postpone or limit families. Some women decided to devote greater attention to a smaller number of children, others to pursue their own careers. Th ere was a marked increase in the number of young unmarried women working for wages or attending school, an increase in the number of women delaying marriage or not marrying at all, and a gradual decline in rates of illegitimacy and premarital pregnancy.
In large part, the decline in fertility stemmed from people’s responses to the social and economic forces around them, the rise of cities and industry. In a host of individual decisions, they decided to have fewer children, and the result reshaped some of the funda- mental attitudes and institutions of American society.
Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness among Women In and out of the family, there was growing recognition of self- sufficient working women, employed in factory, telephone exchange, or business offi ce, who were entering the workforce in increasing numbers. In 1880, 2.6 million women were gainfully employed; in 1890, 4 million. In 1882, the Census Bureau took the fi rst census of working women; most were single and worked out of necessity rather than choice.
Many regarded this “new woman” as a corruption of the ideal vision of the American woman, in which man worshiped “a diviner self than his own,” innocent, helpless, and good. Women were to be better than the world around them. Th ey were brought up, said Ida Tarbell, a leading political reformer, “as if wrongdoing were impos- sible to them.”
Views changed, albeit slowly. One important change occurred in the legal codes pertaining to women, particularly in the com- mon law doctrine of femme couverte . Under that doctrine, wives were chattel of their husbands; they could not legally control their own earnings, property, or children unless they had drawn up a specifi c contract before marriage. By 1890, many states had sub- stantially revised the doctrine to allow wives control of their earn- ings and inherited property. (See “Th e Legal Rights of Married Women: Reforming the Law of Coverture,” pp. 286 – 289 .) In cases of divorce, the new laws also recognized women’s rights to custody or joint custody of their children. Although divorce was
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 451
Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment barred state governments from discriminating on account of race but did not prevent private individuals or orga- nizations from doing so. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) established the doctrine of “separate but equal” and upheld a Louisiana law requir- ing diff erent railroad cars for whites and blacks. Th e Court applied the doctrine directly to schools in Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899), which approved the creation of separate schools for whites, even if there were no comparable schools for blacks.
Southern school laws oft en implied that the schools would be “separate but equal,” and they were oft en separate but rarely equal. Black schools were usually dilapidated, and black teachers were paid considerably less than white teachers. In 1890, only 35 percent of black children attended school in the South; 55 percent of white children did. Th at year nearly two-thirds of the country’s black population was illiterate.
Educational techniques changed aft er the 1870s. Educators paid more attention to early elementary education, a trend that placed young children in school and helped the growing number of mothers who worked outside the home. The kindergarten movement, started in St. Louis in 1873, spread across the country. In kindergartens, four- to six-year-old children learned by playing, not by keeping their knees and toes in order. For older children, social reformers advocated “practical” courses in manual training and homemaking. “We are impatient with the schools which lay all stress on reading and writing,” Jane Addams said, for “they fail to give the child any clew to the life about him.”
For the fi rst time, education became a fi eld of university study. European theorists such as Johann Friedrich Herbart, a German educator, argued that learning occurred best in an atmosphere of freedom and confi dence between teachers and pupils. Teacher training became increasingly professional. Only ten normal schools, or teacher training institutions, existed in the United States before the Civil War. By 1900, there were 345, and one in every fi ve elementary teachers had graduated from a professional school.
Higher Education Nearly one hundred fi ft y new colleges and universities opened in the twenty years between 1880 and 1900. Th e Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 gave large grants of land to the states for the establish- ment of colleges to teach “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” Th e act fostered sixty-nine “land-grant” institutions, including the great state universities of Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, and Illinois.
Private philanthropy, born of the large fortunes of the industrial age, also spurred growth in higher education. Leland Stanford gave $24 million to endow Stanford University on his California ranch, and John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Company, gave $34 million to found the University of Chicago. Other industrialists established Cornell (1865), Vanderbilt (1873), and Tulane (1884).
As colleges expanded, their function changed and their curric- ulum broadened. No longer did they exist primarily to train young men for the ministry. Th ey moved away from the classical curricu- lum of rhetoric, mathematics, Latin, and Greek toward “reality and practicality,” as President David Starr Jordan of Stanford University said. Th e Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), founded in 1861, focused on science and engineering.
teachers focused on basic skills—reading and mathematics—and on values—obedience and attentiveness to the clock. Most schools had a highly structured curriculum, built around discipline and routine. In 1892, Joseph Rice, a pediatrician, toured twelve hun- dred classrooms in thirty-six cities. In a typical classroom, he reported, the atmosphere was “damp and chilly,” the teacher strict. “Th e unkindly spirit of the teacher is strikingly apparent; the pupils being completely subjugated to her will, are silent and motionless.” One teacher asked her pupils, “How can you learn anything with your knees and toes out of order?”
Many children dropped out of school early, and not just to earn money. Helen Todd, a factory inspector in Chicago, found a group of young girls working in a hot, stuff y attic. When she asked why they were not in school, Tillie Isakowsky, who was 14, said, “School! School is de fi ercest t’ing youse kin come up against. Factories ain’t no cinch, but schools is worst.” A few blocks away, Todd stumbled on a 13-year-old boy hiding in a basement. He cried when she said he would have to go to school, blurting that “they hits ye if yer don’t learn, and they hits ye if ye whisper, and they hits ye if ye have string in yer pocket, and they hits ye if yer seat squeaks, and they hits ye if ye don’t stan’ up in time, and they hits ye if yer late, and they hits ye if ye ferget the page.” Curious, Todd asked 500 children whether they would go to school or work in a factory if their families did not need the money—412 preferred the factory.
School began early; boys attended all day, but girls oft en stayed home aft er lunch, since it was thought they needed less in the way of learning. On the teacher’s command, students stood and recited from Webster’s Spellers and McGuff ey’s Eclectic Readers , the period’s most popular textbooks. Th e work of William Holmes McGuff ey, a professor of languages at Miami University in Ohio, McGuff ey’s Eclectic Readers had been in use since 1836; 100 million copies were sold in the last half of the nineteenth century. Nearly every child read them; they taught not only reading but also ethics, val- ues, and religion. In the Readers , boys grew up to be heroes, girls to be mothers, and hard work always meant success:
Shall birds, and bees, and ants, be wise, While I my moments waste? O let me with the morning rise, And to my duty haste.
Th e South lagged far behind in education. Th e average family size there was about twice as large as in the North, and a greater proportion of the population lived in isolated rural areas. State and local authorities mandated fewer weeks in the average school year, and many southern states refused to adopt compulsory education laws. Even more important was the eff ect of southern Jim Crow laws, passed in the 1890s and aft er to keep African Americans from vot- ing, serving on juries, and participating in other aspects of southern life. Southerners used these laws to maintain separate school systems to segregate the races. Supported by the U.S. Supreme Court deci- sion of 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson (see Plessy v. Ferguson : “Th e Shaping of Jim Crow ,” pp. 460 – 463 ), segregated schooling added a devastating fi nancial burden to education in the South.
North Carolina and Alabama mandated segregated schools in 1876, South Carolina and Louisiana in 1877, Mississippi in 1878, and Virginia in 1882. A series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1880s and 1890s upheld the concept of segregation. In the
452 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
courses rather than following a rigidly prescribed curriculum. Lectures and discussions replaced rote recitation, and courses in the natural and social sciences, fi ne arts, and modern languages multiplied. In the 1890s, Eliot’s Harvard moved to the forefront of educational innovation.
Women still had to fi ght for educational opportu- nities. Some formed study clubs, an important move- ment that spread rapidly between 1870 and 1900. Groups such as the Decatur (Illinois) Art Class, the Boston History Class, and the Barnesville (Georgia) Shakespeare Club aimed “to enlarge the mental hori- zon as well as the knowledge of our members.” Club members read Virgil and Chaucer, studied history and architecture, and discussed women’s rights.
Clubs sprang up almost everywhere there were women: in Caribou, Maine; Tyler, Texas; and Leadville, Colorado—as well as San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Although they were usually small, study clubs sparked a greater interest in education among women and their daughters and contributed to a rapid rise in the number of women entering col- lege in the early 1900s.
Before the Civil War, only three private colleges admitted women to study with men. Aft er the war, educational opportunities increased for women. A number of women’s colleges opened, including Vassar (1865), Wellesley (1875), Smith (1875), Bryn Mawr (1885), Barnard (1889), and Radcliff e (1893). The land-grant colleges of the Midwest, open to women from the outset, spurred a nationwide trend toward coeducation, although some physicians, such as Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Edward H. Clarke in his popular Sex in Education (1873), continued to argue that the strain of learning made women sterile. By 1900, women made up about 40 percent of college students, and four out of fi ve colleges admitted them.
Fewer opportunities existed for African Americans and other minorities. Jane Stanford encouraged the Chinese who had worked on her husband’s Central Pacific Railroad to apply to Stanford University, but her policy was unusual. Most colleges did not accept minority students, and only a few applied. W. E. B. Du Bois, the bril- liant African American sociologist and civil rights leader, attended Harvard in the late 1880s but found the society of Harvard Yard closed against him. Disdained and disdainful, he “asked no fellowship
of my fellow students.” Chosen as one of the commencement speak- ers, Du Bois picked as his topic “Jeff erson Davis,” treating it, said an onlooker, with “an almost contemptuous fairness.”
Black students turned to black colleges such as the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute in Virginia and the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Th ese colleges were oft en supported by whites who favored manual training for blacks. Booker T. Washington, an ex-slave, put into practice his educational ideas at Tuskegee, which opened in 1881. Washington began Tuskegee with limited funds, four run-down buildings, and only thirty students; by 1900, it was a model
Infl uenced by the new German universities, which emphasized specialized research, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore opened the nation’s fi rst separate graduate school in 1876. Under President Daniel Coit Gilman, Johns Hopkins stressed the seminar and labo- ratory as teaching tools, bringing together student and teacher in close association.
Charles W. Eliot, who became president of Harvard in 1869 at the age of thirty-fi ve, moved to end, as an admirer said, the “old fogyism” that marked the institution. Revising the curriculum, Eliot set up the elective system, in which students chose their own
Read the Document The Morrill Act (1862)
The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 gave large grants of land to the states for the establishment of colleges to teach “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” The act, sponsored by U.S. Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, facilitated the creation of sixty-nine “land-grant” institutions, including the state universities of Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Illinois.
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 453
he went to Harvard. Unable to fi nd a teaching job in a white college, he took a low-paying research position at the University of Pennsylvania. He had no offi ce but did not need one. Du Bois used the new discipline of sociology, which emphasized factual observa- tion in the fi eld, to study the condition of blacks.
Notebook in hand, he set out to examine crime in Philadelphia’s black seventh ward. He interviewed fi ve thousand people, mapped and classifi ed neighborhoods, and produced Th e Philadelphia Negro (1898). Th e fi rst study of the eff ect of urban life on blacks, it cited a wealth of statistics, all suggesting that crime in the ward stemmed not from inborn degeneracy but from the environment in which blacks lived. Change the environment, and people would change, too; education was a good way to go about it.
In Th e Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois openly attacked Booker T. Washington and the philosophy of the Atlanta Compromise. He urged African Americans to aspire to professional careers, to fi ght for the restoration of their civil rights, and, wherever possible, to get a college education. Calling for integrated schools with equal oppor- tunity for all, Du Bois urged blacks to educate their “talented tenth,” a highly trained intellectual elite, to lead them.
Du Bois was not alone in promoting careers in the professions. Th roughout higher education there was increased emphasis on professional training, particularly in medicine, dentistry, and law. Enrollments swelled, even as standards of admission tightened. Th e number of medical schools in the country rose from 75 in 1870 to 160 in 1900, and the number of medical students—including more and more women—almost tripled. Schools of nursing grew from
industrial and agricultural school. Spread over forty-six buildings, it off ered instruction in thirty trades to fourteen hundred students.
Washington emphasized patience, manual training, and hard work. “Th e wisest among my race understand,” he said in a widely acclaimed speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895, “that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly.” Blacks should focus on economic gains; they should go to school, learn skills, and work their way up the ladder. “No race,” he said at Atlanta, “can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a fi eld as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.” Southern whites should help out because they would then have “the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen.”
Outlined most forcefully in Washington’s speech in Atlanta, the philosophy became known as the Atlanta Compromise, and many whites and some blacks welcomed it. Acknowledging white domination, it called for slow progress through self-improvement, not through lawsuits or agitation. Rather than fi ghting for equal rights, blacks should acquire property and show they were worthy of their rights. But Washington did believe in black equality. Oft en secretive in his methods, he worked behind the scenes to organize black voters and lobby against harmful laws. In his own way, he bespoke a racial pride that contributed to the rise of black nation- alism in the twentieth century.
Du Bois wanted a more aggressive strategy. Born in Massachusetts in 1868, the son of poor parents, he studied at Fisk University in Tennessee and the University of Berlin before
Booker T. Washington, who served as the fi rst president of Tuskegee Institute, advocated work effi ciency and practical skills as keys to advancement for African Americans. Students like these at Tuskegee studied academic subjects and received training in trades and professions.
Address at the Atlanta Exposition by Booker T. Washington Listen to the Audio File
454 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
Jim Crow laws expanded during the 1920s and 1930s. Mississippi segregated white and black patients in hospitals and mandated that nurses could tend only the sick of their own race. City ordinances required Jim Crow taxis in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1929; Birmingham, Alabama, in 1930; and Atlanta, Georgia, in 1940. In 1930, a Birmingham ordinance forbade blacks and whites from playing each other at dominoes or checkers.
Lynchings also spread. Between 1889 and 1899, an average of 187 blacks were lynched every year for alleged off enses against white supremacy. Many blacks (and whites) convicted of petty crimes were leased out to private contractors whose brutality rivaled that of the most sadistic slaveholders. Th e convict-lease system enabled entrepre- neurs, such as mine owners and lumber companies, to rent prisoners
only 15 in 1880 to 432 in 1900. Doctors, lawyers, and others became part of a growing middle class that shaped the concerns of the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century.
Although less than 5 percent of the college-age population attended college during the 1877–1890 period, the new trends had great impact. A generation of men and women encountered new ideas that changed their views of themselves and society. Courses never before off ered, such as Philosophy II at Harvard, “Th e Ethics of Social Reform,” which students called “drainage, drunkenness, and divorce,” heightened interest in social problems and the need for reform. Some graduating students burned with a desire to cure society’s ills. “My life began . . . at Johns Hopkins University,” Frederic C. Howe, an infl uential reformer, recalled. “I came alive, I felt a sense of responsibility to the world, I wanted to change things.”
The Spread of Jim Crow
Why did Jim Crow laws spread across the South after the end of Reconstruction?
Th ough Washington and Du Bois diff ered widely in their views, both of them fought the growing restrictions on black civil rights known as Jim Crow laws (see Chapter 16 ) . While segregation and disfranchisement began as informal arrangements in the immediate aft ermath of the Civil War, they soon culminated in a legal regime of separation and exclusion that took fi rm hold in the 1890s.
Th roughout the South, the new measures lent the sanction of law to a racial ostracism that included voting booths, churches, schools, housing, and jobs. Touching virtually all parts of life, they aff ected public transportation, hospitals, prisons, and asylums— even funeral homes and cemeteries.
A number of infl uences lay behind their rapid growth. By the 1870s, many northerners had lost interest in guarding the rights of blacks. Weariness with Civil War issues played a role in this trend, as did beliefs in Anglo-Saxon superiority and, aft er the Spanish- American War of 1898, the acquisition of colonial subjects—called, revealingly, “the white man’s burden”—in Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
As a result, the North and the federal government did little to stem the tide. Supreme Court decisions between 1878 and 1898 gut- ted the Reconstruction amendments and the legislation passed to enforce them, leaving blacks virtually defenseless against political and social discrimination. (See Table 19.1 .)
Most visible in areas like voting, Jim Crow laws soon penetrated nearly every aspect of Southern life. In 1915, a South Carolina code banned textile factories from allowing laborers of diff erent races to work together in the same room or to use the same entrances, exits, toilets, and drinking water. That year, Oklahoma required telephone companies to maintain separate phone booths for whites and blacks. North Carolina and Florida ordered separate textbooks for black and white children. Florida even required that the books be segregated while they were in stor- age. A New Orleans ordinance placed black and white prostitutes in separate districts of the city. Th ere were Jim Crow Bibles for African American witnesses in Atlanta courts and Jim Crow eleva- tors in Atlanta buildings.
Perhaps no event better expresses the cruel and barbaric nature of the racism and white supremacy that swept the South after Reconstruction than lynching. Although lynchings were not confi ned to the South, most occurred there, and African American men were the most frequent victims. Here, two men lean out of a barn window above a black man who is about to be hanged. Others below prepare to set on fi re the pile of hay at the victim’s feet. Lynchings were often public events, drawing huge crowds to watch the victim’s agonizing death.
The Stirrings of Reform 455
Th is emphasis on the slow pace of change refl ected the doctrine of Social Darwinism , based on the writings of English social philosopher Herbert Spencer. In several infl uential books, Spencer took the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and applied Darwinian principles of natural selection to society, combining biology and sociology in a theory of “social selection” that tried to explain human progress. Like animals, society evolved, slowly, by adapting to the environment. Th e “survival of the fi ttest”—a term that Spencer, not Darwin, invented—preserved the strong and weeded out the weak. “If they are suffi ciently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not suffi ciently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die.”
Social Darwinism had a number of infl uential followers in the United States, including William Graham Sumner, a professor of political and social science at Yale University. One of the country’s best known academic fi gures, Sumner was forceful and eloquent. In writ- ings such as What Social Classes Owe to Each Other (1883) and “Th e Absurd Eff ort to Make the World Over” (1894), he argued that gov- ernment action on behalf of the poor or weak interfered with evolu- tion and sapped the species. Reform tampered with the laws of nature. “It is the greatest folly of which a man can be capable to sit down with a slate and pencil to plan out a new social world,” Sumner said.
Th e infl uence of Social Darwinism on American thinking has been exaggerated, but in the powerful hands of Sumner and oth- ers it did infl uence some journalists, ministers, and policy makers. Between 1877 and the 1890s, however, it came under increasing attack. In fi elds such as religion, economics, politics, literature, and law, thoughtful people raised questions about established condi- tions and suggested the need for reform.
Progress and Poverty Read and reread, passed from hand to hand, Henry George’s nation- wide best-seller Progress and Poverty (1879) led the way to a more critical appraisal of American society in the 1880s and beyond. Th e book jolted traditional thought. “It was responsible,” one histo- rian has said, “for starting along new lines of thinking an amazing number of the men and women” who became leaders of reform.
Born in 1839, the child of a poor Philadelphia family, George had little formal schooling. As a boy he went to sea; he also worked as a prospector, printer, and journalist. Self-educated as an econo- mist, he moved to San Francisco in the late 1850s and began to study “the fi erce struggle of our civilized life.” Disturbed by the depression of the 1870s and labor upheavals such as the great railroad strikes of 1877, George saw modern society—rich, complex, with material goods hitherto unknown—as sadly fl awed.
“Th e present century,” he wrote, “has been marked by a pro- digious increase in wealth-producing power. . . . It was natural to expect, and it was expected, that . . . real poverty [would become] a thing of the past.” Instead, he argued,
it becomes no easier for the masses of our people to make a living. On the contrary, it is becoming harder. Th e wealthy class is becoming more wealthy; but the poorer class is becoming more dependent. Th e gulf between the employed and the employer is growing wider; social con- trasts are becoming sharper; as liveried carriages appear, so do barefooted children.
from the state and treat them as they saw fi t. Unlike slaveowners, they suff ered no loss when a forced laborer died from overwork.
Racism, of course, was not limited to the South, as race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois, (1917) and Chicago (1919), among other events, attested. In 1903, the New York public school system banned Uncle Tom’s Cabin from its reading lists, saying that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s depiction of antebellum slavery “does not belong to today but to an unhappy period of our country’s history, the memory of which it is not well to revive in our children.” Encountering the racism of the North—far less brutal but racism nonetheless—blacks who had migrated there called it James Crow.
The Stirrings of Reform
How did life in the growing cities lead to ideas of reform?
When Henry George, one of the era’s leading reformers, asked a friend what could be done about the problem of political corruption in American cities, his friend replied, “Nothing! You and I can do nothing at all. . . . We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps in four or fi ve thousand years evolution may have carried men beyond this state of things.”
SUPREME COURT DECISIONS AFFECTING BLACK CIVIL RIGHTS, 1875–1900
Case Effects of Court’s Decisions Hall v. DeCuir (1878)
Struck down Louisiana law prohibiting racial discrimination by “common carriers” (railroads, steamboats, buses). Declared the law a “burden” on interstate com- merce, over which states had no authority.
United States v. Harris (1882)
Declared federal laws to punish crimes such as murder and assault unconstitu- tional. Declared such crimes to be the sole concern of local government. Ignored the frequent racial motivation behind such crimes in the South.
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Struck down Civil Rights Act of 1875. Declared that Congress may not legislate on civil rights unless a state passes a discriminatory law. Declared the Four- teenth Amendment silent on racial dis- crimination by private citizens.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Upheld Louisiana statute requiring “separate but equal” accommodations on railroads. Declared that segregation is not necessarily discrimination.
Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
Upheld state law requiring a literacy test to qualify for voting. Refused to fi nd any implication of racial discrimination in the law, although it permitted illiterate whites to vote if they “understood” the Constitu- tion. Using such laws, southern states rapidly disfranchised blacks.
456 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
solution, simplistic and unappealing, had much less impact than his analysis of the problem itself. He raised questions a generation of readers set out to answer.
New Currents in Social Thought George’s emphasis on deprivation in the environ- ment excited a young country lawyer in Ashtabula, Ohio—Clarence Darrow. Unlike the Social Darwinists, Darrow was sure that criminals were made and not born. Th ey grew out of “the unjust condition of human life.” In the mid-1880s, he left for Chicago and a forty-year career working to convince people that poverty lay at the root of crime. “Th ere is no such thing as crime as the word is generally understood,” he told a group of startled prisoners in the Cook County jail. “If every man, woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent, fair, honest living there would be no jails and no law- yers and no courts.”
As Darrow rejected the implications of social Darwinism, in similar fashion Richard T. Ely and a group of young economists poked holes in tra- ditional economic thought. Fresh from graduate study in Germany, Ely in 1884 attacked classical economics for its dogmatism, simple faith in lais- sez-faire, and reliance on self-interest as a guide for human conduct. Th e “younger” economics, he said, must no longer be “a tool in the hands of the greedy and the avaricious for keeping down and oppress- ing the laboring classes. It does not acknowledge laissez-faire as an excuse for doing nothing while people starve.”
Accepting a post at Johns Hopkins University, Ely assigned graduate students to study labor con- ditions in Baltimore and other cities; one of them, John R. Commons, went on to publish a massive four-volume study, History of Labour in the United States . In 1885, Ely led a small band of rebels in founding the American Economic Association, which linked economics to social problems and urged government intervention in economic aff airs. Social critic Th orstein Veblen saw economic laws as a mask for human greed. In Th e Th eory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen analyzed the “predatory wealth” and “conspicuous consump- tion” of the business class.
Edward Bellamy dreamed of a cooperative society in which poverty, greed, and crime no longer existed. A lawyer from western Massachusetts, Bellamy published Looking Backward, 2000–1887 , in 1887 and became a national reform fi gure virtually overnight. Th e novel’s protagonist, Julian West, falls asleep in 1887 and awakes in the year 2000. Wide-eyed, he fi nds himself in a socialist utopia: Th e gov- ernment owns the means of production, and citizens share the mate- rial rewards. Cooperation, rather than competition, is the watchword.
George proposed a simple solution. Land, he thought, formed the basis of wealth, and a few people could grow wealthy just because the price of their land rose. Since the rise in price did not result from any eff ort on their part, it represented an “unearned increment,” which, George argued, should be taxed for the good of society. A “single tax” on the increment, replacing all other taxes, would help equalize wealth and raise revenue to aid the poor. “Single-tax” clubs sprang up around the country, but George’s
Read the Document Edward Bellamy, from Looking Backward
Edward Bellamy was the author in 1887 of Looking Backward, 2000–1887. The book envisioned a nation cured of its social problems through the creation of a socialist utopia including the elimination of private competition and government ownership of industry.
The Stirrings of Reform 457
settlement houses in the slums and went to live in them to experience the problems they were trying to solve.
Youthful, idealistic, and mostly middle class, these social workers took as their model Toynbee Hall, founded in 1884 in the slums of East London to provide community services. Stanton Coit, a moody and poetic graduate of Amherst College, was the fi rst American to borrow the settlement house idea; in 1886, he opened the Neighborhood Guild on the Lower East Side of New York. Th e idea spread swift ly. By 1900, there were more than a hun- dred settlements in the country; fi ve years later, there were more than two hundred, and by 1910, more than four hundred.
Th e settlements included Jane Addams’s famous Hull House in Chicago (1889), Robert A. Woods’s South End House in Boston (1892), and Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement in New York (1893). Th e reformers wanted to bridge the socioeconomic gap between rich and poor and to bring education, culture, and hope to the slums. Th ey sought to create in the heart of the city the val- ues and sense of community of small-town America. Of settlement workers, Wald said in Th e House on Henry Street (1915), “We were to live in a neighborhood . . . identify ourselves with it socially, and, in brief, contribute to it our citizenship.”
Many of the settlement workers were women, some of them college graduates, who found that society had little use for their tal- ents and energy. Jane Addams, a graduate of Rockford College in Illinois, opened Hull House on South Halsted Street in the heart of the Chicago slums. Twenty-nine years old, endowed with a force- ful and winning personality, she intended “to share the lives of the poor” and humanize the industrial city. “American ideals,” she said, “crumbled under the overpowering poverty of the overcrowded city.”
Occupying an old, rundown house, Hull House focused on edu- cation, off ering classes in elementary English and Shakespeare, lec- tures on ethics and the history of art, and courses in cooking, sewing, and manual skills. A pragmatist, Addams believed in investigating a problem and then doing something to solve it. Noting the lack of medical care in the area, she established an infant welfare clinic and free medical dispensary. Because the tenements lacked bathtubs, she installed showers in the basement of the house and built a bathhouse for the neighbors. Because there was no local library, she opened a reading room. Gradually, Hull House expanded to occupy a dozen buildings sprawling over more than a city block.
Like settlement workers in other cities, Addams and her colleagues studied the immigrants in nearby tenements. Laboriously, they identified the background of every family in a one-third- square-mile area around Hull House. Finding people of eighteen diff erent nationalities, they taught them American history and the English language, yet Addams also encouraged them—through folk festivals and art—to preserve their own heritage.
In Boston, Robert Woods of South End House focused on the problem of school dropouts. He off ered manual training, formed clubs to get young people off the streets, and established a cheap res- taurant where the hungry could eat. Lillian Wald, the daughter of a middle-class family and herself a graduate nurse, concentrated on providing health care for the poor. In 1898, the fi rst Catholic-run settlement house opened in New York, and in 1900, Bronson House opened in Los Angeles to work in the Mexican American community.
Florence Kelley, an energetic graduate of Cornell University, taught night school one winter in Chicago. Watching children
Th e world of Looking Backward had limits; it was regimented, paternalistic, and fi lled with the gadgets and material concerns of Bellamy’s own day. But it had a dramatic eff ect on many readers. Th e book sold at the rate of ten thousand copies a week, and its followers formed Nationalist Clubs to work for its objectives. By 1890, there were such clubs in twenty-seven states, all calling for the nationaliza- tion of public utilities and a wider distribution of wealth.
Walter Rauschenbusch, a young Baptist minister, read widely from the writings of Bellamy and George, along with the works of other social reformers. When he took his fi rst church post in Hell’s Kitchen, a blighted area of New York City, he soon discov- ered the weight of the slum environment. “One could hear,” he said, “human virtue cracking and crushing all around.” In the 1890s, Rauschenbusch became a professor at the Rochester Th eological Seminary, and he began to expound on the responsibility of orga- nized religion to advance social justice.
Some Protestant sects emphasized individual salvation and a better life in the next world, not in this one. Poverty was evidence of sinfulness; the poor had only themselves to blame. “God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little,” said Henry Ward Beecher, the country’s best known pastor. Wealth and destitu- tion, suburbs and slums—all formed part of God’s plan.
Challenging those traditional doctrines, a number of churches in the 1880s began establishing missions in the city slums. William Dwight Porter Bliss, an Episcopal clergyman, founded the Church of the Carpenter in a working-class district of Boston. Lewis M. Pease worked in the grim Five Points area of New York; Alexander Irvine, a Jewish missionary, lived in a fl ophouse in the Bowery. Irvine walked his skid row neighborhood every aft ernoon to lend a hand to those in need. Living among the poor and homeless, the urban missionaries grew impatient with religious doctrines that endorsed the status quo.
Many of the new trends were refl ected in an emerging religious philosophy known as the Social Gospel . As the name suggests, the Social Gospel focused on society as well as individuals, on improv- ing living conditions as well as saving souls. Sermons in Social Gospel churches called on church members to fulfi ll their social obligations, and adults met before and aft er the regular service to discuss social and economic problems. Children were excused from sermons, organized into age groups, and encouraged to make the church a center for social as well as religious activity. Soon churches included dining halls, gymnasiums, and even theaters.
Th e most active Social Gospel leader was Washington Gladden, a Congregational minister and prolifi c writer. Linking Christianity to the social and economic environment, Gladden spent a lifetime working for “social salvation.” He saw Christianity as a fellowship of love and the church as a social agency. In Applied Christianity (1886) and other writings, he denounced competition, urged an “industrial partnership” between employers and employees, and called for eff orts to help the poor.
The Settlement Houses A growing number of social reformers living in the urban slums shared Gladden’s concern. Like Tweed and Plunkitt, they appre- ciated the dependency of the poor; unlike them, they wanted to eradicate the conditions that underlay it. To do so, they formed
458 CHAPTER 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
trying to help “ignorant foreigners, who live in an atmosphere of low morals . . . surrounded by anarchy and crime.”
Although Addams tried to off er a few programs for blacks, most white reformers did not, and aft er 1900, a number of black reformers opened their own settlements. Like the whites, they off ered employment information, medical care, and recreational facilities, along with concerts, lectures, and other educational events. White and black, the settlement workers made important contributions to urban life.
Crisis in Social Welfare Th e depression of 1893 jarred the young settlement workers, many of whom had just begun their work. Addams and the Hull House workers helped form the Chicago Bureau of Charities to coordi- nate emergency relief. Kelley, recently appointed the chief factory inspector of Illinois, worked even harder to end child labor, and in
break under the burden of poverty, she devoted her life to the prob- lem of child labor. Convinced of the need for political activism, she worked with Addams and others to push through the Illinois Factory Act of 1893, which mandated an eight-hour day for women in factories and for children under the age of fourteen.
Th e settlement house movement had its limits. Hull House, one of the best, attracted two thousand visitors a week, still just a fraction of the seventy thousand people who lived within six blocks. Immigrants sometimes resented the middle-class “strangers” who told them how to live. Dressed always in a brown suit and dark stock- ings, Harriet Vittum, the head resident of Chicago’s Northwestern University Settlement (who told the story of the suicide victim at the beginning of this chapter), was known in the neighborhood as “the police lady in brown.” She once stopped a dance because it was too wild, and then watched in disgust as the boys responded by “making vulgar sounds with their lips.” Th ough her attempts to help were sincere, in private Vittum called the people she was
Read the Document Jane Addams, from Twenty Years at Hull House (1910)
Jane Addams founded Chicago’s Hull House in 1889. The settlement house provided recreational and day-care facilities; offered extension classes in academic, vocational, and artistic subjects; and, above all, sought to bring hope to poverty-stricken slum dwellers.
Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society 459
and legislation, the new group helped spawn the National Civic Federation (1900), a nationwide organization devoted to the reform of urban life.
Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society
“Th e United States was born in the country and moved to the city,” historian Richard Hofstadter said. Much of that movement occurred during the nineteenth century when the United States was the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the Western world. American cities bustled with energy; they absorbed millions of migrants who came from Europe and other distant and not-so-distant parts of the world. Th at migration, and the urban growth that accompanied it, reshaped American politics and culture.
By 1920, the census showed that, for the fi rst time, most Americans lived in cities. By then, too, almost half the population was descended from people who had arrived aft er the American Revolution. As European, African, and Asian cultures met in the American city, a culturally pluralistic society emerged. Dozens of nationalities produced a culture whose members considered themselves Polish Americans, African Americans, and Irish Americans. The melting pot sometimes softened distinctions between the various groups, but it only partially blended them into a unifi ed society.
“Ah, Vera,” said a character in Israel Zangwill’s popular play Th e Melting Pot (1908), “what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, com- pared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!” Critics scorned the play as “romantic claptrap,” and indeed it was. But the metaphor of the melting pot clearly depicted a new national image. In the decades aft er the 1870s a jumble of ethnic and racial groups struggled for a place in society.
Th at society, it is clear, experienced a crisis between 1870 and 1900. Together, the growth of cities and the rise of industrial capi- talism brought jarring change: the exploitation of labor, ethnic and racial tensions, poverty—and, for a few, wealth beyond the imagi- nation. At Homestead, Pullman, and a host of other places, there was open warfare between capital and labor. As reformers strug- gled to mediate the situation, they turned more and more to state and federal government to look aft er human welfare, a tendency the Supreme Court stoutly resisted. In the midst of the crisis, the depression of the 1890s struck, adding to the turmoil and straining American institutions. Tracing the changes wrought by waves of urbanization and industrialization, Henry George described the country as “the House of Have and the House of Want,” almost in paraphrase of Lincoln’s earlier metaphor of the “house divided.” Th e question was, could this house, unlike that one, stand?
1899, she moved to New York City to head the National Consumers League, which marshaled the buying power of women to encour- age employers to provide better working conditions.
In cities and towns across the country, traditional methods of helping the needy foundered in the crisis. Churches, charity orga- nization societies, and community chests did what they could, but their resources were limited, and they functioned on traditional lines. Many of them still tried to change rather than aid individual families, and people were oft en reluctant to call on them for help.
Gradually, a new class of professional social workers arose to fi ll the need. Unlike the church and charity volunteers, these social workers wanted not only to feed the poor but to study their condi- tion and alleviate it. Revealingly, they called themselves “case work- ers” and daily collected data on the income, housing, jobs, health, and habits of the poor. Prowling tenement districts, they gathered information about the number of rooms, number of occupants, ventilation, and sanitation of the buildings, putting together a fund of useful data.
Studies of the poor popped up everywhere. Walter Wyckoff , a graduate of Princeton University, embarked in 1891 on what he called “an experiment in reality.” For eighteen months, he worked as an unskilled laborer in jobs from Connecticut to California. “I am vastly ignorant of the labor problems and am trying to learn by experience,” he said as he set out. Aft er working as a ditchdigger, farmhand, and logger, Wyckoff summarized his findings in Th e Workers (1897), a book immediately hailed as a major contribu- tion to sociology.
So many others followed Wyckoff ’s example that sometimes it seemed the observers outnumbered those being observed. W. E. B. Du Bois did his pioneering study of urban blacks; Lillian Pettengill took a job as a domestic servant to see “the ups and downs of this particular dog-life from the dog’s end of the chain.” Others became street beggars, miners, lumberjacks, and factory laborers. Bessie and Marie Van Vorst’s Th e Woman Who Toils: Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls (1903) studied female work- ers, as did Helen Campbell’s Women Wage-Earners: Th eir Past, Th eir Present and Th eir Future (1893), which suggested that the conditions of factory employment prepared women mainly “for the hospital, the workhouse, and the prison.”
William T. Stead, a prominent British editor, visited the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and stayed to examine the city. He roamed the fl ophouses and tenements and dropped in at Hull House to drink hot chocolate and talk over conditions with Jane Addams. Later he wrote an infl uential book, If Christ Came to Chicago (1894), and in a series of mass meetings during 1893, he called for a civic revival. In response, Chicagoans formed the Civic Federation, a group of forty leaders who aimed to make Chicago “the best governed, the healthiest city in this country.” Setting up task forces for philanthropy, moral improvement,
460
New Orleans, more than most southern cities, had a group of talented African American leaders, educated, aggressive, and experienced in poli- tics and the judicial system. Outraged by the new law, they thought fi rst of boycotting the railroads that obeyed it but then decided to contest it in the courts. Led by Louis A. Martinet, a well-known lawyer and physician, and Rodolphe L. Desdunes, an impor- tant Reconstruction Republican, they formed the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, raised money for the cause, and enlisted the aid of Albion W. Tourgée of New York, a prominent white lawyer, novelist, and longtime crusader for African American rights.
Tourgée did not hesitate to join in the fi ght, for which he charged no fee. “Submission to such outrages,” he angrily wrote his New Orleans friends, tends “only to their multipli- cation and exaggeration. It is by con- stant resistance to oppression that the race must ultimately win equality of right.”
As a fi rst step, Citizens’ Com- mittee members went to various railroad offi cials to ask for aid in establishing a case that could test the law. Disliking the cost of the extra cars the law forced them to buy, the offi cials were sympathetic but reluc- tant. One railroad already refused to enforce the law; offi cials on two other railroads said it was “a bad and mean one; they would like to get rid of it,” but were afraid of public opinion. At last, the East Louisiana Railway agreed to help.
And so on June 7, 1892, to test the law, Homer A. Plessy boarded
politely waited upon than in some parts of New England.”
That situation changed near the end of the century. The courts often refl ect trends in the society, and whites in both North and South in the 1890s had little enthusiasm for civil rights or racial equality. In addition, economic depression heightened racial tensions, and the spread of colonial imperialism in Africa and Asia led to talk about “inferior” people, both at home and abroad. Beginning in the 1870s, the Supreme Court handed down a series of decisions that overturned much Reconstruction legislation, limited fed- eral protection for blacks, and encour- aged racial segregation.
In the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, the Supreme Court nar- rowed the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment protecting blacks; a decade later, in the Civil Rights Cases (1883), it said that Congress could not punish private individuals for acts of racial discrimination. Emboldened by such decisions, southern states passed many segregation laws, including laws requiring railroad companies to separate white and black riders. In the summer of 1890, Louisiana passed “An Act to promote the comfort of passengers” that made railroads in the state provide “equal but separate” cars “for the white and colored races.”
Segregationists were delighted. “The Southern whites,” a New Orleans newspaper said, had passed the law “in no spirit of hostility to the negroes,” but to make sure that “the two races shall live separate and distinct from each other in all things, with separate schools, separate hotels, and separate cars.”
I n a nation of laws, the inter-pretation of law can pro- foundly change people’s lives. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), one of the most important cases ever to reach the Supreme Court, changed the lives of millions of black and white Americans. Interpreting law in a way that lasted for more than a half cen- tury, it permitted the segrega- tion of blacks in public facilities throughout the land.
Given the signifi cance of the case, we know surprisingly little about Homer A. Plessy, the man who fi g- ured in it. He was young—we know that—and apparently worked as a carpenter in Louisiana. According to the court records, he was “seven- eighths Caucasian,” which perhaps was a reason he was chosen to test the constitutionality of a Louisiana law requiring railroad companies to seg- regate whites and blacks on trains in the state. It seemed a good law to test. Louisiana’s own constitution forbade such discrimination; so did the federal Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guar- anteed blacks “full and equal enjoy- ment” of public conveyances.
Whatever the details of his life, Plessy lived in a post–Reconstruction South in which racism was wide- spread but segregation was not. Where segregation did exist, it usually was not enacted into law. During the 1870s and 1880s, blacks and whites often ate together, rode together, and worked together. “I can ride in fi rst-class cars on the rail- roads and in the streets,” a delighted black visitor wrote home from South Carolina in 1885. “I can stop in and drink a glass of soda and be more
Plessy v. Ferguson The Shaping of Jim Crow
Law and Society
Complete the Assignment Plessy v. Ferguson: The Shaping of Jim Crow on myhistorylab
461
“Probably most white persons if given a choice,” Tourgée argued, “would prefer death to life in the United States as colored persons . Under these conditions, is it possible to conclude that the reputation of being white is not property? Indeed, is it not the most valuable sort of property, being the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity?”
The remainder of Tourgée’s brief was straightforward, emphasizing the incompatibility of the separate car law with the intent of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, the inequities it fostered, and its basis in claims of white superiority. Unless the Court stopped it now, enforced segregation would soon spread every- where through life. “Why may [a law] not require all red-headed people to ride in a separate car? Why not require all colored people to walk on one side of the street and the whites on the other?” Why not houses of
principle—the right to separate the races in cars and elsewhere—the better for them.”
It took three more years before the United States Supreme Court heard the case. Tourgée himself was pleased with the delay, hoping that time might improve racial feelings in the country and bring popular support to his cause. Those hopes did not bear out, nor did his arguments before the Court.
In an unusual approach, Tourgée began by arguing that Homer A. Plessy, who was light-skinned in color, had been deprived of property with- out due process of law, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment. Able to pass for white, he had been identifi ed by the railroad conductor as black. He had been robbed, therefore, of his “property,” Tourgée said, the sense of being white, and thus barred from association with white people, who in the United States controlled the ave- nues to advancement.
an East Louisiana Railway train in New Orleans for the 30-mile trip to Covington. He took a seat in the car reserved for whites, refused to move when a conductor asked him to, and was arrested by a detec- tive who was standing by for the occasion. John H. Ferguson, a local judge, ruled against Plessy’s argu- ment that the law violated his rights, and Plessy appealed to the State Supreme Court, arguing that the law violated the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. That Court, too, promptly ruled against him.
Delighted, Louisiana segrega- tionists hoped, as one of their news- papers said, that the two decisions would knock some sense into “the silly negroes who are trying to fi ght this law. The sooner they drop their so- called ‘crusade’ against the ‘Jim Crow Car,’ and stop wasting their money in combating so well-established a
462
and black prostitutes. Atlanta had separate Bibles for black witnesses in the city courts.
Harlan had, in general terms, predicted it all, in words still worth reading today: “The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indis- solubly linked together, and the interests of both require that the common government of all shall not permit the seeds of race hate to be planted under the sanction of law. What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in pub- lic coaches occupied by white citi- zens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation as was enacted in Louisiana.”
Plessy v. Ferguson set a pattern of court-supported segregation that lasted sixty years. Generations of blacks and whites, children and adults alike, were deeply affected—some- times traumatized—by it. The practice became a major focus of grievance in the growing movement for civil rights during the 1930s and 1940s.
“Justice,” Tourgée had written in his original brief, “is pictured blind and her daughter, the Law, ought at least to be color-blind.” Harlan had used the same word, “color-blind,” a welcome concept to those fi ghting for civil rights in the 1890s. But his- tory takes interesting and different turns, as does the law, and the word would come up again decades later, in arguments against affi rmative action programs that helped African Americans get into colleges and pro- fessional schools. (See discussion of Bakke v. Regents of the University of California , p. 792 .)
Plessy , by then, was no more. At last, exactly fi fty-eight years after the decision had been announced, on May 17, 1954, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (see Chapter 29 ), the Supreme Court
of changing opinion in the North. The single dissenter in the case, Justice John Marshall Harlan of Kentucky, on the other hand, was not only from the South, he had once owned slaves. But accepting the changed requirements of the Reconstruction amendments, he became the “Great Dissenter” in a Court—and a country—fast fl eeing its important responsibilities.
Dissenting in Plessy , he scoffed at the majority’s reasoning. The Louisiana law, he said, was clearly prejudicial, designed to keep blacks from railroad cars occupied by whites, and as such was in clear confl ict with both the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. It was “a badge of ser- vitude,” inconsistent with “the equal- ity before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justifi ed upon any legal grounds.”
“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.”
“In my opinion,” Harlan concluded, “the judgment this day rendered will, in time, prove to be quite as pernicious as the decision made by this tribunal in the Dred Scott case .”
It was. After Plessy, Jim Crow laws spread
swiftly through the South. More and more public conveyances, schools, and restaurants were segregated. Signs saying “Whites only” or “Colored” appeared on entrances and exits, rest- rooms and water fountains, waiting rooms, and even elevators. In 1905, Georgia passed the fi rst law requiring separate public parks. In 1909, Mobile, Alabama, enacted a curfew requiring blacks to be off the streets by 10 P.M. In 1915, South Carolina forbade blacks and whites to work in the same rooms in textile factories. The Oklahoma leg- islature required separate telephone booths; New Orleans segregated white
different color, or clothes, or car- riages? Laws might make blacks and whites (or Protestants and Catholics, natives and foreign-born, or anyone else, for that matter) sit on opposite sides of a courtroom or use different playgrounds.
Deciding the case was simple, Tourgée concluded: “Suppose you, the members of the Court, were suddenly ordered into a Jim Crow car of your own. What humiliation, once owned slaves. But accepting what rage would then fi ll the judicial mind!”
Finally, on May 18, 1896, the Court handed down its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson . By a vote of 7 to 1, it decided against Plessy. Upholding the doctrine of “separate but equal,” it held that the Louisiana law did not violate Plessy’s rights. It did not vio- late them, the Court said, because the law was “reasonable”; it had been passed “with reference to the estab- lished usages, customs, and tradi- tions of the people.”
It was precisely those usages and customs—race prejudice, in short— that Tourgée had argued against. They were contrary to the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution, he had argued, but the majority of the Court would have none of it. The authors of those amendments, they said, could not have meant to do away with racial distinctions or institute social equality; that simply could not be done. Laws did not cre- ate race prejudice, and they could not change it. Enforced segregation did not label anyone as inferior. “We consider,” the Court said, “the under- lying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argu- ment to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
There was irony in the Court’s vote. Justice Henry Billings Brown, a son of Massachusetts and Michigan, wrote the opinion for the majority, a measure
463
3. What are some of the factors that contributed to increased segregation in the South and North, after 1890?
do you think of these reasons? How do you think the majority refl ected the climate of their times? What changes in public opinion have occurred since?
2. Do you think Tourgée established an effective defense in arguing that the light-skinned Plessy had been deprived of his valuable property, “ the reputation of being white ”? Why or why not?
reversed itself and overturned Plessy . Ruling that segregated schools are inherently unequal, the Court’s stand toppled segregation of many kinds and changed lives once again.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What did the majority of the Supreme Court give as its reasons in deciding Plessy v. Ferguson ? What
464 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER REVIEW
1883 Metropolitan Opera opens in New York 1885 Home Insurance Building, country’s fi rst metal-frame
structure, erected in Chicago; American Economic Association formed to advocate government inter- vention in economic affairs
1887 Edward Bellamy promotes idea of socialist utopia in Looking Backward, 2000–1887
1889 Jane Addams opens Hull House in Chicago 1890 National Woman Suffrage Association and the
American Woman Suffrage Association, both formed in 1869, merge to consolidate the woman suffrage movement
1894 Immigration Restriction League formed to limit immigration from southern and eastern Europe
1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson establishes constitutionality of “separate but equal” facilities; John Dewey’s Laboratory School for test- ing and practice of new educational theory opens at University of Chicago
1862 Morrill Land Grant gives land to states for establishment of colleges
1869 Rutgers and Princeton play in nation’s fi rst intercol- legiate football game; Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball’s fi rst professional team, organized
1873 Comstock Law bans obscene articles from U.S. mail; Nation’s fi rst kindergarten opens in St. Louis, Missouri
1874 Women’s Christian Temperance Union formed to crusade against evils of liquor
1876 Johns Hopkins University opens fi rst separate graduate school
1879 Henry George analyzes problems of urbanizing America in Progress and Poverty ; Salvation Army arrives in United States
1880 Polish National Alliance formed to help Polish immigrants adjust to life in America
1881 Booker T. Washington opens Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; Dr. John H. Kellogg advises parents to teach their children about sex in Plain Facts for Old and Young
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 19 Toward an Urban Society, 1877–1900 on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The Lure of the City
Why did cities expand in the United States between 1880 and 1900?
American cities grew by leaps and bounds between 1880 and 1900. Among the reasons for the growth were the needs of an industrializing society; technological
change in the form of electricity, elevators, steel beams, and other advances; and the arrival of millions of immigrants. Politically, city bosses retained power by responding to the needs of immigrants and other urban voters. (p. 439 )
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900
How did the growth of American cities affect social, cultural, and political life?
The rapid growth of cities changed how Americans thought and acted. Cities opened up new areas of enter- tainment, employment, and behavior. They reshaped
the family, brought more women into the workforce, and emphasized education. (p. 447 )
The Spread of Jim Crow
Why did Jim Crow laws spread across the South after end of the Reconstruction?
After Reconstruction ended in 1877, northern weariness with Civil War issues, a series of Supreme Court decisions, and growing racism led the federal government to stop
trying to uphold civil rights legislation in the South. This enabled Southern states and cities to pass and enforce Jim Crow laws that mandated rigid separation between blacks and whites. (p. 454 )
The Stirrings of Reform
How did life in the growing cities lead to ideas of reform?
Urban life, which forced many people close together, made social problems unprecedentedly visible. The city could not hide the contrasts between rich and poor, the dirtiness
and dangers of factory life, and the woeful lot of millions of immigrants. Reformers argued for change. Some of them, like Jane Addams, opened urban settlement houses where they lived among the poor. (p. 455 )
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STUDY RESOURCES 465
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S New immigrants Starting in the 1880s, immigration into the United States began to shift from northern and western Europe to southern and eastern Europe. These new immigrants were mostly poor, non-Protestant, and unskilled; they tended to stay in close-knit communities and retain their language, customs, and religions. Between 1880 and 1910, approximately 8.4 million of these so-called new immigrants came to the United States. p. 444
Mugwumps Educated and upper-class reformers who crusaded for lower tariffs, limited federal government, and civil service reform. They were best known for helping elect Grover Cleveland president in 1884. p. 448
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) This organiza- tion campaigned to end drunkenness and the social ills that accompanied it. By 1898, it had 10,000 branches and 500,000 members. The WCTU illustrated the role women played in politics and reform long before they won the right to vote. p. 448
National American Woman Suffrage Association Founded by Susan B. Anthony in 1890, this organization worked to secure women the right to vote. It stressed careful organization and peaceful lobbying. p. 450
Plessy v. Ferguson A Supreme Court case in 1896 that established the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The Court applied it to schools in Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899). The doctrine was finally overturned in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. p. 451
Civil Rights Cases A group of cases in 1883 in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment barred state governments from discriminating on the basis of race but did not prevent private indi- viduals or organizations from doing so. The ruling dealt a major blow to efforts to protect African Americans. p. 451
Social Darwinism Adapted by English social philosopher Herbert Spencer from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, this theory held that the “laws” of evolution applied to human life, that change or reform therefore took centuries, and that the “fittest” would succeed in business and social relationships. It promoted competition and individualism, saw government intervention into human affair as futile, and was used by the economic and social elite to oppose reform. p. 455
Social Gospel Preached by urban Protestant ministers, the Social Gospel focused as much on improving the conditions of life on earth as on saving souls for the hereafter. Its adherents worked for child-labor laws and measures to alleviate poverty. p. 457
Settlement houses Located in poor districts, these community centers tried to soften the impact of urban life for immigrant and other families. Often run by young, educated women, they provided social ser- vices and a political voice for their neighborhoods. Chicago’s Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in 1889, was the most famous of them. p. 457
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What were the main economic, social, and political characteristics of the new urban society?
2. In what ways did the social and cultural changes of urban society affect fundamental outlooks on the family, the role of women, and education, and lead to demands for reform?
3. How did reform-minded critics try to meet the challenges of urban growth?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 19 on MyHistoryLab
Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900 The Lure of the City
Read the Document Charles Loring Brace, “The Life of the Street Rats” (1872) p. 439
Immigration, 1880–1920 p. 444 View the Map
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Ellis Island Immigrants (1903) p. 442 Watch the Video
Democracy and Corruption: The Rise of Political Machines p. 446
Watch the Video ◾
Read the Document The Morrill Act (1862) p. 452
Address at the Atlanta Exposition by Booker T. Washington p. 453
Listen to the Audio File
The Stirrings of Reform
Edward Bellamy, from Looking Backward p. 456
Read the Document
Jane Addams, from Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) p. 458
Plessy v. Ferguson: The Shaping of Jim Crow p. 460
Read the Document
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Group of Emigrants (Women and Children) from Eastern Europe on Deck of the S.S. Amsterdam p. 441
View the Closer Look ◾
◾ Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears p. 442
Complete the Assignment Complete the Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
in need. The records of the Massachusetts state medical examiner told a grim story:
K.R., 29 Suicide by drowning Boston October 2, 1896 Out of work and despondent for a long while. Body found floating in the Charles [River]. F.S., 29 Suicide by arsenic Boston January 1, 1896
Much depressed for several weeks. Loss of employment. At 7:50 A.M. Jan. 1, she called her father and told him she had taken poison and wished to die.
R.N., 23 Suicide by bullet wound of brain Boston June 22, 1896 Out of work. Mentally depressed. About 3 P.M. June 21 shot himself in right temple. . . . Left a letter explaining that he killed himself to save others the trouble of caring for him.
Hardship and Heartache In June 1894, Susan Orcutt, a young farm woman from western Kansas, sat down to write the governor of her state a letter. She was desperate. The nation was in the midst of a devastating economic depression, and, like thousands of other people, she had no money and nothing to eat. “I take my Pen In hand to let you know that we are Starving to death,” she wrote. Hail had ruined the Orcutts’ crops, and none of the household could find work. “My Husband went away to find work and came home last night and told me that we would have to Starve. [H]e has bin in ten countys and did not Get no work. . . . I havent had nothing to Eat today and It is three oclock[.]”
As bad as conditions were on the farms, they were no better in the cities. “There are thousands of homeless and starving men in the streets,” reported a journalist in Chicago in the winter of 1893. “I have seen more mis- ery in this last week than I ever saw in my life before.” Charity societies and churches tried to help, but they could not handle the huge numbers of people who were
POLITICS OF STALEMATE PG. 468 Why was there a stalemate between Republicans and Democrats until the mid-1890s?
REPUBLICANS IN POWER: THE BILLION- DOLLAR CONGRESS PG. 470 How did the Republican party’s vision shape the “Billion- Dollar Congress”?
THE RISE OF THE POPULIST MOVEMENT PG. 472 What factors led to the formation and growth of the Farmers’ Alliance and People’s party?
THE CRISIS OF THE DEPRESSION PG. 476 What were the main political and labor effects of the panic and depression of the 1890s?
CHANGING ATTITUDES PG. 479 What changes in outlook did the panic and depression of the 1890s bring about?
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1896 PG. 481 Why was the presidential election of 1896 so important?
THE MCKINLEY ADMINISTRATION PG. 485 What did McKinley accomplish that placed the results of the 1896 election on a solid basis?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Political Realignments in the 1890s 20
Chapter 20 Political Realignments in the 1890s Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
cities, brought about a bitter fi ght over the currency, and changed people’s thinking about government, unemployment, and reform. Th ere were outbreaks of warfare between capital and labor; farmers demanded a fairer share of economic and social benefi ts; the new immigrants came under fresh attack. Th e depression of the 1890s changed the course of American history, as did another event of that decade: the war with Spain in 1898.
Under the cruel impact of the depression, ideas changed in many areas, including a stronger impulse toward reform, a larger role for the presidency, and a call for help from many farmers and laborers. One of the most important of these areas was politics. A realignment of the American political system, which had been developing since the end of Reconstruction, fi nally reached its fruition in the 1890s, establishing new pat- terns that gave rise to the Progressive Era and lasted well into the twentieth century.
Lasting until 1897, the depression was the decisive event of the decade. At its height, three million people were unemployed—fully 20 percent of the workforce. The human costs were enormous, even among the well-to-do. “They were for me years of simple Hell,” shattering “my whole scheme of life,” said Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the descendant of two American presidents. “I was sixty-three years old and a tired man when at last the effects of the 1893 convulsion wore themselves out.”
L ike the Great Depression of the 1930s that gave rise to the New Deal, the depression of the 1890s had profound and lasting eff ects. Bringing to a head many of the tensions that had been building in the society, it increased rural hostility toward the
Homesteading on the Plains.
468 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
there were relatively few “independent” voters. Although linked to the defeated Confederacy, the Democrats revived quickly aft er the war. In 1874, they gained control of the House of Representatives, which they maintained for all but four of the succeeding twenty years. The Democrats rested on a less sectional base than the Republicans. Identifi cation with civil rights and military rule cut Republican strength in the South, but the Democratic party’s prin- ciples of states’ rights, decentralization, and limited government won supporters everywhere.
While Democrats wanted to keep government local and small, the Republicans pursued policies for the nation as a whole, in which government was an instrument to promote moral prog- ress and material wealth. Th e Republicans passed the Homestead Act (1862), granted subsidies to the transcontinental railroads, and pushed other measures to encourage economic growth. Th ey enacted legislation and constitutional amendments to protect civil rights. Th ey advocated a high protective tariff as a tool of economic policy to keep out foreign products while “infant industries” grew.
In national elections, sixteen states, mostly in New England and the North, consistently voted Republican; fourteen states, mostly in the South, consistently voted Democratic. Elections, therefore, depended on a handful of “doubtful” states, which could swing elec- tions either way. Th ese states—New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—received special attention at election time. Politicians lavished money and time on them; presidential candidates usually came from them. From 1868 to 1912, eight of the nine Republican presidential candidates and six of the seven Democratic candidates came from the “doubtful” states, especially New York and Ohio.
The two parties were evenly matched, and elections were closely fought. In three of the fi ve presidential elections from 1876 to 1892, the victor won by less than 1 percent of the vote; in 1876 and 1888, the losing candidates actually had more popular votes than the winners but lost in the electoral college. Knowing that small mistakes could lose elections, politicians became extremely cautious. Only twice during these years did one party control both the presidency and the two houses of Congress—the Republicans in 1888 and the Democrats in 1892.
Historians once believed that political leaders accom- plished little between 1877 and 1900, but those who saw few achievements were looking in the wrong location. With the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the authority of the presi- dency dwindled in relation to congressional strength. For the first time in many years, attention shifted away from Washington itself. North and South, people who were weary of the centralization brought on by war and Reconstruction looked first to state and local governments to deal with the problems of an urban-industrial society.
Experiments in the States Across the country, state bureaus and commissions were established to regulate the new industrial society. Many of the early commis- sions were formed to oversee the railroads, at the time the nation’s largest businesses. People who shipped goods over the railroads, especially farmers and merchants, wanted to end the policies of rate discrimination and other harmful practices. In 1869, Massachusetts
Politics of Stalemate
Why was there a stalemate between Republicans and Democrats until the mid-1890s?
Politics was a major fascination of the late nineteenth century, its mass entertainment and favorite sport. Political campaigns were events that involved the whole community, even though in most states only men could vote. During the weeks leading up to an election, there were rallies, parades, picnics, and torchlight pro- cessions. Millions of Americans read party newspapers, listened to three-hour speeches by party leaders, and in elections turned out in enormous numbers to vote. In the six presidential elections from 1876 to 1896, an average of almost 79 percent of the electorate voted, a higher percentage than voted before or aft er.
White males made up the bulk of the electorate; until aft er the turn of the century, women could vote in national elections only in Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. The National Woman Suff rage Association sued early for the vote, but in 1875, the Supreme Court ( Minor v. Happersett ) upheld the power of the states to deny this right to women. On several occasions, Congress refused to pass a constitutional amendment for woman suffrage, and between 1870 and 1910, nearly a dozen states defeated referenda to grant women the vote.
Black men were another group kept from the polls. In 1877, Georgia adopted the poll tax to make voters pay an annual tax for the right to vote. Th e technique, aimed at impoverished blacks, was quickly copied across the South. In 1882, South Carolina adopted the “eight box” law, soon copied elsewhere, that required ballots for separate offi ces to be placed in separate boxes, a diffi cult task for illiterate voters.
In 1890, Mississippi required voters to be able to read and interpret the federal Constitution to the satisfaction of registration offi cials, all of them white. Such literacy tests, which the Supreme Court upheld in the case of Williams v. Mississippi (1898), excluded poor white voters as well as blacks. In 1898, Louisiana avoided the problem by adopting the famous “grandfather clause,” which used a literacy test to disqualify black voters but permitted men who had failed the test to vote anyway if their fathers and grandfathers had voted before 1867—a time, of course, when no blacks could vote. Th e number of black voters decreased dramatically. In 1896, there were 130,334 registered black voters in Louisiana; in 1904, there were 1,342.
The Party Deadlock The 1870s and 1880s were still dominated by the Civil War generation, the unusual group of people who rose to power in the turbulent 1850s. In both the North and South, they had ruled longer than most generations, with a consciousness that the war experience had set them apart. Five of the six presidents elected between 1865 and 1900 had served in the war, as had many civic, business, and religious leaders. In 1890, well over one million vet- erans of the Union army were still alive, and Confederate veterans numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
Party loyalties—rooted in Civil War traditions, ethnic and reli- gious diff erences, and perhaps class distinctions—were remarkably strong. Voters clung to their old parties, shift s were infrequent, and
Politics of Stalemate 469
which created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to investi- gate and oversee railroad activities. Th e act outlawed rebates and pooling agreements, and the ICC became the prototype of the fed- eral commissions that today regulate many parts of the economy.
Reestablishing Presidential Power Johnson’s impeachment, the scandals of the Grant adminis- trations, and the controversy surrounding the 1876 election weakened the presidency. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, presidents fought to reassert their authority, and by 1900, under William McKinley, they had succeeded to a remarkable degree. Th e late 1890s, in fact, marked the birth of the modern powerful presidency.
Rutherford B. Hayes entered the White House with his title clouded by the disputed election of 1876. Opponents called him “His Fraudulency” and “Rutherfraud B. Hayes,” but soon he began to reassert the authority of the presidency. Hayes worked for reform in the civil service, placed well-known reformers in high offi ces, and, ordering the last troops out of South Carolina and Louisiana, ended military Reconstruction. Committed to the gold standard— the only basis, Hayes thought, of a sound currency—in 1878 he vetoed a bill that called for the partial coinage of silver, but Congress passed this Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act over his veto.
James A. Garfi eld, a Union army hero and longtime member of Congress, succeeded Hayes. Winning by a handful of votes in 1880, he took offi ce energetically, determined to unite the Republican party (which had been split by personality diff erences and disagreement over policy toward the tariff and the South), lower the tariff to cut taxes, and assert American economic and strategic interests in Latin America. Ambitious and eloquent, Garfi eld had looked forward to the presidency, yet within a few weeks he said to friends, “My God! What is there in this place that a man should ever want to get into it?”
Offi ce seekers, hordes of them, evoked Garfi eld’s anguish. Each one wanted a government job, and each one thought nothing of cornering the president on every occasion. Th e prob- lem of government jobs also provoked a bitter fi ght with the pow- erful senator from New York, Roscoe Conkling, who resented some of Garfi eld’s choices. On the verge of victory over Conkling, Garfield planned to leave Washington on July 2, 1881, for a vacation in New England. Walking toward his train, he was shot in the back by Charles J. Guiteau, a deranged lawyer and disap- pointed offi ce seeker. Suff ering through the summer, Garfi eld died on September 19, 1881, and Vice President Chester A. Arthur—an ally of Senator Conkling—became president.
THE ELECTION OF 1880
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Garfi eld Republican 4,454,416 214
Hancock Democrat 4,444,952 155
Weaver Greenback 308,578 0
Arthur was a better president than many had expected. Deft ly, he established his independence of Conkling. Conservative in outlook, he reversed Garfield’s foreign policy initiatives in
established the fi rst commission to regulate the railroads; by 1900, twenty-eight states had taken such action.
Most of the early commissions were advisory in nature. Th ey collected statistics and published reports on rates and practices— serving, one commissioner said, “as a sort of lens” to focus public attention. Impatient with the results, legislatures in the Midwest and on the Pacifi c coast established commissions with greater power to fi x rates, outlaw rebates, and investigate rate discrimina- tion. Th ese commissions, experimental in nature, served as models for later policy at the federal level.
Illinois had one of the most thoroughgoing provisions. Responding to local merchants who were upset with existing rail- road rate policies, the Illinois state constitution of 1870 declared railroads to be public highways and authorized the legislature to pass laws establishing maximum rates and preventing rate dis- crimination. In the important case of Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court upheld the Illinois legislation, declaring that private property “aff ected with the public interest . . . must submit to being controlled by the public for the common good.”
But the Court soon weakened that judgment. In the Wabash case of 1886 ( Wabash, St. Louis, & Pacifi c Railway Co. v. Illinois ), it narrowed the Munn ruling and held that states could not regulate commerce extending beyond their borders. Only Congress could. Th e Wabash decision turned people’s attention back to the federal govern- ment. It spurred Congress to pass the Interstate Commerce Act (1887),
Read the Document The Interstate Commerce Act (1887)
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 was a federal law crafted to regulate the railroad industry and its anti-competitive practices. The Act created a regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was empowered to investigate and oversee railroad activities.
470 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
Latin America, but he approved the construction of the modern American navy. Arthur worked to lower the tariff , and in 1883, with his backing, Congress passed the Pendleton Act to reform the civil service. In part a reaction to Garfi eld’s assassination, the act created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to administer competi- tive examinations and appoint offi ceholders on the basis of merit. Initially, the act aff ected only about fourteen thousand of some one hundred thousand government offi ces, but it laid the basis for the later expansion of the civil service.
In the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland, the Democratic governor of New York, narrowly defeated Republican nominee, James G. Blaine, largely because of the continuing divisions in the Republican party. Th e fi rst Democratic president since 1861, Cleveland was slow and ponderous, known for his honesty, stub- bornness, and hard work. His term in the White House from 1885 to 1889 refl ected the Democratic party’s desire to curtail federal activities. Cleveland vetoed more than two-thirds of the bills pre- sented to him, more than all his predecessors combined.
Forthright and sincere, he brought a new respectability to a Democratic party still tainted by its link with secession. Working long into the night, he reviewed veterans’ pensions and civil service appointments. He continued Arthur’s naval construction program and forced railroad, lumber, and cattle companies to surrender millions of acres of fraudulently occupied public domain. Late in 1887, he devoted his annual message to an attack on the tariff , “the vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unnecessary taxation,” and committed himself and the Democratic party to lowering the tariff .
The Republicans accused him of undermining American industries, and in 1888, they nominated for the presidency Benjamin Harrison, a defender of the tariff . Cleveland garnered ninety thousand more popular votes than Harrison but won the elec- toral votes of only two northern states and the South. Harrison won the rest of the North, most of the “doubtful” states, and the election.
THE ELECTION OF 1884
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Cleveland Democrat 4,874,986 219
Blaine Republican 4,851,981 182
Butler Greenback 175,370 0
St. John Prohibition 150,369 0
Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress
How did the Republican party’s vision shape the “Billion-Dollar Congress”?
Despite Harrison’s narrow margin, the election of 1888 was the most sweeping victory for either party in almost twenty years; it gave the Republicans the presidency and both houses of Congress. Th e Republicans, it seemed, had broken the party stalemate and become the majority party in the country.
Democratic leaders hoped not, and, eager to embarrass the Republicans and block Republican-sponsored laws, the Democrats
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UTAH TERR.
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Election of 1888
Electoral Vote by State
DEMOCRATIC Grover Cleveland
REPUBLICAN Benjamin Harrison
Popular Vote
5,540,309
5,439,853233
168
MINOR PARTIES 396,441
11,376,603401
in Congress used minority tactics, especially the “disappearing quorum” rule, which let members of the House of Representatives join in debate but then refuse to answer the roll call to determine whether a quorum was present.
For two months, the Democrats used the rule to bring Congress to a halt. Th e Republicans grew angry and impatient. On January 29, 1890, they fell two votes short of a quorum, and Speaker of the House Th omas B. Reed, a crusty veteran of Maine politics, made congressional history. “Th e Chair,” he said, “directs the Clerk to record the following names of members present and refusing to vote.” Democrats shouted “Czar! Czar!”, a title that stuck to Reed for the rest of his life. Tumult continued for days, but in mid-February 1890, the Republicans adopted the Reed rules and proceeded to enact the party’s program.
Tariffs, Trusts, and Silver As if a dam had burst, law aft er law poured out of the Republican Congress during 1890. Th e Republicans passed the McKinley Tariff Act, which raised tariff duties about 4 percent, higher than ever before; it also included a novel reciprocity provision that allowed the president to lower duties if other countries did the same. In addition, the act used duties to promote new industries, such as tinplate for packaging the new “canned” foods appear- ing on grocery store shelves. A Dependent Pensions Act granted pensions to Union army veterans and their widows and children. Th e pensions were modest—$6 to $12 a month—but the number of pensioners doubled by 1893, when nearly one million indi- viduals received about $160 million in pensions.
Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress 471
manufacturer, was not subject to the law. But judicial interpre- tations changed aft er the turn of the century, and the Sherman Antitrust Act gained fresh power.
Another measure, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act , tried to end the troublesome problem presented by silver. As one of the two most commonly used precious metals, silver had once played a large role in currencies around the world, but by the mid-1800s, it had slipped into disuse. With the discovery of the great bonanza mines in Nevada, American silver production quadrupled between 1870 and 1890, glutting the world market, lowering the price of silver, and persuading many European nations to demonetize sil- ver in favor of the scarcer metal, gold. Th e United States kept a limited form of silver coinage with congressional passage of the B land-Allison Act in 1878.
Support for silver coinage was especially strong in the South and West, where people thought it might infl ate the currency, raise wages and crop prices, and challenge the power of the gold-ori- ented Northeast. Eager to avert the free coinage of silver, which would require the coinage of all silver presented at the U.S. mints, President Harrison and other Republican leaders pressed for a compromise that took shape in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890.
With little debate, the Republicans and Democrats joined in passing the Sherman Antitrust Act , the fi rst federal attempt to reg- ulate big business. As the initial attempt to deal with the problem of trusts and industrial growth, the act shaped all later antitrust policy. It declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce.” Penalties for violation were stiff , including fi nes and imprisonment and the dissolution of guilty trusts. Experimental in nature, the act’s terms were oft en vague and left precise interpretation to later experi- ence and the courts.
One of the most important laws Congress passed, the Sherman Antitrust Act made the United States virtually the only industrial nation to regulate business combinations. It tried to harness big business without harming it. Many mem- bers of Congress did not expect the new law to have much eff ect on businesses, and for a decade, in fact, it did not. Th e Justice Department rarely fi led suit under it, and in the United States v. E. C. Knight Co. decision (1895), the fi rst judicial interpreta- tion of the law, the Supreme Court severely crippled it. Th ough the E. C. Knight Co. controlled 98 percent of all sugar refi n- ing in the country, the Court drew a sharp distinction between commerce and manufacturing, holding that the company, as a
Read the Document Workingman’s Amalgamated Sherman Anti-Trust (1893)
Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890, which authorized federal action against any “combination in the form of trusts or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” Though the act was envisioned as a way to control big business, its wording was sufficiently vague as to allow the federal government to use this law against labor unions, which many people considered to be combinations.
472 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
and discuss common problems. They came by the thousands, weary of drought, mortgages, and low crop prices. At the camp- grounds, they picnicked, talked, and listened to recruiters from an organization called the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union , which promised unified action to solve agri- cultural problems.
Farmers were joining the Alliance at the rate of 1,000 a week; the Kansas Alliance alone claimed 130,000 members in 1890. Th e summer of 1890 became “that wonderful picnicking, speech-making Alliance summer,” a time of fellowship and spirit long remembered by farmers.
The Farm Problem Farm discontent was a worldwide phenomenon between 1870 and 1900. With the new means of transportation and communication, farmers everywhere were caught up in a complex international market they neither controlled nor entirely understood.
American farmers complained bitterly about declining prices for their products, rising railroad rates for shipping them, and burdensome mortgages. Some of their grievances were valid. Farm profits were certainly low; agriculture in general tends to pro- duce low profi ts because of the ease of entry into the industry. Th e prices of farm commodities fell between 1865 and 1890—corn sold at sixty-three cents a bushel in 1881 and twenty-eight cents in 1890— but they did not fall as low as did other commodity prices. Despite the fact that farmers received less for their crops, their purchasing power actually increased.
Neither was the farmers’ second grievance—rising railroad rates—entirely justifi ed. Railroad rates actually fell during these years, benefi ting shippers of all products. Farm mortgages, the farmers’ third grievance, were common because many farmers mortgaged their property to expand their holdings or buy new farm machinery. While certainly burdensome, most mortgages did not bring hardship. Th ey were oft en short, with a term of four years or less, aft er which farmers could renegotiate at new rates, and the new machinery the farmers bought enabled them to triple their output and increase their income.
Th e terms of the farm problem varied from area to area and year to year. New England farmers suff ered from overworked land; farmers in western Kansas and Nebraska went broke in a severe drought that followed a period of unusual rainfall. Many southern farmers were trapped in the crop lien system that kept them in debt. Th ey called it the “anaconda” system because of the way it coiled slowly and tightly around them.
Some farmers did have valid grievances, though many understandably tended to exaggerate them. More important, many farmers were sure their condition had declined, and this perception—as bitterly real as any actual fact—sparked a grow- ing anger. Equally upsetting, everyone in the 1870s and 1880s seemed excited about factories, not farms. Farmers had become “hayseeds,” a word that fi rst appeared in 1889, and they watched their off spring leave for city lights and new careers. A literature of disillusionment emerged, most notably Hamlin Garland’s Son of the Middle Border (1890) and Main-Travelled Roads (1891), which described the drabness of farm life.
Th e act directed the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver a month and to issue legal tender in the form of Treasury notes in payment for it. Th e act was a compromise; it satisfi ed both sides. Opponents of silver were pleased that it did not include free coinage. Silverites, on the other hand, were delighted that the monthly purchases would buy up most of the country’s silver pro- duction. Th e Treasury notes, moreover, could be cashed for either gold or silver at the bank, a gesture toward a true bimetallic system based on silver and gold.
As a fi nal measure, Republicans in the House courageously passed a federal elections bill to protect the voting rights of blacks in the South. Although restrained in language and intent, it set off a storm of denunciation among the Democrats, who called it a “force bill” that would station army troops in the South. Because of the outcry, the bill failed in the Senate; it was the last major eff ort until the 1950s to enforce the Fift eenth Amendment to the Constitution.
The 1890 Elections Th e Republican Congress of 1890 was one of the most impor- tant Congresses in American history. It passed a record number of signifi cant laws that helped shape later policy and asserted the authority of the federal government to a degree the country would not then accept. Sensing the public reaction, the Democrats labeled it the “Billion-Dollar Congress” for spending that much in appropriations and grants.
“Th is is a billion-dollar country,” Speaker Reed replied, but the voters disagreed. Th e 1890 elections crushed the Republicans, who lost an extraordinary seventy-eight seats in the House. Th e elections also crushed Republicans in the Midwest, where, again enlarging government authority, they had passed state laws pro- hibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages, requiring the closing of businesses on Sunday, and mandating the use of English in the pub- lic and parochial schools. Roman Catholics, German Lutherans, and other groups resented such laws, which they saw as a direct attack on their religion and personal freedoms, and they angrily deserted the Republicans.
Political veterans went down to defeat, and new leaders vaulted into sudden prominence. Nebraska elected a Democratic governor for the first time in its history. The state of Iowa, once so staunchly Republican that a local leader had predicted that “Iowa will go Democratic when Hell goes Methodist,” went Democratic in 1890.
The Rise of the Populist Movement
What factors led to the formation and growth of the Farmers’ Alliance and People’s party?
The elections of 1890 drew attention to a fast-growing move- ment among farmers that soon came to be known far and wide as populism. The movement had begun rather quietly, in places distant from normal centers of attention, and for a time it went almost unnoticed in the press. But during the summer of 1890, wagonloads of farm families in the South and West converged on campgrounds and picnic areas to socialize
The Rise of the Populist Movement 473
The Fast-Growing Farmers’ Alliance Originally a social organization for farmers, the Grange lost many of its members as it turned more and more toward politics in the late 1870s. In its place, a multitude of farm societies sprang into existence. By the end of the 1880s, they had formed into two major organizations: the National Farmers’ Alliance, located on the plains west of the Mississippi and known as the Northwestern Alliance, and the Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union, based in the South and known as the Southern Alliance.
Th e Southern Alliance began in Texas in 1875 but did not assume major proportions until Dr. Charles W. Macune, an ener- getic and farsighted person, took over the leadership in 1886. Rapidly expanding, the Alliance absorbed other agricultural societies. Its agents spread across the South, where farmers were fed up with crop liens, depleted lands, and sharecropping. Th ey “seem like unto ripe fruit,” an Alliance organizer said; “you can garner them by a gentle shake of the bush.” In 1890, the Southern Alliance claimed more than a million members. It welcomed to membership the farmers’ “natural friends”—country doctors, schoolteachers, preachers, and mechanics. It excluded lawyers, bankers, cotton merchants, and warehouse operators.
An eff ective organization, the Southern Alliance published a newspaper and distributed Alliance material to hundreds of local newspapers, and in fi ve years it sent lecturers to forty-three states and territories where they spoke to two m illion farm families. It was “the most massive organizing drive by any citizen institution of nineteenth-century America.” Like the Grange, the Alliance also established cooperative grain elevators, marketing associations, and retail stores—all designed to bring farmers together to make greater profi ts. Most of the projects were short-lived, but for a time, between 1886 and 1892, cooperative enterprises blossomed in the South.
1876
Cents per pound
1880 1890 1895 19001866
Dollars per bushel
1874 1882 1890 1898
Wheat, 1866–1900 Cotton, 1876–1900
1885
2.00
1.80
1.60
1.40
1.20
1.00
.80
.60
10.50
9.50
8.50
7.50
6.50
5.50
SELECTED COMMODITY PRICES
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 , Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
Loosely affiliated with the Southern Alliance, a separate Colored Farmers’ National Alliance and Cooperative Union enlisted black farmers in the South. Claiming more than one million members, it probably had closer to 250,000, but even that fi gure was sizable in an era when “uppity” blacks faced not merely defeat, but death. In 1891, black cotton pickers struck for higher wages near Memphis, Tennessee. Led by Ben Patterson, a 30-year-old picker, they walked off several plantations, but a posse hunted them down and, following violence on both sides, lynched fi ft een strikers, including Patterson. Th e abortive strike ended the Colored Farmers’ Alliance.
On the plains, the Northwestern Alliance, a smaller organi- zation, was formed in 1880. Its objectives were similar to those of the Southern Alliance, but it disagreed with the Southerners’ emphasis on secrecy, centralized control, and separate organiza- tions for blacks. In 1889, the Southern Alliance changed its name to the National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union and per- suaded the three strongest state alliances on the plains—those in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Kansas—to join. Th ereaft er, the renamed organization dominated the Alliance movement.
Th e Alliance mainly sponsored social and economic pro- grams, but it turned early to politics. In the West, its leaders rejected both the Republicans and Democrats and organized their own party; in June 1890, Kansas Alliance members formed the fi rst major People’s party. Th e Southern Alliance resisted the idea of a new party for fear it might divide the white vote, thus under- cutting white supremacy.
Th omas E. Watson and Leonidas L. Polk, two politically minded Southerners, reflected the high quality of Alliance leadership. Georgia born, Watson was a talented orator and organizer; he urged Georgia farmers, black and white, to unite against their oppressors.
474 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
Th e Alliance strategy worked well in the elections of 1890. In Kansas, the Alliance-related People’s party, organized just a few months before, elected four congressmen and a U.S. senator. Across the South, the Alliance won victories based on the “Alliance yardstick,” a demand that Democratic party candidates pledge support for Alliance measures. Alliance leaders claimed thirty-eight Alliance supporters elected to Congress, with at least a dozen more pledged to Alliance principles.
The People’s Party After the 1890 elections, Northern Alliance leaders urged the formation of a national third party to promote reform, although the Southerners remained reluctant, still hopeful of capturing control of the Democratic party. Plans for a new party were dis- cussed at Alliance conventions in 1891 and the following year. In July 1892, a convention in Omaha, Nebraska, formed the new People’s (or Populist) party . Southern Alliance leaders joined in, convinced now that there was no reason to cooperate with
Th e president of the National Farmers’ Alliance, Polk believed in sci- entifi c farming and cooperative action. Jeremiah Simpson of Kansas, probably the most able of the western leaders, was refl ective and well read. A follower of reformer Henry George, he pushed for major social and economic change. Also from Kansas, Mary E. Lease helped head a movement remarkably open to female leadership. A captivat- ing speaker, she made 160 speeches during the summer of 1890, call- ing on farmers to rise against Wall Street and the industrial East.
Meeting in Ocala, Florida, in 1890, the Alliance adopted the Ocala Demands , the platform the organization pushed as long as it existed. First and foremost, the demands called for the creation of a “sub-treasury system,” which would allow farmers to store their crops in government warehouses. In return, they could claim Treasury notes for up to 80 percent of the local market value of the crop, a loan to be repaid when the crops were sold. Farmers could thus hold their crops for the best price. Th e Ocala Demands also urged the free coinage of silver, an end to protective tariff s and national banks, a federal income tax, the direct election of senators by voters instead of state legislatures, and tighter regulation of railroad companies.
Read the Document Proceedings of Grange Session (1879)
The Alliance movement grew quickly in the late 1800s among discontented farmers. This photograph shows Southern Alliance members meeting at the cabin that was the site of their first formal meeting in 1877 in Lampasas County, Texas. The cabin was later uprooted and exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.
The Rise of the Populist Movement 475
to attract more than a million. He carried Kansas, Idaho, Nevada, and Colorado, along with portions of North Dakota and Oregon, for a total of twenty-two electoral votes, a measure of agrarian unrest. Th e Populists elected governors in Kansas and North Dakota, ten congressmen, fi ve senators, and about fi ft een hundred members of state legislatures.
Despite the Populists’ victories, the election brought disap- pointment. Southern Democrats used intimidation, fraud, and manipulation to hold down Populist votes. Weaver was held to less than a quarter of the vote in every southern state except Alabama. In most of the country, he lost heavily in urban areas, with the exception of some mining towns in the Far West. He also failed to win over most farmers. In no midwestern state except Kansas and North Dakota did he win as much as 5 percent of the vote.
In the election of 1892, many voters switched parties, but they tended to realign with the Democrats rather than the Populists, whose platform on silver and other issues had relatively little appeal among city dwellers or factory workers. Although the Populists did run candidates in the next three presidential elec- tions, they had reached their peak in 1892. Th at year, Farmers’ Alliance membership dropped for the second year in a row, and the organization, which was once the breeding ground of the People’s party, was broken.
While it lived, the Alliance was one of the most powerful pro- test movements in American history. Catalyzing the feelings of hundreds of thousands of farmers, it attempted to solve specifi c economic problems while at the same time advancing a larger
the Democrats who exploited Alliance popularity but failed to adopt its reforms.
In the South, some Populists had worked to unite black and white farmers. “Th ey are in the ditch just like we are,” a white Texas Populist said. Blacks and whites served on Populist election commit- tees; they spoke from the same platforms, and they ran on the same tickets. Populist sheriff s called blacks for jury duty, an unheard-of practice in the close-of-the-century South. In 1892, a black Populist was threatened with lynching; he took refuge with Tom Watson, and two thousand white farmers, some of whom rode all night to get there, guarded Watson’s house until the threat passed.
Many of the delegates at the Omaha convention had planned to nominate Leonidas L. Polk for president, but he died suddenly in June, and the convention turned instead to James B. Weaver of Iowa, a former congressman, Union army general, and third-party candi- date for president in 1880 (on the Greenback-Labor party ticket). As its platform, the People’s party adopted many of the Ocala Demands.
Weaver waged an active campaign but with mixed results. He won 1,027,329 votes, the fi rst third-party presidential candidate ever
Read the Document Mary E. Lease, The Populist Crusader (1892)
Populist Mary E. Lease advised farmers to “raise less corn and more hell.” She also said, “If one man has not enough to eat three times a day and another man has $25 million, that last man has something that belongs to the first.”
Source: Kansas State Historical Society.
13
24 15 22
1 32
6
3 10
6 4
154 4
17 8
36
13
12 9
53 1
4
8
9
3
10 6
4
8
15 8
8 12
9 11 13
4
9
11
12
3
3
3
11 1
4
1 ARIZ. TERR.
UTAH TERR.
NEW MEXICO TERR.
OKLA. TERR.
INDIAN TERR.
Election of 1892
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN Benjamin Harrison
DEMOCRATIC* Grover Cleveland
Popular Vote
5,176,108
5,556,918277
145
PEOPLE'S (POPULIST)
James B. Weaver 1,027,32922
MINOR PARTIES
*Electors classed as Democratic were in many states elected on joint Democratic and People's party tickets.
264,133
12,024,488444
Read the Document Ocala Platform 1890
476 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
belt west of the Mississippi River, creating conditions unmatched until the devastating Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Corn withered in the fi elds. In the South, the price of cotton fell below fi ve cents a pound, far under the break-even point.
People became restless and angry. As one newspaper said in 1896: “On every corner stands a man whose fortune in these dull times has made him an ugly critic of everything and everybody.” Th ere was even talk of revolution and bloodshed. “Everyone scolds,” Henry Adams, the historian, wrote a British friend. “Everyone also knows what ought to be done. Everyone reviles everyone who does not agree with him, and everyone diff ers, or agrees only in con- tempt for everyone else. As far as I can see, everyone is right.”
Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike Some of the unemployed wandered across the country—singly, in small groups, and in small armies. During 1894, there were some fourteen hundred strikes involving more than a half million workers.
On Easter Sunday 1894, an unusual “army” of perhaps three hundred people left Massillon, Ohio. At its head rode “General” Jacob S. Coxey, a mild-looking middle-aged businessman who wanted to put the nation’s jobless to work building roads. Coxey wanted Congress to pass the Coxey Good Roads bill, which would authorize the printing of $500 million in paper money to fi nance road construction. His march to Washington—“a petition in boots,” he called it—drew nationwide attention.
Other armies sprang up around the country, and all headed for Washington to persuade the government to provide jobs on irriga- tion, road construction, or other projects. In the West, they com- mandeered freight trains and headed east. Coxey himself reached Washington on May 1, 1894, aft er a diffi cult, tiring march. Police were everywhere, lining the streets and blocking the approaches to the Capitol. Coxey made it to the foot of the Capitol steps, but before he could do anything, the police were on him. He and a companion were clubbed, then arrested for trespassing. A week later, Coxey was sentenced to twenty days in jail.
Th e armies melted away, but discontent did not. Th e great Pullman strike —one of the largest strikes in the country’s history—began just a few days aft er Coxey’s arrest when the employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company, living in a com- pany town just outside Chicago (a town in which everything was owned and meted out by the company), struck to protest wage cuts, continuing high rents, and layoff s. On June 26, 1894, the American Railway Union (ARU) under Eugene V. Debs joined the strike by refusing to handle trains that carried Pullman sleeping cars.
Within hours, the strike paralyzed the western half of the nation. Grain and livestock could not reach markets. Factories shut down for lack of coal. Th e strike extended into twenty-seven states and territories, tying up the economy and renewing talk of class warfare. In Washington, President Grover Cleveland, who had been reelected to the presidency in 1892, decided to break the strike on the grounds that it obstructed delivery of the mail.
On July 2, he secured a court injunction against the ARU, and he ordered troops to Chicago. When they arrived on the morning of Independence Day, the city was peaceful. Before long, however, violence broke out, and mobs, composed mostly of nonstrikers,
vision of harmony and community, in which people who cared about each other were rewarded for what they produced.
The Crisis of the Depression
What were the main political and labor effects of the panic and depression of the 1890s?
It was economic crisis, however, not harmony and community, that dominated the last decade of the century. Responding to the heady forces of industrialization, the American economy had expanded too rapidly in the 1870s and 1880s. Railroads had overbuilt, gambling on future growth. Companies had grown beyond their markets; farms and businesses had borrowed heavily for expansion.
The Panic of 1893 Th e mood changed early in 1893. In mid-February, panic suddenly hit the New York stock market. In one day, investors dumped one million shares of a leading company, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, and it went bankrupt. Business investment dropped sharply in the railroad and construction industries, touching off the worst economic downturn to that point in the country’s history.
Frightened, people hurriedly sold stocks and other assets to buy gold. Th e overwhelming demand depleted the gold reserve of the U.S. Treasury. Eroding almost daily, in March 1893, the Treasury’s reserve slumped toward the $100 million mark, an amount that stood for the government’s commitment to maintain the gold standard. On April 22, for the fi rst time since the 1870s, the reserve fell below $100 million.
Th e news shattered business confi dence—the stock market broke. On Wednesday, May 3, railroad and industrial stocks plummeted, and the next day, several major fi rms went bankrupt. When the market opened on Friday, crowds fi lled its galleries, anticipating a panic. Within minutes, leading stocks plunged to record lows, and there was pandemonium on the fl oor and in the streets outside. May 5, 1893, Wall Street’s worst day until the Great Crash of 1929, became “Industrial Black Friday,” “a day of terrible strain long remembered on the market.”
Aft erward, banks cut back on loans. Unable to get capital, busi- nesses failed at an average rate of two dozen a day during the month of May. “Th e papers are full of failures—banks are breaking all over the country, and there is a tremendous contraction of credits and hoarding of money going on everywhere,” an observer noted. On July 26, the Erie Railroad, one of the leading names in railroading history, failed.
August 1893 was the worst month. Across the country, factories and mines shut down. On August 15, the Northern Pacifi c Railroad went bankrupt; the Union Pacifi c and the Santa Fe soon followed. Some economists estimated unemployment at two million people, or nearly 15 percent of the labor force. During 1893, fi ft een thousand business fi rms and more than six hundred banks closed.
Th e year 1894 was even worse. Th e gross national product dropped again, and by midyear the number of unemployed stood at three million. One out of every fi ve workers was unemployed. “Famine is in our midst,” said the head of one city’s relief com- mittee. In the summer, a heat wave and drought struck the farm
The Crisis of the Depression 477
overturned freight cars, looted, and burned. Restoring order, the army occupied railroad yards in Illinois, California, and other places. By late July, the strike was over; Debs was jailed for violating the injunction. Many people applauded Cleveland’s action, “nominally for the expedition of the mails,” a newspaper said, but “really for the preservation of society.”
Th e Pullman strike had far-reaching consequences for the devel- opment of the labor movement. Working people resented Cleveland’s actions in the strike, particularly as it became apparent that he sided with the railroads. Upholding Debs’s sentence in In re Debs (1895), the Supreme Court endorsed the use of the injunction in labor disputes, thus giving business and government an eff ective antilabor weapon that hindered union growth in the 1890s. Th e strike’s failure catapulted Debs into prominence. During his time in jail, he turned to socialism, and aft er his release, he worked to build the Socialist Party of America, which experienced some success aft er 1900.
The Miners of the Midwest Th e plight of coal miners in the Midwest illustrated the personal and social impact of the depression. Even in the best of times, min- ing was a dirty and dangerous business. One miner in twelve died underground; one in three suff ered injury. Mines routinely closed for as long as six months a year, and wages fell with the depression.
Midwestern mining was oft en a family occupation, passed down from father to son. It demanded delicate judgments about when to blast, where to follow a seam, and how to avoid rockfalls. Until 1890, English and Irish immigrants dominated the business. Th ey migrated from mine to mine, and they nearly always lived in fl imsy shacks owned by the company. Time and again the miners struck for higher wages—between 1887 and 1894, there were 116 major coal strikes in Illinois, 111 in Ohio.
Aft er 1890, immigration from southern and eastern Europe, hitherto a trickle, became a fl ood. Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, Slovaks, Magyars, Russians, Bohemians, and Croatians came to the mines to fi nd work. In three years, nearly one thousand Italians settled in Coal City, Illinois; they comprised more than one-third of the population. In other mining towns, Italian and Polish miners soon made up almost half the population.
As the depression deepened, tensions grew between min- ers and their employers and between “old” miners and the “new.” Many new miners spoke no English, and oft en they were “birds of passage,” transients who had come to the United States to make money to take back home. Lacking the skills handed down by the old miners, they were oft en blamed for accidents, and they worked longer hours for less pay. At many a tavern aft er work, old miners grumbled about the diff erent-looking newcomers and considered ways to get rid of them.
In April 1894, a wave of wage reductions sparked an explosion of labor unrest in the mines. Th e United Mine Workers, a struggling union formed just four years earlier, called for a strike of bitumi- nous coal miners, and on April 21, virtually all midwestern and Pennsylvania miners—some 170,000 in all—quit working. Th e fl ow of crucial coal slackened; cities faced blackouts; factories closed.
Th e violence that soon broke out followed a signifi cant pattern. Over the years, the English and Irish miners had built up a set of unspoken understandings with their employers. Th e new miners had not, and they were more prone to violent action to win a strike. Th e depression hit them especially hard, frustrating their plans to earn money and return home. In many areas, anger and frustration turned the 1894 strikes into outright war.
For nearly two weeks in June 1894, fighting rocked the Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana coalfields. Mobs ignited mine shafts, dynamited coal trains, and defied state militias. While miners of all backgrounds participated in the violence, it often divided old miners and new. In Spring Valley, Illinois, exiled Italian anarchists took over the strike leadership and incited rioting despite the opposition of the old miners. Elsewhere, a mine fired by arsonists burned because the new miners prevented the old ones from extinguishing the blaze.
Shocked by the violence, public opinion shift ed against the strikers. Th e strike ended in a matter of weeks, but its eff ects lin- gered. English and Irish miners moved out into other jobs or up into supervisory positions. Jokes and songs poked cruel fun at the new immigrants, and the Pennsylvania and Illinois legisla- tures adopted laws to keep them out of the mines. Th ousands of old miners voted Populist in 1894—the Populist platform called for restrictions on immigration—in one of the Populists’ few suc- cesses that year. Th e United Mine Workers, dominated by the older miners, began in 1896 to urge Congress to stop the “demoralizing eff ects” of immigration.
Coxey’s army is shown here entering Washington, D.C. Jacob Coxey was arrested for trespassing on the lawn surrounding the U.S. Capitol. On the fiftieth anniversary of his march to Washington, Coxey was permitted to finish the speech that had been interrupted by his arrest in 1894.
Read the Document Jacob S. Coxey, “Address of Protest” (1894)
478 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
following November, he again sold bonds, and in February 1895, arousing outrage among many, he agreed to a third bond sale that allowed fi nancier J. Pierpont Morgan and other bankers to reap large profi ts. A fourth bond sale in January 1896 also failed to stop the drain on the reserve, although it further sharpened the silverites’ hatred of President Cleveland.
Still another blow to the morale of the Democrats came in 1894, when they tried to fulfi ll their long-standing promise to reduce the tariff . Despite all their eff orts, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, passed by Congress in August 1894, contained only modest reductions in duties. It reduced the tariff on coal, iron ore, wool, and sugar, ended the McKinley Tariff Act’s popular reciprocity agreements with other countries, and moved some duties higher than ever before. It also imposed a small income tax, a provision the Supreme Court over- turned in 1895 ( Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co. ). Very few Democrats, including Cleveland, were pleased with the measure, and the president let it become law without his signature.
Breaking the Party Deadlock The Democrats were buried in the elections of 1894. Suffering the greatest defeat in congressional history, they lost 113 House seats, while the Republicans gained 117. In twenty-four states, not a single Democrat was elected to Congress. Only one Democrat (Boston’s John F. Fitzgerald, the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy) came from all of New England. The Democrats even lost some of the “solid South,” and in the Midwest, a crucial battleground of the 1890s, the party was virtually destroyed.
Wooing labor and the unemployed, the Populists made strik- ing inroads in parts of the South and West, yet their progress was far from enough. In a year in which thousands of voters switched parties, the People’s party elected only four senators and four congressmen. Southern Democrats again used fraud and violence to keep the Populists’ totals down. In the Midwest, the Populists won double the number of votes they had received in 1892, yet still attracted less than 7 percent of the vote. Across the country, the discontented tended to vote for the Republicans, not the Populists, a discouraging sign for the Populist party.
For millions of people, Grover Cleveland became a scape- goat for the country’s economic ills. Th e Democratic party split, and southern and western Democrats deserted him in droves. At Democratic conventions, Cleveland’s name evoked jeers. “He is an old bag of beef,” Democratic Congressman “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman told a South Carolina audience, “and I am going to go to Washington with a pitchfork and prod him in his old fat ribs.”
Th e elections of 1894 marked the end of the party dead- lock that had existed since the 1870s. Th e Democrats lost, the Populists gained somewhat, and the Republicans became the majority party in the country. In the midst of the depression, the Republican doctrines of activism and national authority, which voters had repudiated in the elections of 1890, became more attractive. Th is was a development of great signifi cance, because as Americans became more accepting of the use of gov- ernment power to regulate the economy and safeguard individual welfare, the way lay open to the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and beyond.
Occurring at the same time, the Pullman strike pulled attention away from the crisis in the coalfi elds, yet the miners’ strike involved three times as many workers and provided a revealing glimpse of the tensions within American society. Th e miners of the Midwest were the fi rst large group of skilled workers seriously aff ected by the fl ood of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Buff eted by depression, they refl ected the social and economic discord that permeated every industry.
A Beleaguered President Building on the Democratic party’s sweeping triumph in the midterm elections of 1890, Grover Cleveland decisively defeated the Populist candidate, James B. Weaver, and the incumbent president, Benjamin Harrison, in 1892. He won by nearly four hundred thousand votes, a large margin by the standards of the era, and the Democrats increased their strength in the cities and among working-class voters. For the fi rst time since the 1850s, they controlled the White House and both branches of Congress.
The Democrats, it now seemed, had broken the party stalemate, but unfortunately for Cleveland, the Panic of 1893 struck almost as he took offi ce. He was sure that he knew its cause. Th e Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, he believed, had dam- aged business confi dence, drained the Treasury’s gold reserve, and caused the panic. Th e solution to the depression was equally simple: repeal the act.
In June 1893, Cleveland summoned Congress into special session. India had just closed its mints to silver, and Mexico was now the only country in the world with free silver coinage. Th e silverites were on the defensive, although they pleaded for a com- promise. Rejecting the pleas, Cleveland pushed the repeal bill through Congress, and on November 1, 1893, he signed it into law. Always sure of himself, he had staked everything on a single measure—a winning strategy if he succeeded, a devastating one if he did not.
Repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was probably a necessary action. It responded to the realities of international fi nance, reduced the fl ight of gold out of the country, and, over the long run, boosted business confi dence. Unfortunately, it con- tracted the currency at a time when infl ation might have helped. It did not bring economic revival. Th e stock market remained listless, businesses continued to close, unemployment spread, and farm prices dropped. “We are hourly expecting the arrival of the benev- olent man who is to pay ten cents a pound for cotton,” a Virginia newspaper said.
Th e repeal battle of 1893, discrediting the conservative Cleveland Democrats who had dominated the party since the 1860s, reshaped the politics of the country. It confi ned the Democratic party largely to the South, helped the Republicans become the majority party in 1894, and strengthened the position of the silver Democrats in their bid for the presidency in 1896. It also focused national attention on the silver issue and thus intensifi ed the silver sentiment Cleveland had intended to dampen. In the end, repeal did not even solve the Treasury’s gold problem. By January 1894, the reserve had fallen to $65 million. A year later, it fell to $44.5 million.
In January 1894, Cleveland desperately resorted to a sale of $50 million in gold bonds to replenish the gold reserve. Th e
Changing Attitudes 479
clubs, reform societies, university extension centers, church groups, farmers’ societies—gave people a place to discuss alter- natives to the existing order. Pressures for reform increased, and demand grew for government intervention to help the poor and unemployed.
“Everybody Works But Father” Women and children had been entering the labor force for years, and the depression accelerated the trend. As husbands and fathers lost their jobs, more and more women and children went to work. Even as late as 1901, well aft er the depression had ended, a study of working-class families showed that more than half the principal breadwinners were out of work. So many women and children worked that in 1905 there was a popular song titled “Everybody Works But Father.”
During the 1890s, the number of working women rose from 4 million to 5.3 million. Trying to make ends meet, they took in boarders and found jobs as laundresses, cleaners, or domestics. Where possible, they worked in offi ces and factories. Far more black urban women than white worked to supplement their husbands’ meager earnings. In New York City in 1900, nearly 60 percent of all black women worked, compared to 27 percent of the foreign-born and 24 percent of native-born white women. Men still dominated business offi ces, but during the 1890s, more
Changing Attitudes
What changes in outlook did the panic and depression of the 1890s bring about?
The depression, brutal and far reaching, did more than shift political alignments. Across the country, it undermined traditional views and caused people to rethink older ideas about government, the economy, and society. As men and women concluded that established ideas had failed to deal with the depression, they looked for new ones. There was, the president of the University of Wisconsin said, “a general, all-pervasive, restless discontent with the results of current political and economic thought.”
In prosperous times, Americans had thought of unemploy- ment as the result of personal failure, aff ecting primarily the lazy and immoral. “Let us remember,” a leading Protestant minister once said, “that there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings.” In the midst of depression, such views were harder to maintain, since everyone knew people who were both worthy and unemployed. Next door, a respected neighbor might be laid off ; down the block, an entire factory might be shut down.
People debated issues they had long taken for granted. New and reinvigorated local institutions—discussion clubs, women’s
Read the Document “Everybody Works But Father” (1905)
Tiny children peddling newspapers and women domestics serving the rich—their meager earnings were desperately needed.
480 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
which emphasized the eff ect of the environment on humans; and the new philosophy of pragmatism, which emphasized the rela- tivity of values.
Regionalist authors such as Joel Chandler Harris and George Washington Cable depicted life in the South. Hamlin Garland described the grimness of life on the Great Plains, and Sarah Orne Jewett wrote about everyday life in rural New England. Another regionalist, Bret Harte, achieved fame with stories that portrayed the local color of the California mining camps, particularly in his popular tale “Th e Outcasts of Poker Flat.”
Harte was joined by a more talented writer, Mark Twain, who became the country’s most outstanding realist author. Growing up along the Mississippi River in Hannibal County, Missouri, the young Samuel Langhorne Clemens observed life around him with a humorous and skeptical eye. Adopting a pen name from the river term “mark twain” (two fathoms), he wrote a number of important works that drew on his own experiences. Life on the Mississippi (1883) described his career as a steamboat pilot. Th e Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Th e Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) gained international prominence. In these books, Twain used dialect and common speech instead of literary language, touching off a major change in American prose style.
William Dean Howells—aft er Twain, the country’s most famous author—came more slowly to the realist approach. At fi rst, he wrote about the happier sides of life, but then he grew worried about the impact of industrialization. A Traveler from Altruria (1894), a utopian novel, described an industrial society that consumed lives. Th e poem “Society” (1895), written in the midst of the depression, compared society to a splendid ball in which men and women danced on fl owers covering the bodies of the poor:
And now and then from out the dreadful fl oor An arm or brow was lift ed from the rest, As if to strike in madness, or implore For mercy; and anon some suff ering breast Heaved from the mass and sank; and as before Th e revellers above them thronged and prest.
Other writers, the naturalists, became impatient even with realism. Pushing Darwinian theory to its limits, they wrote of a world in which a cruel and merciless environment determined human fate. Oft en focusing on economic hardship, naturalist writ- ers studied the poor, the lower classes, and the criminal mind; they brought to their writing the social worker’s passion for direct and honest experience.
Stephen Crane spent a night in a seven-cent lodging house on the Bowery and in “An Experiment in Misery” captured the smells and sounds of the poor. Crane depicted the carnage of war in Th e Red Badge of Courage (1895) and the impact of poverty in Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893).
Frank Norris assailed the power of big business in two dramatic novels, Th e Octopus (1901) and Th e Pit (1903), both the story of individual futility in the face of the heartless corporations. Norris’s McTeague (1899) studied the disintegration of character
and more employers noted the relative cheapness of female labor. Women telegraph and telephone operators nearly tripled in number during the decade. Women worked as clerks in the new fi ve-and-tens and department stores, and as nurses; in 1900, a half million were teachers. Th ey increasingly entered offi ce work as stenographers and typists, occupations in which they earned between $6.00 and $15.00 a week, compared to factory wages of $1.50 to $8.00 a week.
Th e depression also caused an increasing number of children to work. During the 1890s, the number of children employed in southern textile mills jumped more than 160 percent, and boys and girls under sixteen years of age made up nearly one-third of the labor force of the mills. Youngsters of eight and nine years worked twelve hours a day for pitiful wages. In most cases, how- ever, children worked not in factories but in farming and city street trades such as peddling and shoe shining. In 1900, the South had more than half the child laborers in the nation.
Concerned about child labor, middle-class women in 1896 formed the League for the Protection of the Family, which called for compulsory education to get children out of factories and into classrooms. The Mothers Congress of 1896 gave rise to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the spawn- ing ground of thousands of local Parent-Teacher Associations. The National Council of Women and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs took up similar issues. By the end of the 1890s, the Federation had 150,000 members who worked for various civic reforms in the fields of child welfare, education, and sanitation.
Changing Themes in Literature Th e depression also gave point to a growing movement in litera- ture toward realism and naturalism. In the years aft er the Civil War, literature oft en refl ected the mood of romanticism—sen- timental and unrealistic. Walt Whitman called it “ornamental confectionary” and “copious dribble,” but it remained popular through the end of the century.
Th e novels of Horatio Alger, which provided simple lessons about how to get ahead in business and life, continued to attract large numbers of readers. A failed New York minister, Alger published some 130 novels—with titles such as Sink or Swim, Work and Win , and Struggling Upward —which sold more than 20 million copies. Th ey told of poor youngsters who made their way to the top through hard work, thrift , honesty, and luck. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868–1869) related the daily lives of four girls in a New England family, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty (1877) charmed readers with the story of an abused horse that found a happy home, and Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur (1880), one of the era’s best-selling books, off ered a sweeping epic of life in the Roman empire.
After the 1870s, however, a number of talented authors began to reject romanticism and escapism, turning instead to realism. Determined to portray life as it was, they studied local dialects, wrote regional stories, and emphasized the “true” rela- tionships between people. In doing so, they refl ected broader trends in the society, such as industrialism; evolutionary theory,
The Presidential Election of 1896 481
silverites believed the amount of money in circulation deter- mined the level of activity in the economy. If money was short, that meant there was a limit on economic activity and ultimately a depression. If the government coined silver as well as gold, that meant more money in circulation, more business for everyone, and thus prosperity. Farm prices would rise; laborers would go back to work.
By 1896, silver was also a symbol. It had moral and patriotic dimensions—by going to a silver standard, the United States could assert its independence in the world—and it stood for a wide range of popular grievances. For many, it refl ected rural values rather than urban ones, suggested a shift of power away from the Northeast, and spoke for the downtrodden instead of the well-to-do. Silver represented the common people, as the vast literature of the movement showed.
William H. Harvey’s Coin’s Financial School (1894), the most popular of all silver pamphlets, had the eloquent Coin, a wise but unknown youth, tutoring famous people on the cur- rency. Bankers, lawyers, and scholars came to argue for gold, but they left shaken, leaning toward silver. Coin’s Financial School sold fi ve thousand copies a day at its peak in 1895, with tens of thousands of copies distributed free by silver organizations. It “is being sold on every railroad train by the newsboys and at every cigar store,” a Mississippi congressman said. “It is being read by almost everybody.”
Silver was more than just a political or economic issue. It was a social movement, one of the largest in American history, but its life span turned out to be brief. As a mass phenomenon, it fl our- ished between 1894 and 1896, then succumbed to electoral defeat, the return of prosperity, and the onset of fresh concerns. But in its time, the silver movement bespoke a national mood and won mil- lions of followers.
The Republicans and Gold Sensing victory over the discredited Democrats, numerous Republicans fought for the party’s presidential nomination, including “Czar” Th omas B. Reed of the Billion-Dollar Congress. Reed picked up early support but suff ered from his reputation for biting wit. William McKinley of Ohio, his chief rival, soon passed him in the race for the nomination.
Able, calm, and aff able, McKinley had served in the Union army during the Civil War. In 1876, he won a seat in Congress, where he became the chief sponsor of the tariff act named for him. In the months before the 1896 national convention, Marcus A. Hanna, his campaign manager and trusted friend, built a powerful national organization that featured McKinley as “the advance agent of prosperity,” an alluring slogan in a country beset with depression. When the convention met in June, McKinley had the nomination in hand, and he backed a platform that favored the gold standard against the free coinage of silver.
Republicans favoring silver proposed a prosilver platform, but the convention overwhelmingly defeated it. Twenty-three silverite Republicans, far fewer than prosilver forces had hoped, marched out of the convention hall. The remaining delegates waved handkerchiefs and flags and shouted “Good-bye” and
under economic pressure. Jack London, another naturalist author, traced the power of nature over civilized society in novels such as Th e Sea Wolf (1904) and Th e Call of the Wild (1903), his classic tale of a sled dog that preferred the diffi cult life of the wilderness to the world of human beings.
Theodore Dreiser, the foremost naturalist writer, grimly portrayed a dark world in which human beings were tossed about by forces beyond their understanding or control. “My own ambition,” Dreiser said, “is to represent my world, to conform to the large, truthful lines of life.” In his great novel Sister Carrie (1901), he followed a young farm girl who took a job in a Chicago shoe factory. He described the exhausting nature of factory work: “Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the fi ngers, and towards the last she seemed one mass of dull, complaining muscle, fi xed in an eternal position, and performing a single mechanical movement.”
Like other naturalists, Dreiser focused on environment and char- acter. He thought writers should tell the truth about human aff airs, not fabricate romance, and Sister Carrie , he said, was “not intended as a piece of literary craft smanship, but was a picture of conditions.”
The Presidential Election of 1896
Why was the presidential election of 1896 so important?
The election of 1896 was known as the “battle of the standards” because it focused primarily on the gold and silver standards of money. As an election, it was exciting and decisive. New voting patterns replaced old, a new majority party confirmed its control of the country, and national policy shifted to suit new realities.
The Mystique of Silver Sentiment for free silver coinage grew swift ly aft er 1894, domi- nating the South and West, appearing even in the farming regions of New York and New England. Pro-silver literature fl ooded the country. (See the Feature Essay, “Th e Wonderful Wizard of Oz ,” pp. 482 – 483 .) Pamphlets issued by the millions argued silver’s virtues.
People wanted quick solutions to the economic crisis. During 1896, unemployment shot up and farm income and prices fell to the lowest point in the decade. “I can remember back as far as 1858,” an Iowa hardware dealer said in February 1896, “and I have never seen such hard times as these are.” Th e silverites off ered a solution, simple but compelling: the free and independent coin- age of silver at the ratio of 16 ounces of silver to every ounce of gold. Free coinage meant that the U.S. mints would coin all the silver off ered to them. Independent coinage meant that the coun- try would coin silver regardless of the policies of other nations, nearly all of which were on the gold standard.
It is diffi cult now to understand the kind of faith the silveri- tes placed in silver as a cure for the depression. But faith it was, and of a sort that some observers compared to religious fervor. Underlying it all was a belief in a quantity theory of money: Th e
482
Complete the Assignment The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on myhistorylab
for the common folk. Added to the cur- rency in the form of silver d ollars, it meant more money, higher crop prices, and a return of prosperity.
and breaking onto the prairie, they saw “a new world, reaching to the far horizon without break of trees or chim- ney stack; just sky and grass and grass and sky. . . . The hush was so loud. . . . The heavens seemed nearer than ever before and awe and beauty and maj- esty over all.”
In later years, railroads crisscrossed the state, and advertisements touted the fertile soil. Land was plentiful, rain- fall somehow seemed to increase each year, crop prices held at levels high enough to pay, new farming imple- ments yielded larger crops, and prop- erty values increased.
Yet life on the prairie was never an easy matter. Flat, lonely, and wind- swept, the land affected people in ways that were hard to describe to the folks back East. When Aunt Em, Dorothy’s aunt, came to Kansas to live, she was young and pretty, but the sun and wind soon changed her. “They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also.” Like Aunt Em, Uncle Henry never laughed. “He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was.”
After 1887, the environment of the Great Plains family changed dra- matically. A series of droughts struck Kansas, and as many as three out of four farms were mortgaged in some Kansas counties. Thousands of settlers like Aunt Em and Uncle Henry gave up and retraced their steps East; others trusted in the Farmers’ Alliance and pinned their hopes on the free coin- age of silver. While gold as a standard of currency symbolized the idle rich of the industrial Northeast, silver stood
A restless dreamer, Frank Baum tried his hand at several careers before he gained fame and fortune as a writer of children’s literature. From 1888 to 1891, he ran a store and newspaper in South Dakota, where he experi- enced the desolation and grayness that accompanied agrarian discon- tent. An avid supporter of William Jennings Bryan in the “battle of the standards,” Baum wrote what many interpret as an enduring alle- gory of the silver movement, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Published in April 1900, it was an immediate success.
The book opens with a grim description of Kansas, the drab envi- ronment in which Dorothy grew up:
When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see noth- ing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of fl at country that reached the edge of the sky in all direc- tions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.
Kansas had not always seemed that way. After 1854, when the Kansas–Nebraska Act opened to set- tlement its 50 million acres of grass- land, people poured into the state to stake their claims. Many came from the hilly timbered country to the east,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Feature Essay
The Wicked Witch of the West.
483
Or so the supporters of silver coinage believed. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , read as an allegory, Dorothy (every person) is carried by a cyclone (a victory of the silver forces at the polls) from drought-stricken Kansas to a marvelous land of riches and witches. Unlike dry, gray Kansas, Oz is beautiful, with rippling brooks, stately trees, colorful fl owers, and bright- feathered birds. On arrival, Dorothy dis- poses of one witch, the Wicked Witch of the East (the eastern money power and those favoring gold), and frees the Munchkins (the common people) from servitude. To return to Kansas, she must fi rst go to the Emerald City (the greenback- colored national capital).
Dorothy wears magical silver slip- pers and follows the yellow brick road, thus achieving a proper relationship between the precious metals, silver and gold. Like many of her country- men, she does not at fi rst recognize the power of the silver slippers, but a kiss from the Good Witch of the North (Northern voters) protects her on the road. Dorothy meets the Scarecrow (the farmer), who has been told he has no brain but actually possesses great common sense (no “hick” or “hayseed,” he); the Tin Woodman (the industrial worker), who fears he has become heartless but discovers the spirit of love and cooperation; and the Cowardly Lion (reformers, particularly William Jennings Bryan), who turns out not to be very cowardly at all.
When the four companions reach the Emerald City, they meet the “Great and Terrible” Wizard, who tells them that, to gain his help, they must destroy the Wicked Witch of the West (mortgage companies, heart- less nature, and other things oppos- ing progress there). Courageously, they set forth. Dorothy dissolves the witch with a bucket of water (what else for drought-ridden farmers?), but when they return to the Emerald City, they fi nd that the great and power- ful Wizard (the money power) is only a charlatan, a manipulator, whose power rests on myth and illusion. “‘I thought Oz was a great Head,’ said Dorothy. . . . ‘And I thought Oz was a terrible Beast,’ said the Tin Woodman. ‘And I thought Oz was a Ball of Fire,’ exclaimed the Lion. ‘No; you are all wrong,’ said the little man meekly. ‘I have been making believe.’”
Dorothy unmasks the wizard, and with the help of Glinda, the Good Witch of the South (support for silver was strong in the South), uses the sil- ver slippers to return home to Kansas. Sadly, the shoes are lost in fl ight. Back in Oz, the Scarecrow rules the Emerald City (the triumph of the farmers), and the Tin Woodman reigns in the West (industrialism moves West). Oz was a familiar abbreviation to those involved in the fi ght over the ratio of silver to gold—16 ounces to 1.
Baum wanted to write American fairy tales to “bear the stamp of our times and depict the progressive
fairies of today.” The land of Oz refl ected his belief in the American values of free- dom and independence, love of family, self-reliance, individualism, and sympa- thy for the underdog. Oz , he said in the original introduction, “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the won- derment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.”
The Oz stories have remained popu- lar, and they still rest on many children’s bookshelves. A 1939 fi lm starring Judy Garland as Dorothy, with Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Jack Haley as the Tin Woodman, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, and Frank Morgan as the Wizard, was spectacularly successful. Released in the midst of another depression, the fi lm included songs designed to escape hardship, as Dorothy once had, “some- where over the rainbow.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why was The Wizard of Oz so popular as a book in the 1890s and a fi lm dur- ing the Great Depression in the 1930s?
2. How do Baum’s characters symbolize the values and social forces he was trying to address?
3. If Baum were writing today, what social forces and issues might he address?
484 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
The anti-Cleveland Democrats had their issue, but they lacked a leader. Out in Nebraska, Bryan saw the opportunity to take on that role. He was barely thirty-six years old and had rela- tively little political experience. But he had spent months wooing support, and he was a captivating public speaker—tall, slender, and handsome, with a resounding voice that, in an era without microphones, projected easily into every corner of an auditorium.
From the outset of the 1896 Democratic convention, the sil- ver Democrats were in charge, and they put together a platform that stunned the Cleveland wing of the party. It demanded the free coinage of silver, attacked Cleveland’s actions in the Pullman strike, and censured his sales of gold bonds. On July 9, as delegates debated the platform, Bryan’s moment came. Striding to the stage, he stood for an instant, a hand raised for silence, waiting for the applause to die down. He would not contend with the previous speakers, he began, for “this is not a contest between persons. Th e humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righ- teous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.”
Th e delegates were captivated. Like a trained choir, they rose, cheered each point, and sat back to listen for more. Easterners, Bryan said, liked to praise businessmen but forgot that plain p eople— laborers, miners, and farmers—were businessmen, too. Shouts rang through the hall, and delegates pounded on chairs. Savoring each cheer, Bryan defended silver. Th en came the famous closing: “Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world . . . we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: ‘You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”’
Bryan moved his fi ngers down his temples, suggesting blood trickling from his wounds. He ended with his arms outstretched as on a cross. Letting the silence hang, he dropped his arms, stepped back, then started to his seat. Suddenly, there was pandemonium. Delegates shouted and cheered. When the tumult subsided, they adopted the anti-Cleveland platform, and the next day, Bryan won the presidential nomination.
Campaign and Election The Democratic convention presented the Populists with a dilemma. Th e People’s party had staked everything on the assump- tion that neither major party would endorse silver. Now it faced a painful choice: Nominate an independent ticket and risk split- ting the silverite forces, or nominate Bryan and give up its separate identity as a party.
Th e choice was unpleasant, and it shattered the People’s party. Meeting late in July, the party’s national convention nomi- nated Bryan, but rather than accept the Democratic candidate for vice president, it named Tom Watson instead. Th e Populists’ endorsement probably hurt Bryan as much as it helped. It won him relatively few votes, since many Populists would have voted for him anyway. It also identifi ed him as a Populist, which he was not, allowing the Republicans to accuse him of heading a ragtag army of malcontents. Th e squabble over Watson seemed
“Put them out.” Hanna stood on a chair screaming “Go! Go! Go!” William Jennings Bryan, who was there as a special cor- respondent for a Nebraska newspaper, climbed on a desk to get a better view.
The Democrats and Silver Silver, meanwhile, had captured large segments of the Democratic party in the South and West. Despite President Cleveland’s oppo- sition, more than twenty Democratic state platforms came out for free silver in 1894. Power in the party shift ed to the South, where it remained for decades. Th e party’s base narrowed; its outlook increasingly reflected southern views on silver, race, and other issues. In eff ect, the Democrats became a sectional—no longer a national—party.
Read the Document William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” Speech (1896)
William Jennings Bryan was well known for his dramatic speeches. During the Democratic Convention of 1896, Bryan delivered his best-known speech, which attacked the gold standard. His stirring rhetoric captivated his audience and won him the Democratic presidential nomination for the election of 1896.
The McKinley Administration 485
the Northeast and Midwest and carried four border states. In the cities, McKinley crushed Bryan.
Th e election struck down the Populists, whose totals sagged nearly everywhere. Many Populist proposals were later adopted under diff erent leadership. Th e graduated income tax, crop loans to farmers, the secret ballot, and direct election of U.S. senators all were early Populist ideas. But the People’s party never could win over a majority of the voters, and failing that, it vanished aft er 1896.
The McKinley Administration
What did McKinley accomplish that placed the results of the 1896 election on a solid basis?
The election of 1896 cemented the voter realignment of 1894 and initiated a generation of Republican rule. For more than three decades after 1896, with only a brief Democratic resur- gence under Woodrow Wilson, the Republicans remained the country’s majority party.
McKinley took offi ce in 1897 under favorable circumstances. To everyone’s relief, the economy had begun to revive. Th e stock market rose, factories once again churned out goods, and farmers prospered. Farm prices climbed sharply during 1897 on bumper crops of wheat, cotton, and corn. Discoveries of gold in Australia and Alaska—together with the development of a new cyanide pro- cess for extracting gold from ore—enlarged the world’s gold supply, decreased its price, and infl ated the currency as the silverites had hoped. For the fi rst time since 1890, the 1897 Treasury statements showed a comfortable gold reserve.
McKinley and the Republicans basked in the glow. Th ey became the party of progress and prosperity, an image that helped them win victories until another depression hit in the 1930s. McKinley’s popularity soared. Open and accessible, in contrast to Cleveland’s isolation, he rode the Washington streetcars, walked the streets, and enjoyed looking in department store windows. McKinley became the fi rst president to ride in an automobile, reaching the speed of 18 miles an hour.
An activist president, he set the policies of the administra- tion. Conscious of the limits of power, he maintained close ties with Congress and worked hard to educate the public on national choices and priorities. McKinley struck new relations with the press and traveled far more than previous presidents. In some ways, he began the modern presidency.
Shortly after taking office, he summoned Congress into special session to revise the tariff . In July 1897, the Dingley Tariff passed the House and Senate. It raised average tariff duties to a record level, and as the fi nal burst of nineteenth-century protec- tionism, it caused trouble for the Republican party. By the end of the 1890s, consumers, critics, and the Republicans themselves were wondering if the tariff had outlived its usefulness in the maturing American economy.
From the 1860s to the 1890s, the Republicans had built their party on a pledge to promote economic growth through the use of state and national power. By 1900, with the industrial system
to prove that the Democratic-Populist alliance could never stay together long enough to govern.
In August 1896, Bryan set off on a campaign that became an American legend. Much of the conservative Democratic eastern press had deserted him, and he took his campaign directly to the voters, the fi rst presidential candidate in history to do so in a systematic way. By his own count, Bryan traveled 18,009 miles, visited 27 states, and spoke 600 times to a total of some 3 million people. He built skillfully on a new “merchandising” style of campaign in which he worked to educate and persuade voters.
Bryan summoned voters to an older America: a land where farms were as important as factories, where the virtues of rural and religious life outweighed the doubtful lure of the city, where common people still ruled and opportunity existed for all. He drew on the Jeff ersonian tradition of rural virtue, distrust of cen- tral authority, and abiding faith in the powers of human reason.
Urged to take the stump against Bryan, McKinley replied, “I might just as well put up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete with some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan.” The Republican candidate let voters come to him. Railroads brought them by the thousands into McKinley’s hometown of Canton, Ohio, and he spoke to them from his front porch. Th rough use of the press, he reached fully as many people as Bryan’s more strenuous eff ort. Appealing to labor, immigrants, well-to-do farmers, businessmen, and the middle class, McKinley defended economic nationalism and the advancing urban- industrial society.
On election day, voter turnout was extraordinarily high, a measure of the intense interest. By nightfall, the outcome was clear: McKinley won 50 percent of the vote to Bryan’s 46 percent. He won
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Election of 1896
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN William McKinley
Popular Vote
6,502,925
7,104,779271
176
MINOR PARTIES 265,155
13,872,859447
DEMOCRATIC William J. Bryan
486 CHAPTER 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
fi rmly in place, the focus had shift ed. Th e need to regulate , to control the eff ects of industrialism, became a central public con- cern of the new century. McKinley prodded the Republicans to meet that shift , but he died before his plans matured.
McKinley toyed with the idea of lowering the tariff , but one obstacle always stood in the way: Th e government needed revenue, and tariff duties were one of the few taxes the public would support. Th e Spanish-American War of 1898 persuaded people to accept greater federal power and, with it, new forms of taxation. In 1899, McKinley spoke of lowering tariff barriers in a world that technology had made smaller. “God and man have linked the nations together,” he said in his last speech at Buff alo, New York, in 1901. “Isolation is no longer possible or desirable.”
THE ELECTION OF 1900
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
McKinley Republican 7,207,923 292
Bryan Democrat 6,358,133 155
Woolley Prohibition 209,004 0
Debs Socialist 94,768 0
In 1898 and 1899, the McKinley administration focused on the war with Spain, the peace treaty that followed, and the dawning realization that the war had thrust the United States into a posi- tion of world power. In March 1900, Congress passed the Gold Standard Act , which declared gold the standard of currency and ended the silver controversy that had dominated the 1890s.
The presidential campaign of 1900 was a replay of the McKinley–Bryan fight of 1896. McKinley’s running mate was Theodore Roosevelt, hero of the Spanish-American War and former governor of New York, who was nominated for vice president to capitalize on his popularity and, his enemies hoped, to sidetrack his political career into oblivion. Bryan emphasized the issues of imperialism and the trusts; McKinley emphasized his record at home and abroad. The result in 1900 was a landslide.
On September 6, 1901, a few months after his second inauguration, McKinley stood in a receiving line at the Pan- American Exposition in Buff alo. Leon Czolgosz, a 28-year-old unemployed laborer and anarchist, moved through the line and, reaching the president, shot him. Surgeons probed the wound but could fi nd nothing. A recent discovery called the X ray was on display at the exposition, but it was not used. On September 14, McKinley died, and Vice President Th eodore Roosevelt became president. A new century had begun.
Conclusion: A Decade’s Dramatic Changes
As the funeral train carried McKinley’s body back to Ohio, Mark Hanna, McKinley’s old friend and ally, sat slumped in his parlor car. “I told William McKinley it was a mistake to nomi- nate that wild man at Philadelphia,” he mourned. “I asked him if he realized what would happen if he should die. Now look, that damned cowboy is president of the United States!”
Hanna’s world had changed, and so had the nation’s—not so much because “that damned cowboy” was suddenly president, but because events of the 1890s had had powerful eff ects. In the course of that decade, political patterns shift ed, the presidency acquired fresh power, and massive unrest prompted social change. Th e war with Spain brought a new empire and world- wide responsibilities. Economic hardship posed questions of the most diffi cult sort about industrialization, urbanization, and the quality of American life. Worried, people embraced new ideas
Republican Campaign Poster of 1896, William McKinley
View the Closer Look
This Republican campaign poster of 1896 depicts candidate William McKinley as the champion of commerce and civilization. The sun rising behind the flag McKinley is holding suggests that a new day will dawn with a Republican administration.
STUDY RESOURCES 487
Study Resources
T I M E L I N E
1876 Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1877 Disputed election of 1876 results in awarding of
presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
1880 Republican James A. Garfi eld elected president 1881 Garfi eld assassinated; Vice President Chester A.
Arthur becomes president
1884 Democrat Grover Cleveland elected president, defeating Republican James G. Blaine
1887 Cleveland calls for lowering of tariff duties 1888 Republican Benjamin Harrison wins presidential
election
1889 National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union formed to address problems of farmers
1890 Republican-dominated “Billion-Dollar” Congress enacts McKinley Tariff Act, Sherman Antitrust Act, and Sherman Silver Purchase Act; Farmers’ Alliance adopts the Ocala Demands
1892 Democrat Cleveland defeats Republican Harrison for presidency; People’s party formed
1893 Financial panic touches off depression lasting until 1897; Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed; World Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago
1894 Coxey’s army marches on Washington; Pullman employees strike
1896 Republican McKinley defeats William Jennings Bryan, Democratic and Populist candidate, in “battle of the standards”
1897 Gold discovered in Alaska; Dingley Tariff Act raises tariff duties
1900 McKinley reelected, again defeating Bryan; Gold Standard Act establishes gold as standard of currency
1901 McKinley assassinated; Vice President Theodore Roosevelt assumes presidency; Naturalist writer Theodore Dreiser publishes Sister Carrie
yy Take the Study Plan for Chapter 20 Political Realignments in the 1890s on MyHistoryLab
and causes. Reform movements begun in the 1890s fl owered in the Progressive Era aft er 1900.
Technology continued to alter the way Americans lived. In 1896, Henry Ford produced a two-cylinder, four-horsepower car, the fi rst of the famous line that bore his name. In 1899, the fi rst automobile salesroom opened in New York, and some innovative thinkers were already imagining a network of service stations to keep the new cars running. At Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur
and Orville Wright, two bicycle manufacturers, neared the birth of powered fl ight.
Th e realignments that reached their peak in the 1890s seem distant, yet they are not. Important decisions in those years shaped nearly everything that came aft er them. In character and infl uence, the 1890s were as much a part of the twentieth century as of the nineteenth and continue to have repercussions into the twenty-fi rst century.
488 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER REVIEW
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
Bland–Allison Silver Purchase Act This 1878 act called for the partial coinage of silver. Those favoring silver coinage argued that it would increase the money supply and help farmers and workers repay their debts. Opponents advocated a restricted money supply based solely on gold and pointed out that few other major countries accepted silver coinage. Congress passed the bill over President Rutherford B. Hayes’s veto. p. 469
Pendleton Act This 1883 law created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to administer competitive exams for civil service jobs and appoint officeholders based on merit. It also outlawed compulsory political contributions from appointed officials. p. 470
Sherman Antitrust Act This 1890 act was the first major U.S. attempt to deal with the problem of the increasing size of business. It declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspir- acy, in restraint of trade or commerce.” p. 471
Sherman Silver Purchase Act An 1890 act that attempted to resolve the controversy over silver coinage by requiring the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month and issue legal tender (in the form of Treasury notes) for it. The act pleased opponents of silver because it did not call for free coinage; it pleased proponents of silver because it bought up most of the nation’s silver production. p. 471
Changing Attitudes
What changes in outlook did the panic and depression of the 1890s bring about?
The depression led people to reconsider the roles of the government, the economy, and society. They had once thought that people lost their jobs because of their own
failings; now they knew that economic forces were at fault. People joined organizations like women’s clubs, church groups, and farm societies to discuss cures for the situation. More women and children worked. Realism and naturalism dominated American literature. (p. 479 )
The Presidential Election of 1896
Why was the presidential election of 1896 so important?
The election of 1896 brought to a head the fight between supporters of silver and gold, established the Republicans as the majority party, and shaped the nation’s politics until
1932. (p. 481 )
The McKinley Administration
What did McKinley accomplish that placed the results of the 1896 election on a solid basis?
The McKinley administration profited from economic recovery. It enacted the gold standard, passed a new tariff, and defeated Spain. How to regulate big business instead of simply promoting it became a new challenge. (p. 485 )
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Politics of Stalemate
Why was there a stalemate between Republicans and Democrats until the mid-1890s?
For more than two decades after Reconstruction, there was a stalemate, in which the Democrats and Republicans fought for votes and focused on a handful of “doubtful” states. In general, Democrats dominated the South, and
Republicans controlled crucial sections of the North. Presidents reestab- lished the authority of their office. (p. 468 )
Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress
How did the Republican party’s vision shape the “Billion-Dollar Congress”?
In control of both the presidency and Congress after 1888, Republicans enacted their activist policies, only to discover that voters were not ready for them. The congres-
sional elections of 1890 restored the Democrats to power. (p. 470 )
The Rise of the Populist Movement
What factors led to the formation and growth of the Farmers’ Alliance and People’s party?
In the late 1880s and early 1890s, farmers in the South and West joined the Farmers’ Alliance, and later the People’s party. The People’s party failed, as voters turned to the
Democrats in the presidential election of 1892. (p. 472 )
The Crisis of the Depression
What were the main political and labor effects of the panic and depression of the 1890s?
The depression encouraged people to rethink their views on the causes of poverty and unemployment. It discredited President Cleveland and crushed the Democrats in the
midterm elections of 1894, giving the Republican party a long-term lease on power. (p. 476 )
STUDY RESOURCES 489
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What effect did the rise of the People’s party have on American politics? 2. How did the depression give rise to conditions that made the election
of 1896 important?
3. How would events have been different if William Jennings Bryan and the Democrats won the election of 1896?
4. Why did McKinley and the Republican party demonstrate about the changes in popular attitudes since 1890?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The Rise of the Populist Movement
Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress
Politics of Stalemate
View the Closer Look
The Interstate Commerce Act (1887) p. 469
Jacob S. Coxey, “Address of Protest” (1894) p. 477
Republican Campaign Poster of 1896, William McKinley p. 486
Workingman’s Amalgamated Sherman Anti-Trust (1893) p. 471
The Crisis of the Depression
Changing Attitudes
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 20 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Proceedings of Grange Session, 1879 p. 474
Mary E. Lease, The Populist Crusader (1892) p. 475
Ocala Platform, 1890 p. 475
“Everybody Works But Father” (1905) p. 479
The Presidential Election of 1896
The McKinley Administration
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz p. 482
◾ Complete the Assignment
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
William Jennings Bryan, “Cross of Gold” Speech (1896) p. 484
◾ Read the Document
National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union The Alliance sought to organize farmers in the South and West to fight for reforms that would improve their lot, including measures to overcome low crop prices, burdensome mortgages, and high railroad rates. The Alliance ultimately organized the People’s (Populist) party. p. 472
Ocala Demands Adopted by the Farmers’ Alliance in 1890 in Ocala, Florida, these demands became the organization’s main platform. They called for a sub-treasury system to allow farmers to store their crops until they could get the best price, the free coinage of silver, an end to protective tariffs and national banks, a federal income tax, the direct election of sena- tors by voters, and tighter regulation of railroads. (See People’s party .) p. 474
People’s (or Populist) party This political party was organized in 1892 by farm, labor, and reform leaders, mainly from the Farmers’ Alliance. It offered a broad-based reform platform reflecting the Ocala Demands.
After 1896, it became identified as a one-issue party focused on free silver and gradually died away. p. 474
Pullman strike Beginning in May 1894, this strike at the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago was one of the largest strikes in American history. Workers struck to protest wage cuts, high rents for com- pany housing, and layoffs. The American Railway Union, led by Eugene v. Debs, joined the strike in June. Extending into 27 states and territories, it paralyzed the western half of the nation. President Grover Cleveland secured an injunction to break the strike on the grounds that it obstructed the mail, and sent federal troops to enforce it. p. 476
Gold Standard Act Passed by Congress in 1900, this law made all cur- rency redeemable in gold. The United States remained on the gold standard until 1933. p. 486
Contents and Learning Objectives
to friends, and telegrams to the governors of Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma asking for “good shots and good riders,” he had more than enough men. The First United States Volunteer Cavalry, an intriguing mixture of Ivy League athletes and western frontiers- men, was born.
Known as the Rough Riders, it included men from the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton clubs of New York City, the Somerset Club of Boston, and New York’s exclusive Knickerbocker Club. Former college athletes— football players, tennis players, and track stars—enlisted. Woodbury Kane, a wealthy yachtsman, signed up and promptly volunteered for kitchen duty.
Other volunteers came from the West—natural sol- diers, Roosevelt called them, “tall and sinewy, with resolute, weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without flinching.” Among the cowboys, hunters, and prospectors, there were Bucky O’Neill, a legendary Arizona sheriff and Indian fighter; a half dozen other sheriffs and Texas Rangers; a large number of Indians; a famous broncobuster; and an ex-marshal of Dodge City, Kansas.
Eager for war, the men trained hard, played harder, and rarely passed up a chance for an intellectual discus- sion—if Roosevelt’s memoir of the war is to be believed. Once, he overheard Bucky O’Neill and a Princeton graduate “discussing Aryan word-roots together, and then sliding off into a review of the novels of Balzac, and a discussion as to how far Balzac could be said to be the founder of the modern realistic school of
Roosevelt and the Rough Riders Many Americans regretted the start of the war with Spain that began in April 1898, but many others welcomed it. Many highly respected people believed that nations must fight every now and then to prove their power and test the national spirit.
Theodore Roosevelt, 39 years old in 1898, was one of them. Nations needed to fight in order to survive, he thought. For months, Roosevelt argued strenuously for war with Spain for three reasons: first, on grounds of freeing Cuba and expelling Spain from the hemisphere; second, because of “the benefit done to our people by giving them something to think of which isn’t material gain”; and third, because the army and navy needed the practice.
In April 1898, Roosevelt was serving in the impor- tant post of assistant secretary of the navy. When war broke out, he quickly resigned to join the army, reject- ing the advice of the secretary of the navy, who warned he would only “ride a horse and brush mosquitoes from his neck in the Florida sands.” The secretary was wrong—dead wrong—and later had the grace to admit it. “Roosevelt was right,” he said. “His going into the Army led straight to the Presidency.”
In 1898, officers supplied their own uniforms, and Roosevelt, the son of well-to-do parents, wanted his to be stylish. He wired Brooks Brothers, the expensive New York clothier, for a “regular Lieutenant-Colonel’s uniform without yellow on the collar and with leggings,” to be ready in a week. Joining a friend, he chose to enlist his own regiment, and after a few telephone calls
AMERICA LOOKS OUTWARD PG. 492 Why did Americans look outward in the last half of the nineteenth century?
WAR WITH SPAIN PG. 497 What were the causes and results of the war with Spain?
ACQUISITION OF EMPIRE PG. 503 What were the various viewpoints about the acquisition of empire after the war with Spain?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The 400 Million Customers of China
Toward Empire 21
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 21 Toward Empire
Rough Riders set sail on June 14, 1898, and Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt, who had performed a war dance for the troops the night before, caught their mood: “We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty world-movement.”
fiction.” Roosevelt himself spent his spare time reading Superiorité des Anglo-Saxons , a French work that strove to prove the superiority of English-speaking peoples. In such a camp, discipline was lax, and enlisted men got on easily with the officers.
The troops howled with joy when orders came to join the invasion army for Cuba. They won their first victories in Florida, fighting off other regiments to capture a train to take them to the wharf and then seizing the only available troopship to Cuba. The
Watch the Video Roosevelt’s Rough Riders
This lithograph depicts Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Rider regiment charging up San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898. The Battle of San Juan Hill was considered the bloodiest of the war and the greatest victory by the Rough Riders.
492 CHAPTER 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
which instructed European nations to stay out of the aff airs of the Western Hemisphere, while remaining virtually impregnable to foreign attack.
In those circumstances a sense of isolationism spread, fostering a desire to stay out of foreign entanglements. Some people even urged abolition of the foreign service, considering it an unnecessary expenditure, a dangerous profession that might lead to involvement in the struggles of the world’s great powers.
In the 1870s and aft er, however, Americans began to take an increasing interest in events abroad. Th ere was a growing sense of internationalism, which stemmed in part from the telegraphs, telephones, and undersea cables that kept people better informed about political and economic developments in distant lands. Many Americans continued to be interested in expansion of the country’s borders; relatively few were interested in imperialism . Expansion meant the kind of growth that had brought California and Oregon into the American system. Imperialism meant the imposition of control over other peoples through annexation, military conquest, or economic domination.
Reasons for Expansion Several developments in these years combined to shift attention outward across the seas. Th e end of the frontier, announced offi - cially in the census report of 1890, sparked fears about diminishing opportunities at home. Further growth, it seemed to some, must take place abroad, as John A. Kasson, an able and experienced dip- lomat, said in the North American Review : “We are rapidly utiliz- ing the whole of our continental territory. We must turn our eyes abroad, or they will soon look inward upon discontent.”
Factories and farms multiplied, producing more goods than the domestic market could consume. Both farmers and industri- alists looked for new overseas markets, and the growing volume of exports—including more and more manufactured goods— changed the nature of American trade relations with the world. American exports of merchandise amounted to $393 million in 1870, $858 million in 1890, and $1.4 billion in 1900. In 1898, the United States exported more than it imported, beginning a trend that lasted through the 1960s.
Political leaders such as James G. Blaine began to argue for the vital importance of foreign markets to continued economic growth. Blaine, secretary of state under Garfi eld and again under Harrison, aggressively sought wider markets in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, using tariff reciprocity agreements and other measures. To some extent, he and others were also caught up in a worldwide scramble for empire. In the last third of the century, Great Britain, France, and Germany divided up Africa and looked covetously at Asia. Th e idea of imperialistic expansion was in the air, and the great powers measured their greatness by the colonies they acquired. Inevitably, some Americans—certain business inter- ests and foreign policy strategists, for example—caught the spirit and wanted to enter the international hunt for territory.
Intellectual currents that supported expansion drew on Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Adherents pointed, for example, to Th e Origin of Species , which mentioned in its subtitle Th e Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life .
T hat “world-movement,” Roosevelt was sure, would establish the United States as a world power, whose commerce and infl uence would extend around the globe, particularly in Latin America and Asia. As he hoped, the nation in the 1890s underwent dramatic expansion, building on the foreign policy approaches of administrations from Lincoln to William McKinley. Policy makers fostered business interests abroad, strengthened the navy, and extended American infl uence into Latin America and the Pacifi c. Diff erences over Cuba resulted in a war with Spain that brought new colonies and colonial subjects, establishing for the fi rst time an American overseas empire.
America Looks Outward
Why did Americans look outward in the last half of the nineteenth century?
Th e overseas expansion of the 1890s diff ered in several impor- tant respects from earlier expansionist moves of the United States. From its beginning, the American republic had been expanding. Aft er the fi rst landings in Jamestown and Plymouth, settlers pushed westward into the trans-Appalachian region, the Louisiana Territory, Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Most of these lands were contiguous with existing terri- tories of the United States, and most were intended for settlement, usually agricultural.
Th e expansion of the 1890s was diff erent. It sought to gain island possessions, the bulk of them already thickly populated. Th e new territories were intended less for settlement than for use as naval bases, trading outposts, or commercial centers on major trade routes. More oft en than not, they were viewed as colonies, not as states in the making.
Historian Samuel F. Bemis described the overseas expansion of the 1890s as “the great aberration,” a time when the country adopted expansionist policies that did not fi t with prior experience. Other his- torians, pointing to expansionist tendencies in thought and foreign policy that surfaced during the last half of the nineteenth century, have found a developing pattern that led naturally to the overseas adventures of the 1890s. In the view of Walter LaFeber, “Th e United States did not set out on an expansionist path in the late 1890s in a sudden, spur-of-the-moment fashion. Th e overseas empire that Americans controlled in 1900 was not a break in their history, but a natural culmination.”
Catching the Spirit of Empire Most people in most times in history tend to look at domestic concerns, and Americans in the years following the Civil War were no exception. Among other things, they focused on Reconstruction, the movement westward, and simply making a living. Th ey took seriously the well-remembered advice of George Washington’s fare- well address to “steer clear” of foreign entanglements. Th roughout the nineteenth century, Americans enjoyed “free security” without fully appreciating it. Sheltered by two oceans and the British navy, they could enunciate bold policies such as the Monroe Doctrine,
America Looks Outward 493
a result of the process of natural selection. Th e English and Americans, Fiske said, would occupy every land on the globe that was not already “civilized,” bringing the advances of com- merce and democratic institutions.
Such views were widespread among the lettered and unlettered alike. In Cuba, one of the Rough Riders ushered a visiting Russian prince around the trenches, informing him with ill-considered enthusiasm: “You see, Prince, the great result of this war is that it has united the two branches of Anglo-Saxon people; and now that they are together they can whip the world, Prince! Th ey can whip the world!” Eminent scholars such as John W. Burgess, a profes- sor of political science at Columbia University, argued in similar though more dignifi ed fashion that people of English origin were destined to impose their political institutions on the world.
Th e career of Josiah Strong, a Congregational minister and fervent expansionist, suggested the strength of the developing ideas. A champion of overseas missionary work, Strong traveled extensively through the West for the Home Missionary Society, and in 1885, drawing on his experiences, he published a book titled Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis . An immediate best seller, the book called on foreign missions to civilize the world under the Anglo-Saxon races. Strong became a national celebrity.
Our Country argued for expanding American trade and dominion. Trade was important, it said, because the desire for material things was one of the hallmarks of civilized people. So was the Christian religion, and by exporting both trade and religion, Americans could civilize and Christianize “inferior” races around the world. As Anglo-Saxons, they were members of a God-favored race destined to lead the world. Anglo-Saxons already owned one-third of the Earth, Strong said, and in a famous passage he concluded that they would take more. In “the fi nal competition of races,” they would win and “move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond.”
Taken together, these developments in social, political, and economic thought prepared Americans for a larger role in the world. Th e change was gradual, and there was never a day when people awoke with a sudden realization of their interests overseas. But change there was, and by the 1890s, Americans were ready to reach out into the world in a more determined and deliberate fashion than ever before. For almost the fi rst time, they felt the need for a foreign “policy.”
Foreign Policy Approaches, 1867–1900 Rarely consistent, American foreign policy in the last half of the nineteenth century took diff erent approaches to diff erent areas of the world. In relation to Europe, seat of the dominant world powers, policy makers promoted trade and tried to avoid diplo- matic entanglements. In North and South America, they based policy on the Monroe Doctrine, a recurrent dream of annexing Canada or Mexico, a hope for extensive trade, and Pan-American unity against the nations of the Old World. In the Pacifi c, they coveted Hawaii and other outposts on the sea-lanes to China.
Secretary of State William Henry Seward, who served from 1861 to 1869, aggressively pushed an expansive foreign policy.
Applied to human and social development, biological concepts seemed to call for the triumph of the fi t and the elimination of the unfi t. “In this world,” said Th eodore Roosevelt, who thought of himself as one of the fi t, “the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.”
Th e “biogenetic law” formulated by German biologist Ernst Haeckel suggested that the development of the race paralleled the development of the individual. Primitive peoples thus were in the arrested stages of childhood or adolescence; they needed supervision and protection. In a similar vein, John Fiske, a popu- lar writer and lecturer, argued for Anglo-Saxon racial superiority,
Read the Document Josiah Strong, from Our Country (1885)
Josiah Strong (1847–1916) was a Protestant minister who advocated in his works and speeches the responsibility of the Anglo-Saxons to civilize and Christianize “inferior” races around the world. Strong’s opinions influenced support among American Protestants, by the 1890s, for the development of an expansionist and imperialist foreign policy.
494 CHAPTER 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
only three places that are of value and not already taken, that are not continental,” he wrote in a letter to President Harrison in 1891. “One is Hawaii and the others are Cuba and Puerto Rico.” Th e last two might take a generation to acquire, but “Hawaii may come up for decision at any unexpected hour and I hope we shall be pre- pared to decide it in the affi rmative.”
Harrison and Blaine toyed with naval acquisitions in the Caribbean and elsewhere, but in general they focused on Pan-Americanism and tariff reciprocity. Blaine presided over the fi rst Inter-American Conference in Washington on October 2, 1889, where delegates from nineteen American nations negotiated several agreements to promote trade and created the International Bureau of the American Republics, later renamed the Pan-American Union, for the exchange of general information, including political, scientifi c, and cultural knowledge. Th e conference, a major step in hemispheric relations, led to later meetings promoting trade and other agreements.
Reciprocity, Harrison and Blaine hoped, would divert Latin American trade from Europe to the United States. Working hard to sell the idea in Congress, Blaine lobbied for a reciprocity provi- sion in the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, and once that was enacted, he negotiated reciprocity treaties with most Latin American nations. Th e treaties failed to foster the hoped-for trade because of the depression of the 1890s; nevertheless, they resulted in greater American exports of flour, grain, meat, iron, and machinery. Exports to Cuba jumped by one-third between 1891 and 1893, then dropped precipitously when the 1894 Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act ended reciprocity.
Grover Cleveland, Harrison’s successor, also pursued an aggressive policy toward Latin America. In 1895, he brought the United States precariously close to war with Great Britain over a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. Cleveland sympathized with Venezuela, and he and Secretary of State Richard Olney urged Britain to arbitrate the dispute. When Britain failed to act, Olney draft ed a stiff diplomatic note affi rming the Monroe Doctrine and denying European nations the right to meddle in Western Hemisphere aff airs.
Four months passed before Lord Salisbury, the British foreign secretary, replied. Rejecting Olney’s arguments, he sent two letters, the fi rst bluntly repudiating the Monroe Doctrine as international law. Th e second letter, carefully reasoned and sometimes sarcastic, rejected Olney’s arguments for the Venezuelan boundary. Enraged, Cleveland defended the Monroe Doctrine, and he asked Congress for authority to appoint a commission to decide the boundary and enforce its decision. “I am fully alive to the responsibility incurred and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow,” he told Congress, plainly implying war.
Preoccupied with larger diplomatic problems in Africa and Europe, Britain changed its position. In November 1896, the two countries signed a treaty of arbitration, under which Great Britain and Venezuela divided the disputed territory. Th ough Cleveland’s approach was clumsy—throughout the crisis, for example, he rarely consulted Venezuela—the Venezuelan incident demonstrated a growing determination to exert American power in the Western Hemisphere. Cleveland and Olney had persuaded Great Britain to recognize the dominance of the United States, and they had increased American infl uence in Latin America.
“Give me . . . ; fi ft y, forty, thirty more years of life,” he told a Boston audience in 1867, “and I will give you possession of the American continent and control of the world.” Seward, it turned out, had only fi ve more years of life, but he developed a vision of an American empire stretching south into Latin America and west to the shores of Asia. His vision included Canada and Mexico; islands in the Caribbean as strategic bases to protect a canal across the isthmus; and Hawaii and other islands as stepping-stones to Asia, which Seward and many others considered a virtually bottomless outlet for farm and manufactured goods.
Seward tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a commercial treaty with Hawaii in 1867, and the same year he annexed the Midway Islands, a small atoll group twelve hundred miles northwest of Hawaii. In 1867, he concluded a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska (which was promptly labeled “Seward’s Folly”) partly to sandwich western Canada between American territory and lead to its annexation. As the American empire spread, Seward thought, Mexico City would become its capital.
Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, an urbane New Yorker, followed Seward in 1869, serving under President Ulysses S. Grant. An avid expansionist, Grant wanted to extend American infl uence in the Caribbean and Pacifi c, though the more conservative Fish oft en restrained him. Th ey moved fi rst to repair relations with Great Britain. Th e fi rst business was settlement of the Alabama claims— demands that Britain pay the United States for damages to Union ships caused by Confederate vessels which, like the Alabama , had been built and outfi tted in British shipyards. Negotiating patiently, Fish signed the Treaty of Washington in 1871, providing for arbi- tration of the Alabama issue and other nettlesome controversies. Th e treaty, one of the landmarks in the peaceful settlement of inter- national disputes, marked a signifi cant step in cementing Anglo- American relations.
Grant and Fish looked most eagerly to Latin America. In 1870, Grant became the fi rst president to proclaim the nontrans- fer principle—“hereaft er no territory on this continent shall be regarded as subject to transfer to a European power.” Fish also promoted the independence of Cuba, restive under Spanish rule, while holding off the annexation desired by the more eager Grant. Infl uenced by speculators, Grant tried to annex Santo Domingo in 1869 but was thwarted by powerful Republicans in the Senate who disliked foreign involvement and feared a subsequent attempt to annex Haiti.
James G. Blaine served briefly as secretary of state under President James Garfield and laid extensive plans to establish closer commercial relations with Latin America. Blaine’s successor, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, changed Blaine’s approach but not his strategy. Like Blaine, Frelinghuysen wanted to fi nd Caribbean mar- kets for American goods; he negotiated separate reciprocity trea- ties with Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico, the British West Indies, Santo Domingo, and Colombia. Using these treaties, Frelinghuysen hoped not only to obtain markets for American goods but to bind these countries to American interests.
When Blaine returned to the State Department in 1889 under President Benjamin Harrison, he moved again to expand markets in Latin America. Drawing on earlier ideas, he envisaged a hemi- spheric system of peaceful intercourse, arbitration of disputes, and expanded trade. He also wanted to annex Hawaii. “I think there are
America Looks Outward 495
States to pluck it.” On February 14, 1893, Harrison’s secretary of state, John W. Foster, and delegates of the new government signed a treaty annexing Hawaii to the United States.
But only two weeks remained in Harrison’s term, and the Senate refused to ratify the agreement. Five days aft er taking offi ce, Cleveland withdrew the treaty; he then sent a representative to investigate the cause of the rebellion. Th e investigation revealed that the Americans’ role in it had been improper, and Cleveland
Read the Document Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story
The first step toward American annexation of Hawaii came in 1893 when Queen Liliuokalani was removed from the throne. Hawaii was annexed to the United States as a possession in 1898 and became a U.S. territory in 1900.
Th e Monroe Doctrine assumed new impor- tance. In averting war, an era of Anglo- American friendship was begun.
The Lure of Hawaii and Samoa Th e islands of Hawaii off ered a tempting way station to Asian markets. In the early 1800s, they were already called the “Crossroads of the Pacifi c,” and trading ships of many nations stopped there. In 1820, the fi rst American missionaries arrived to convert the islanders to Christianity. Like missionaries elsewhere, they advertised Hawaii’s economic and other benefits and attracted new settlers. Their children later came to dominate Hawaiian political and economic life and played an important role in annexation.
Aft er the Civil War, the United States tightened its connections with the islands. The reciprocity treaty of 1875 allowed Hawaiian sugar to enter the United States free of duty and bound the Hawaiian mon- archy to make no territorial or economic concessions to other powers. The treaty increased Hawaiian economic dependence on the United States; its political clauses effectively made Hawaii an American protectorate. In 1887, a new treaty reaf- fi rmed these arrangements and granted the United States exclusive use of Pearl Harbor, a magnifi cent harbor that had early caught the eye of naval strategists.
Following the 1875 treaty, white Hawaiians became more and more infl u- ential in the islands’ political life. The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 ended the spe- cial status given Hawaiian sugar and at the same time awarded American producers a bounty of two cents a pound. Hawaiian sugar production dropped dramatically, unemployment rose, and property val- ues fell. Th e following year, the weak King Kalakaua died, bringing to power a strong- willed nationalist, Queen Liliuokalani. Resentful of white minority rule, she decreed a new constitution that gave greater power to native Hawaiians.
Unhappy, the American residents revolted in early 1893 and called on the United States for help. John L. Stevens, the American minister in Honolulu, sent 150 marines ashore from the cruiser Boston , and within three days, the bloodless revolution was over. Queen Liliuokalani surrendered “to the superior force of the United States,” and the victorious rebels set up a provisional government. Stevens urged annexation, telling Washington that the “Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United
496 CHAPTER 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
While annexation of Hawaii represented a step toward China, the Samoan Islands, three thousand miles to the south, off ered a strategic location astride the sea-lanes of the South Pacifi c. Americans showed early interest in Samoa, and in 1872, a naval offi cer negotiated a treaty granting the United States the use of Pago Pago, a splendid harbor on one of its islands. Th e Senate rejected the treaty but six years later approved a similar agreement providing for a naval station there. Th e agreement bound the United States to use its good offi ces to adjust any disputes between the Samoan chiefs and foreign governments. Great Britain and Germany also secured treaty rights in Samoa, and thereaft er the three nations jockeyed for position.
Th e situation grew tense in 1889, when warships from all three countries gathered in a Samoan harbor. But a sudden typhoon damaged the fl eets, and tensions eased. A month later, delegates from Britain, Germany, and the United States met in Berlin to negotiate the problem. Britain and Germany wanted to divide up the islands; Secretary of State Blaine held out for some degree of authority by the indigenous population, with American control over Pago Pago.
The agreement, an uneasy one, ended in 1899 when the United States and Germany divided Samoa and compensated Britain with lands elsewhere in the Pacifi c. Germany claimed the two larger islands in the chain; the United States kept the harbor at Pago Pago.
The New Navy Large navies were vital in the scramble for colonies, and in the 1870s the United States had almost no naval power. One of the most pow- erful fl eets in the world during the Civil War, the American navy had fallen into rapid decline. By 1880, there were fewer than two thousand vessels, only forty-eight of which could fi re a gun. Ships rotted, and many offi cers left the service.
Conditions changed during the 1880s. A group of rising young offi cers, steeped in a new naval philosophy, argued for an expanded navy equipped with fast, aggressive fl eets capable of fi ghting battles across the seas. Th is group had its greatest infl u- ence in a special Naval Advisory Board, formed by the secretary of the navy in 1881. Big-navy proponents pointed to the grow- ing fl eets of Great Britain, France, and Germany, arguing that the United States needed greater fl eet strength to protect its eco- nomic and other interests in the Caribbean and Pacifi c.
In 1883, Congress authorized construction of four steel ships, marking the beginning of the new navy. Experts also worked to improve naval management and the quality of fleet personnel, and between 1885 and 1889, Congress budgeted funds for thirty additional ships. The initial building program focused on lightly armored fast cruisers for raiding enemy mer- chant ships and protecting American shores, but after 1890, the program shifted to the construction of a seagoing offen- sive battleship navy capable of challenging the strongest fleets of Europe.
Alfred Th ayer Mahan and Benjamin F. Tracy were two of the main forces behind the new navy. Austere and scholarly, Mahan was the era’s most infl uential naval strategist. Aft er graduating from
decided to restore the queen to her throne. He made the demand, but the provisional government in Hawaii politely refused and instead established the Republic of Hawaii, which the embarrassed Cleveland, unable to do otherwise, recognized.
Th e debate over Hawaiian annexation, continuing through the 1890s, foreshadowed the later debate over the treaty to end the Spanish-American War. People in favor of annexation pointed to Hawaii’s strategic location, argued that Japan or other powers might seize the islands if the United States did not, and suggested that Americans had a responsibility to civilize and Christianize the native Hawaiians. Opponents warned that annexation might lead to a colonial army and colonial problems, the inclusion of a “mongrel” population in the United States, and rule over an area not destined for statehood.
Annexation came swift ly in July 1898 in the midst of excite- ment over victories in the Spanish-American War. Th e year before, President William McKinley had sent a treaty of annexation to the Senate, but opposition quickly arose, and the treaty stalled. Japan protested against it, pointing out that Japanese made up a quarter of the Hawaiian population. Japan dispatched a cruiser to Honolulu; the Navy Department sent the battleship Oregon and ordered naval forces to take Hawaii if the Japanese made threatening moves.
In 1898, annexationists redoubled arguments about Hawaii’s commercial and military importance. McKinley and congressio- nal leaders switched strategies to seek a joint resolution, rather than a treaty, for annexation. A joint resolution required only a majority of both houses, while a treaty needed a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Bolstered by the new strategy, the annexation measure moved quickly through Congress, and McKinley signed it on July 7, 1898. His signature, giving the United States a naval and commercial base in the mid-Pacifi c, realized a goal held by policy makers since the 1860s.
Alaska
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HAWAIIAN ISLANDS The Hawaiian Islands provided the United States with both a convenient stopping point on the way to Asian markets and a strategic naval station in the Pacifi c.
War with Spain 497
bases, the foundation of a nation’s wealth and power. Th e bases might serve as markets themselves, but they were more impor- tant as stepping-stones to other objectives, such as the markets of Latin America and Asia.
Mahan called attention to the worldwide race for power, a race, he warned, the United States could not aff ord to lose. “All around us now is strife; ‘the struggle of life,’ ‘the race of life’ are phrases so familiar that we do not feel their signifi cance till we stop to think about them. Everywhere nation is arrayed against nation; our own no less than others.” To compete in the struggle, Mahan argued, the United States must expand. It needed strategic bases, a powerful oceangoing navy, a canal across the isthmus to link the East Coast with the Pacifi c, and Hawaii as a way station on the route to Asia.
Mahan infl uenced a generation of policy makers in the United States and Europe; one of them, Benjamin F. Tracy, became Harrison’s secretary of the navy in 1889. Tracy organized the Bureau of Construction and Repair to design and build new ships, established the naval reserve in 1891, and ordered con- struction of the fi rst American submarine in 1893. He also adopted the fi rst heavy rapid-fi re guns, smokeless powder, tor- pedoes, and heavy armor. Above all, Tracy joined with big-navy advocates in Congress to push for a far-ranging battleship fl eet capable of attacking distant enemies. He wanted two fl eets of battle ships, eight ships in the Pacifi c and twelve in the Atlantic. He got four fi rst-class battleships.
In 1889, when Tracy entered offi ce, the United States ranked twelft h among world navies; in 1893, when he left , it ranked seventh and was climbing rapidly. “Th e sea,” he predicted in 1891, “will be the future seat of empires. And we shall rule it as certainly as the sun doth rise.” By the end of the decade, the navy had seventeen steel battleships, six armored cruisers, and many smaller craft . It ranked third in the world.
War with Spain
What were the causes and results of the war with Spain?
Th e war with Spain in 1898 built a mood of national confi - dence; altered older, more insular patterns of thought; and reshaped the way Americans saw themselves and the world. Its outcome pleased some people but troubled others who raised questions about war itself, colonies, and subject peoples. Th e war left a lingering strain of isolationism and antiwar feeling that aff ected later policy. It also left an American empire, small by European standards, but quite new to the American experi- ence by virtue of its overseas location. When the war ended, American possessions stretched into the Caribbean and deep into the Pacifi c. American infl uence went further still, and the United States was recognized as a “world power.”
Th e Spanish-American War established the United States as a dominant force for the twentieth century. It brought America colonies and millions of colonial subjects; it brought the respon- sibilities of governing an empire and protecting it. For better
the Naval Academy in 1859, he devoted a lifetime to studying the infl uence of sea power in history; for more than two decades, he headed the Newport Naval War College, where offi cers imbibed the latest in strategic thinking. A clear, logical writer, Mahan sum- marized his beliefs in several major books, including Th e Infl uence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890), and Th e Interest of America in Sea Power (1897).
Mahan’s reasoning was simple and, to that generation, persuasive. Industrialism, he argued, produced vast surpluses of agricultural and manufactured goods, for which markets must be found. Markets involved distant ports; reaching them required a large merchant marine and a powerful navy to pro- tect it. Navies, in turn, needed coaling stations and repair yards. Coaling stations meant colonies, and colonies became strategic
This 1881 cartoon depicted “our top heavy navy,” a decrepit vessel sinking with idle offi cers.
Read the Document Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power
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sent a trusted aide on a fact-fi nding mission to Cuba; the aide reported in mid-1897 that Weyler’s policy had wrapped Cuba “in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation.” Th e report in hand, McKinley off ered to mediate the struggle, but, concerned over the suff ering, he protested against Spain’s “uncivilized and inhuman” conduct. Th e United States, he made clear, did not con- test Spain’s right to fi ght the rebellion but insisted it be done within humane limits.
Late in 1897, a change in government in Madrid brought a temporary lull in the crisis. The new government recalled Weyler and agreed to off er the Cubans some form of auton- omy. It also declared an amnesty for political prisoners and released Americans from Cuban jails. Th e new initiatives pleased McKinley, though he again warned Spain that it must fi nd a humane end to the rebellion. Th en, in January 1898, Spanish army offi cers led riots in Havana against the new autonomy policy, shaking the president’s confi dence in Madrid’s control over conditions in Cuba.
McKinley ordered the battleship Maine to Havana to demonstrate strength and protect American citizens if neces- sary. On February 9, 1898, the New York Journal , a leader of the yellow press, published a letter stolen from Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish ambassador in Washington. In the letter, which was private correspondence to a friend, de Lôme called McKinley “weak,” “a would-be politician,” and “a bidder for the admiration of the crowd.” Many Americans were angered by the insult; McKinley himself was more worried about other sections of the letter that revealed Spanish insincerity in the negotiations. De Lôme immediately resigned and went home, but the damage was done.
A few days later, at 9:40 in the evening of February 15, an explosion tore through the hull of the Maine , riding at anchor in Havana harbor. Th e ship, a trim symbol of the new steel navy, sank quickly; 266 lives were lost. McKinley cautioned patience and promised an immediate investigation. Crowds gathered quietly on Capitol Hill and outside the White House, mourning the lost men. Soon there was a new slogan: “Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain!”
The most recent study of the Maine incident blames the sinking on an accidental internal explosion, caused perhaps by spontaneous combustion in poorly ventilated coal bunkers. In 1898, Americans blamed it on Spain. Spaniards were hanged in effi gy in many communities. Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryan, and others urged war, but McKinley delayed, hopeful that Spain might yet agree to an armistice and perhaps Cuban indepen- dence. In early March 1898, wanting to be ready for war if it came, McKinley asked Congress for $50 million in emergency defense appropriations, a request Congress promptly approved. Th e unani- mous vote stunned Spain; allowing the president a latitude that was highly unusual for the era, it appropriated the money “for the National defense and for each and every purpose connected therewith to be expended at the discretion of the President.” In late March, the report of the investigating board blamed the sinking of the Maine on an external (and thus presumably Spanish) explo- sion. Pressures for war increased.
On March 27, McKinley cabled Spain his final terms. He asked Spain to declare an armistice, end the reconcentration
or worse, it involved the country in other nations’ arguments and aff airs. Th e war strengthened the offi ce of the presidency, swept the nation together in a tide of emotion, and confi rmed the long- standing belief in the superiority of the New World over the Old. When it was over, Americans looked outward as never before, touched, they were sure, with a special destiny.
A War for Principle By the 1890s, Cuba and the nearby island of Puerto Rico comprised nearly all that remained of Spain’s once vast empire in the New World. Several times, Cuban insurgents had rebelled against Spanish rule, including a decade-long rebellion from 1868 to 1878 (the Ten Years’ War) that failed to settle the con- fl ict. Th e depression of 1893 damaged the Cuban economy, and the Wilson-Gorman Tariff of 1894 prostrated it. Duties on sugar, Cuba’s lifeblood, were raised 40 percent. With the island’s sugar market in ruins, discontent with Spanish rule heightened, and in late February 1895, revolt again broke out.
Recognizing the importance of the nearby United States, Cuban insurgents established a junta in New York City to raise money, buy weapons, and wage a propaganda war to sway American public opinion. Conditions in Cuba were grim. Th e insurgents pursued a hit-and-run scorched-earth policy to force the Spanish to leave. Spain committed more than two hundred thousand soldiers; the Spanish commander, who had won with similar tactics in 1878, tried to pin the insurgents in the eastern part of the island where they could be cornered and destroyed.
When this strategy failed, Spain, in January 1896, sent a new commander, General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau. Relentless and brutal, Weyler gave the rebels ten days to lay down their arms. He then put into eff ect a “reconcentration” policy designed to move the native population into camps and destroy the rebel- lion’s popular base. Herded into fortifi ed areas, Cubans died by the thousands, victims of unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and disease.
Stories in American newspapers spurred a wave of sympathy for the insurgents. Two brash newspaper publishers in New York City, William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal , and Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World , hoped to use the situation in Cuba to increase sales of their newspapers. To do so they published accounts of lurid Spanish atrocities, rebel victories, and of innocent Cuban women harassed by Spanish troops. Because of the yellow color of the comic strips in both papers, the tactic became known as yellow journalism , and some blamed it for causing the war.
In actual fact, it did not. Th e confl ict stemmed from larger disputes in policies and perceptions between Spain and the United States. Grover Cleveland, under whose administration the rebellion began, preferred Spanish rule to the kind of turmoil that might invite foreign intervention. Opposed to the annexa- tion of Cuba, he issued a proclamation of neutrality and tried to restrain public opinion. In 1896, Congress passed a resolu- tion favoring recognition of Cuban belligerence, but Cleveland ignored it. Instead, he off ered to mediate the struggle, an off er Spain declined.
Taking offi ce in March 1897, President McKinley also urged neutrality but leaned slightly toward the insurgents. He immediately
War with Spain 499
On April 21, Spain severed diplomatic relations. The following day, McKinley proclaimed a blockade of Cuba and called for 125,000 volunteers. On Monday, April 25, Congress passed a declaration of war. Late that afternoon, McKinley signed it.
Some historians have suggested that in leading the coun- try toward war, McKinley was weak and indecisive, a victim of war hysteria in the Congress and the country; others have called him a wily manipulator for war and imperial gains. In truth, he was neither. Th roughout the Spanish crisis, McKinley pur- sued a moderate middle course that sought to end the suff ering in Cuba, promote Cuba’s independence, and allow Spain time to adjust to the loss of the remnant of empire. He also wanted peace, as did Spain, but in the end, the confl icting national inter- ests of the two countries brought them to war.
policy, and—implicitly—move toward Cuban independence. When the Spanish answer came, it conceded some things, but not, in McKinley’s judgment, the important ones. Spain off ered a sus- pension of hostilities (but not an armistice) and left the Spanish commander in Cuba to set the length and terms of the suspen- sion. It also revoked the reconcentration policy. But the Spanish response made no mention of a true armistice, McKinley’s off er to mediate, or Cuba’s independence.
Reluctantly McKinley prepared his war message. Congress heard it on April 11, 1898. On April 19, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring Cuba independent and authorizing the president to use the army and navy to expel the Spanish from it. Th e Teller Amendment , off ered by Colorado senator Henry M. Teller, pledged that the United States had no intention of annexing the island.
Burial of the Maine Victims Watch the Video
This photo of the burial procession of victims of the Maine was taken at Key West, FL, on March 27, 1898. Two hundred sixty-six sailors and marines were killed in the explosion in Havana harbor.
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trouble to satisfy those who are not going than to fi nd those who are willing to go.”
In an army inundated with men, problems of equipment and supply quickly appeared. Th e regulars had the new .30-caliber Krag-Jorgensen rifl es, but National Guard units carried Civil War Springfi eld rifl es that used old black-powder cartridges. Th e car- tridges gave off a puff of smoke when fi red, neatly marking the troops’ position. Spanish troops were better equipped; they had modern Mausers with smokeless powder, which they used to devastating eff ect. Food was also a problem, as was sickness. Th e War Department fell behind in supplies and received many com- plaints about the canned beef it off ered the men. Tropical disease felled many soldiers. Scores took ill aft er landing in Cuba and the Philippines, and it was not uncommon for half a regiment to be unable to answer the bugle call.
Americans then believed that “a foreign war should be fought by the hometown military unit acting as an extension of their community.” Soldiers identifi ed with their hometowns, dressed in the local fashion, and thought of themselves as members of a town unit in a national army. Th e poet Carl Sandburg, twenty years old in 1898, rushed to join the army and called his unit a “living part” of his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois. And the citizens of Galesburg, for their part, took a special interest in Sandburg’s unit, in a fashion repeated in countless towns across the country.
Not surprisingly, then, National Guard units mirrored the social patterns of their communities. Since everyone knew each other, there was an easygoing familiarity, tempered by the deference
“A Splendid Little War” Ten weeks aft er the declaration of war, the fi ghting was over. For Americans, they were ten glorious, dizzying weeks, with victo- ries to fi ll every headline and slogans to suit every taste. No war can be a happy occasion for those who fi ght it, but the Spanish- American War came closer than most. Declared in April, it ended in August. Relatively few Americans died, and the quick victory seemed to verify burgeoning American power, though Sherwood Anderson, the author, suggested that fi ghting a weakened Spain was “like robbing an old gypsy woman in a vacant lot at night aft er a fair.” John Hay, soon to be McKinley’s secretary of state, called it “a splendid little war.”
At the outset, the United States was militarily unprepared. Unlike the navy, the army had not been rebuilt or modernized, and it had shrunk drastically since the day thirty-three years before when Grant’s great Civil War army marched sixty abreast, two hundred thousand strong, down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1898, the regular army consisted of only twenty-eight thousand offi cers and men, most of them more experienced in quelling Indian uprisings than fi ghting large-scale battles.
When McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers, as many as one million young Americans responded. Ohio alone had 100,000 volunteers. Keeping the regular army units intact, War Department offi cials enlisted the volunteers in National Guard units that were then integrated into the national army. Men clam- ored to join. Th e secretary of war feared “there is going to be more
Charge of the 24th and 25th Colored Infantry and Rescue of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, July 2, 1898 , colored lithograph by Kurz and Allison, 1899 (above). The Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fi fth Colored Infantry regiments served with exceptional gallantry in the Spanish-American War. Charles Young (right), an 1889 graduate of West Point, was the only African American offi cer in the army during the Spanish-American War except for a few chaplains.
War with Spain 501
Twenty-fi ft h Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry. Black regiments had served with distinction in campaigns against the Indians in the West. Most African American troops in fact were posted in the West; no eastern community would accept them. A troop of the Ninth Cavalry was stationed in Virginia in 1891, but whites protested and the troop was ordered back to the West.
When the war broke out, the War Department called for fi ve black volunteer regiments. Th e army needed men, and military authorities were sure that black men had a natural immunity to the climate and diseases of the tropics. But most state governors refused to accept black volunteers. Only Alabama, Ohio, and Massachusetts mustered in black units in response to McKinley’s fi rst call for vol- unteers. Company L of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment took part in the invasion of Puerto Rico in July 1898, the only one of the black volunteer units to see action in the Caribbean. African American leaders, among them P. B. S. Pinchback, former acting governor of Louisiana, and George White of North Carolina, the lone African American member of Congress, protested the discrimination. Th e McKinley administration intervened, and in the end, the volunteer army included more than ten thousand black troops.
Orders quickly went out to the four black regular army regi- ments in the West to move to camps in the South to prepare for the invasion of Cuba. Crowds and cheers followed the troop trains across the plains, but as they crossed into Kentucky and Tennessee, the cheering stopped. Welcoming crowds were kept away from the trains, and the troops were hustled onward. Station restaurants
that went with hometown wealth, occupation, education, and length of residence. Enlisted men resented offi cers who grabbed too much authority, and they expected offi cers and men to call each other by their fi rst names. Sandburg knew most of the privates in his unit, had worked for his corporal, and had gone to school with the fi rst lieutenant. “Offi cers and men of the Guard mingle on a plane of beautiful equality,” said a visitor to one volunteer camp. “Privates invade the tents of their offi cers at will, and yell at them half the length of the street.”
Each community thought of the hometown unit as its own unit, an extension of itself. In later wars, the government censored news and dominated press relations; there was little censorship in the war with Spain, and the freshest news arrived in the latest let- ter home. Small-town newspapers printed news of the men, and townswomen knit special red or white bellybands of stitched fl an- nel, thought to ward off tropical fevers. Towns sent food, cloth- ing, and occasionally even local doctors to the front. At the close of the war, the Clyde (Ohio) Ladies Society collected funds to provide each member of the town’s company a medal struck on behalf of the town.
“Smoked Yankees” When the invasion force sailed for Cuba, nearly one-fourth of it was African American. In 1898, the regular army included four regiments of African American soldiers, the Twenty-fourth and
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The Spanish-American War View the Map
Disputes regarding Cuba and the sinking of the battleship U.S.S. Maine prompted the United States to declare war on Spain in 1898. The two nations dueled over another Spanish possession, the Philippines. The Treaty Of Paris of 1898 that ended the war granted Cuba its independence (although it remained an American protectorate until 1934) and established U.S. control over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
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more aggressive policy, they decided on the limited strategy of blockading Cuba, sending arms to the insurgents, and annoying the Spanish with small thrusts by the army.
Victories soon changed the strategy. In case of war, long- standing naval plans had called for a holding action against the Spanish base in the Philippines. On May 1, 1898, with the war barely a week old, Commodore George Dewey, commander of the Asiatic Squadron located at Hong Kong, crushed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. Suddenly, Manila and the Philippines lay within American grasp. At home, Dewey portraits, songs, and poems blossomed everywhere, and his calm order to the fl ag- ship’s captain—“You may fire when ready, Gridley”—hung on every tongue. Dewey had two modern cruisers, a gunboat, and a Civil War paddle steamer. He sank eight Spanish warships. Dewey had no troops to attack the Spanish army in Manila, but the War Department, stunned by the speed and size of the victory, quickly raised an expeditionary force. On August 13, 1898, the troops accepted the surrender of Manila, and with it, the Philippines.
McKinley and his aides were worried about Admiral Pascual Cervera’s main Spanish fleet, thought to be headed across the Atlantic for an attack on Florida. On May 13, the navy found Cervera’s ships near Martinique in the Caribbean but then lost them again. A few days later, Cervera slipped secretly into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba, a city on the island’s southern coast. But a spy in the Havana telegraph offi ce alerted the Americans, and on May 28, a superior American force under Admiral William T. Sampson bottled Cervera up.
In early June, a small force of Marines seized Guantánamo Bay, the great harbor on the south of the island. Th ey established depots for the navy to refuel and pinned down Spanish troops in the area. On June 14, an invasion force of about seventeen thousand men set sail from Tampa. Seven days later, they landed at Daiquiri on Cuba’s southeastern coast. All was confusion, but the Spanish off ered no resistance. Helped by Cuban insurgents, the Americans immedi- ately pushed west toward Santiago, which they hoped to surround and capture. At fi rst, the advance through the lush tropical country- side was peaceful.
Th e fi rst battle broke out at Las Guasimas, a crossroads on the Santiago road. Aft er a sharp fi ght, the Spanish fell back. On July 1, the Rough Riders, troops from the four black regiments, and the other regulars reached the strong fortifi cations at El Caney and San Juan Hill. Black soldiers of the Twenty-fi ft h Infantry charged the El Caney blockhouses, surprising the Spanish defenders with Comanche yells. For the better part of a day, the defenders fought stubbornly and held back the army’s elite corps. In the confusion of battle, Roosevelt rallied an assortment of infantry and cavalry to take Kettle Hill, adjacent to San Juan Hill.
Th ey charged directly into the Spanish guns, Roosevelt at their head, mounted on a horse, a blue polka-dot handkerchief fl oating from the brim of his sombrero. “I waved my hat and we went up the hill with a rush,” he recalled in his autobiography. Actually, it was not quite so easy. Losses were heavy; eighty-nine Rough Riders were killed or wounded in the attack. Dense foliage concealed the enemy and smokeless powder gave no clue to their position. At nightfall, the surviving Spanish defenders withdrew, and the Americans pre- pared for the counterattack.
refused to serve them; all waiting rooms were segregated. “It mat- tered not if we were soldiers of the United States, and going to fi ght for the honor of our country,” Sergeant Frank W. Pullen of the Twenty-fourth Infantry wrote; “we were ‘niggers’ as they called us and treated us with contempt.”
Many soldiers were not prepared to put up with the treatment. Th ose stationed near Chickamauga Park, Tennessee, shot “at some whites who insulted them” and forcibly desegregated the railroad cars on the line into Chattanooga. Troops training near Macon, Georgia, refused to ride in the segregated “trailers” attached to the trolleys, and fi ghts broke out. Discovering a Macon park with a sign saying “Dogs and niggers not allowed,” they invaded it and removed the sign. Th ey also chopped down a tree in the park that had been used for lynchings.
More than four thousand black troops training near Tampa and Lakeland, Florida, found segregated saloons, cafes, and drug- stores. “Here the Negro is not allowed to purchase over the same counter in some stores as the white man purchases over,” Chaplain George W. Prioleau charged. “Why sir, the Negro of this country is a freeman and yet a slave. Talk about fi ghting and freeing poor Cuba and of Spain’s brutality; of Cuba’s murdered thousands, and starving reconcentradoes. Is America any better than Spain?”
When the invasion force sailed a few days later, segregation continued on some of the troopships. Blacks were assigned to the lowest decks, or whites and blacks were placed on diff erent sides of the ship. But the confusion of war oft en ended the problem, if only temporarily. Blacks took command as white offi cers died, and Spanish troops soon came to fear the “smoked Yankees,” as they called them. Black soldiers played a major role in the Cuban cam- paign and probably staved off defeat for the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill. In Cuba, they won twenty-six Certifi cates of Merit and fi ve Congressional Medals of Honor.
The Course of the War Mahan’s Naval War College had begun studying strategy for a war with Spain in 1895. By 1898, it had a detailed plan for opera- tions in the Caribbean and Pacifi c. Naval strategy was simple: Destroy the Spanish fl eet, damage Spain’s merchant marine, and harry the colonies or the coast of Spain. Planners were excited; two steam-powered armored fl eets had yet to meet in battle anywhere in the world. Th e army’s task was more diffi cult. It had to defend the United States, invade Cuba and probably Puerto Rico, and undertake possible action in far-fl ung places such as the Philippines or Spain.
Even before war was declared, the secretary of war arranged joint planning between the army and navy. Military intelligence was plentiful, and planners knew the numbers and locations of the Spanish troops. Earlier they had rejected a proposal to send an offi cer in disguise to map Cuban harbors; such things, they said, were simply not done in peacetime. Still, the War Department’s new Military Information Division, a sign of the increasing professionalization of the army, had detailed dia- grams of Spanish fortifi cations in Havana and other points. On the aft ernoon of April 20, 1898, McKinley summoned the strate- gists to the White House; to the dismay of those who wanted a
Acquisition of Empire 503
the war, only 379 were killed in battle. Th e navy lost one man in the battle at Santiago Bay, and only one to heatstroke in the stunning victory in Manila Bay.
Acquisition of Empire
What were the various viewpoints about the acquisition of empire after the war with Spain?
Late in the afternoon of August 12, 1898, representatives of Spain and the United States met in McKinley’s White House offi ce to sign the preliminary instrument of peace. Secretary of State William R. Day beckoned a presidential aide over to a large globe, remarking, “Let’s see what we get by this.”
American troops now occupied the ridges overlooking Santiago. Th ey were weakened by sickness, a fact unknown to the Spanish, who decided the city was lost. Th e Spanish command in Havana ordered Cervera to run for the open sea, although he knew the attempt to escape was hopeless. On the morning of July 3, Cervera’s squadron steamed down the bay and out through the harbor’s narrow channel, but the waiting American fl eet closed in, and in a few hours every Spanish vessel was destroyed. Two weeks later, Santiago surrendered.
Soon thereaft er, army troops, meeting little resistance, occu- pied Puerto Rico. Cervera had commanded Spain’s only battle fl eet, and when it sank, Spain was helpless against attacks on the colonies or even its own shores. Th e war was over. Lasting 113 days, it took relatively few lives, most of them the result of accident, yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid in Cuba. Of the 5,500 Americans who died in
American Empire View the Closer Look
Equator
Hawaiian Is. 1898
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Johnston Is. 1858
Jarvis Is. 1857
Baker Is. 1857
Philippine Is. 1898
Guam 1898
Howland Is. 1857
Wake Is. 1899
Midway Is. 1867
Puerto Rico 1898
Alaska 1867
Cuba (U.S. acquires exclusive rights to lease naval bases)
Aleutian Is. 1867
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AMERICAN EMPIRE, 1900 With the Treaty of Paris, the United States gained an expanded colonial empire stretching from the Caribbean to the far Pacific. It embraced Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, part of Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, and a chain of Pacific islands. The dates on the map refer to the date of U.S. acquisition.
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violated the very principles of independence and self-determination on which the United States was founded.
Some labor leaders feared the importation of cheap labor from new Pacifi c colonies. Gompers warned about the “half- breeds and semi-barbaric people” who might undercut wages and the union movement. Other anti-imperialists argued against assimilation of diff erent races, “Spanish-Americans,” as one said, “with all the mixture of Indian and negro blood, and Malays and other unspeakable Asiatics, by the tens of millions!” Such racial views were also common among those favoring expansion, and the anti-imperialists usually focused on diff erent arguments. If the United States established a tyranny abroad, they were sure, there would soon be tyranny at home. “Th is nation,” declared William Jennings Bryan, “cannot endure half republic and half colony— half free and half vassal.”
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., warned that the possession of colonies meant big armies, government, and debts (“an income tax looms up in the largest possible proportions,” he said). Bryan scoff ed at the argument that colonies were good for trade, pointing out, “It is not necessary to own people to trade with them.” E. L. Godkin, the editor of Th e Nation ; George F. Hoar, a leading Republican senator; and many others thought there was no way to reconcile the country’s republican ideals with the practice of keeping people under heel abroad. As one of them put it, “Dewey took Manila with the loss of one man—and all our institutions.”
To Booker T. Washington, the country had more important things to think about at home, including its treatment of Indians and blacks. Carnegie was so upset that he off ered to buy Filipino independence with a personal check for $20 million. He was sure that keeping the Philippines would divert attention from indus- trial development to foreign adventure, would glorify physical force, and would lead to a war against the Filipinos themselves, in which American soldiers who had signed up “to fi ght the oppres- sor” would end up “shooting down the oppressed.”
In November 1898, opponents of expansion formed the Anti-Imperialist League to fi ght against the peace treaty. Local leagues sprang up in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and many other cities; the parent league claimed thirty thousand members and more than half a million “contributors.” Membership centered in New England; the cause was less popular in the West and South. It enlisted more Democrats than Republicans, though never a majority of either. Th e anti-imperialists were weakened by the fact that they lacked a coherent program. Some favored keeping naval bases in the conquered areas. Some wanted Hawaii and Puerto Rico but not the Philippines. Others wanted nothing at all to do with any colonies. Most simply wished that Dewey had sailed away aft er beating the Spanish at Manila Bay.
Th e treaty debate in the Senate lasted a month. Pressing hard for ratifi cation, McKinley earlier toured the South to rally support and consulted closely with senators. Th ough opposed to taking the Philippines, Bryan supported ratifi cation in order to end the war; his support infl uenced some Democratic votes. Still, on the fi nal weekend before the vote, the treaty was two votes short. Th at Saturday night, news reached Washington that fi ghting had broken out between American troops and Filipino insurgents who demanded immediate independence. Th e news
What the United States got was an expansion of its territory and an even larger expansion of its responsibilities. According to the preliminary agreement, Spain granted independence to Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and the Pacifi c island of Guam to the United States, and allowed Americans to occupy Manila until the two countries reached fi nal agreement on the Philippines. To McKinley, the Philippines were the problem. Puerto Rico was close to the mainland, and it appealed even to many of the opponents of expansion. Guam was small and unknown; it escaped attention. Th e Philippines, on the other hand, were huge, sprawling, and thousands of miles from America.
McKinley weighed a number of alternatives for the Philippines, but he liked none of them. He believed he could not give the islands back to Spain; public opinion would not allow it. He might turn them over to another nation, but then they would fall, as he later said, “a golden apple of discord, among the rival powers.” Germany, Japan, Great Britain, and Russia had all expressed interest in acquiring them. Germany even sent a large fl eet to Manila and laid plans to take the Philippines if the United States let them go.
Rejecting those alternatives, McKinley considered indepen- dence for the islands but was soon talked out of it. People who had been there, refl ecting the era’s racism, told him the Filipinos were not ready for independence. He thought of establishing an American protectorate but discarded the idea, convinced it would bring American responsibilities without full American control. Sift ing the alternatives, McKinley decided there was only one prac- tical policy: Annex the Philippines, with an eye to future indepen- dence aft er a period of tutelage.
At fi rst hesitant, American opinion was swinging to the same conclusion. Religious and missionary organizations appealed to McKinley to hold on to the Philippines in order to “Christianize” them. Some merchants and industrialists saw them as the key to the China market and the wealth of Asia. Many Americans simply regarded them as the legitimate fruits of war. In October 1898, rep- resentatives of the United States and Spain met in Paris to discuss a peace treaty. Spain agreed to recognize Cuba’s independence, assume the Cuban debt, and cede Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States.
Acting on instructions from McKinley, the American repre- sentatives demanded the cession of the Philippines. “Grave as are the responsibilities and unforeseen as are the diffi culties which are before us, the President can see but one plain path of duty— the acceptance of the archipelago,” the instructions said. In return, the United States off ered a payment of $20 million. Spain resisted but had little choice, and on December 10, 1898, the American and Spanish representatives signed the Treaty of Paris .
The Treaty of Paris Debate Submitted to the Senate for ratifi cation, the treaty set off a storm of debate throughout the country. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie, reformer Jane Addams, labor leader Samuel Gompers, promi- nent Republicans such as Th omas B. Reed and John Sherman, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, and a host of others argued forcefully against annexing the Philippines. Annexation of the Philippines, the anti-imperialists protested over and over again,
Acquisition of Empire 505
had gone into exile in Hong Kong; from there he welcomed the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Certain the United States would grant independence, he worked for an American victory. Filipino insurgents helped guide Dewey into Manila Bay, and Dewey himself sent a ship to Hong Kong to bring back Aguinaldo to lead a native uprising against the Spanish. On June 12, 1898, the insurgents proclaimed their independence.
Cooperating with the Americans, they drove the Spanish out of many areas of the islands. In the liberated regions, Aguinaldo established local governments with appointed provincial governors. He waited impatiently for American recognition, but McKinley and others had concluded that the Filipinos were not ready. Soon, warfare broke out between the Filipinos and Americans over the question of Filipino independence.
By late 1899, the American army had defeated and dispersed the organized Filipino army, but claims of victory proved premature. Aguinaldo and his advisers shift ed to guer- rilla tactics, striking suddenly and then melting into the jungle or friendly native villages. In many areas, the Americans ruled the day, the guerrillas the night. Th ere were terrible atrocities on both sides. Th e Americans found themselves using brutal, Weyler-like tactics. Aft er any attack on an American patrol, the Americans burned all the houses in the nearest district. Th ey tortured people and executed prisoners. Th ey established protected “zones” and herded Filipinos into them. Seizing or destroying all food outside the zones, they starved many guerril- las into submission.
Bryan tried to turn the election of 1900 into a debate over imperialism, but the attempt failed. For one thing, he himself refused to give up the silver issue, which cost him some sup- port among anti-imperialists in the Northeast who were for gold. McKinley, moreover, was able to take advantage of the surging economy, and he could defend expansion as an accomplished fact. “It is no longer a question of expansion with us,” he told one audi- ence. “If there is any question at all it is a question of contraction; and who is going to contract?” Riding a wave of patriotism and prosperity, McKinley won the election handily—by an even larger margin than he had in 1896.
In 1900, McKinley sent a special Philippine Commission to the islands under William Howard Taft , a prominent Ohio judge. Directed to establish a civil government, the commission orga- nized municipal administrations and, in stages, created a govern- ment for the Philippines. In March 1901, fi ve American soldiers tricked their way into Aguinaldo’s camp deep in the mountains and took him prisoner. Back in Manila, he signed a proclamation urging his people to end the fi ghting. Some guerrillas held out for another year, but to no avail. On July 4, 1901, authority was trans- ferred from the army to Taft , who was named civilian governor of the islands, and his civilian commission. McKinley reaffi rmed his purpose to grant the Filipinos self-government as soon as they were deemed ready for it.
Given broad powers, the Taft Commission introduced many changes. New schools provided education and vocational training for Filipinos of all social classes. Th e Americans built roads and bridges, reformed the judiciary, restructured the tax system, and introduced sanitation and vaccination programs. Th ey established local governments built on Filipino traditions and hierarchies.
increased pressure to ratify the treaty, which the Senate did on February 6, 1899, with two votes to spare. An amendment promising independence as soon as the Filipinos established a stable government lost by one vote. Th e United States had a colonial empire.
Guerrilla Warfare in the Philippines Historians rarely write of the Philippine-American War , but it was an important event in American history. Th e war with Spain was over a few months aft er it began, but war with the Filipinos lasted more than three years. Four times as many American sol- diers fought in the Philippines as in Cuba. For the fi rst time, Americans fought men of a diff erent color in an Asian guerrilla war. Th e Philippine-American War of 1898–1902 took a heavy toll: 4,300 American lives and untold thousands of Filipino lives (estimates range from 50,000 to 200,000).
Emilio Aguinaldo, the Filipino leader, was twenty-nine years old in 1898. An early organizer of the anti-Spanish resistance, he
Read the Document Carl Schurz, Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League
Carl Schurz and other anti-imperialists of the American Anti-Imperialists League lobbied President McKinley not to annex the Philippines after the Spanish American War in 1898. These anti-imperialists argued that annexation of the Philippines would violate republican principles.
506 CHAPTER 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
the principle that the Constitution did not automatically and immediately apply to the people of an annexed territory and did not confer upon them all the privileges of U.S. citizenship. Instead, Congress could specifi cally extend such constitutional provisions as it saw fi t. “Ye-es,” the secretary of war said of the Court’s ambigu- ous rulings, “as near as I can make out the Constitution follows the fl ag—but doesn’t quite catch up with it.”
Four dependencies—Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico—were organized quickly. In 1900, Congress granted territo- rial status to Hawaii, gave American citizenship to all citizens of the Hawaiian republic, authorized an elective legislature, and provided for a governor appointed from Washington. A similar measure made Alaska a territory in 1912. Guam and American Samoa were simply placed under the control of naval offi cers.
Unlike the Filipinos, Puerto Ricans readily accepted the war’s outcome, and McKinley early withdrew troops from the island. Th e Foraker Act of 1900 established civil government in Puerto Rico. It organized the island as a territory, made its residents citizens of Puerto Rico (U.S. citizenship was extended to them in 1917), and empowered the president to appoint a governor general and a council to serve as the upper house of the legislature. A lower house of delegates was to be elected.
Taft encouraged Filipino participation in government. During the following decades, other measures broadened Filipino rights. Independence fi nally came on July 4, 1946, nearly fi ft y years aft er Aguinaldo proclaimed it.
Governing the Empire Ruling the colonies raised new and perplexing questions. How could—and how should—the distant dependencies be governed? Did their inhabitants have the rights of American citizens? Some people contended that acquisition did not automatically incorpo- rate the new possessions into the United States and endow them with constitutional privileges. Others argued that “the Constitution followed the fl ag,” meaning that acquisition made the possessions part of the nation and thus entitled them to all constitutional guar- antees. A third group suggested that only “fundamental” constitu- tional guarantees—citizenship, the right to vote, and the right to trial by jury—not “formal” privileges—the right to use American currency, the right to be taxed, and the right to run for the presi- dency—were applicable to the new empire.
In a series of cases between 1901 and 1904 ( De Lima v. Bidwell , Dooley v. U.S. , and Downes v. Bidwell ), the Supreme Court asserted
Equator
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ARGENTINA CHILE
GREENLAND (DENMARK) ICELAND(DENMARK)
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DENMARK SWEDEN
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AUSTRIA- HUNGARY
THE NETHERLANDS GREAT BRITAIN
FRANCE BELGIUM
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WORLD COLONIAL EMPIRES, 1900 Events of the nineteenth century increased European hegemony over the world. By 1900, most independent African nations had disappeared and the major European nations had divided the continent among themselves. In the East, the European powers and Japan took advantage of China’s internal weakness to gain both trading ports and economic concessions.
Acquisition of Empire 507
Cubans themselves. It repaired the damage of the civil war, built roads and schools, and established order in rural areas. A public health campaign headed by Dr. Walter Reed, an army surgeon, wiped out yellow fever. Most troops withdrew at the end of 1899, but a small American occupation force remained until May 1902. When it sailed for home, the Cubans at last had a form of inde- pendence, but they were still under the clear domination of their neighbor to the north.
The Open Door Poised in the Philippines, the United States had become an Asian power on the doorstep of China. Weakened by years of warfare, China in 1898 and 1899 was unable to resist foreign infl uence. Japan, England, France, Germany, and Russia eyed it covetously, dividing parts of the country into “spheres of infl uence.” Th ey forced China to grant “concessions” that allowed them exclusive rights to develop particular areas and threatened American hopes for extensive trade with the country.
McKinley fi rst outlined a new China policy in September 1898 when he said that Americans sought more trade, “but we seek no advantages in the Orient which are not common to all. Asking only the open door for ourselves, we are ready to accord the open door to others.” In September 1899, Secretary of State John Hay addressed identical diplomatic notes to England, Germany, and Russia, and later to France, Japan, and Italy, asking them to join the United States in establishing the Open Door policy . Th is policy urged three agreements: Nations possessing a sphere of infl uence would respect the rights and privileges of other nations in that sphere; the Chinese government would continue to collect tariff duties in all spheres; and nations would not discriminate against other nations in levying port dues and railroad rates within their respective spheres of infl uence.
Under the Open Door policy, the United States would retain many commercial advantages it might lose if China was partitioned into spheres of infl uence. McKinley and Hay also attempted to preserve for the Chinese some semblance of national authority. Great Britain most nearly accepted the principle of the Open Door. Russia declined to approve it, and the other powers, sending evasive replies, stated they would agree only if all the other nations did. Hay turned the situation to American advantage by boldly announcing in March 1900 that all the powers had accepted the Open Door policy. (See the Feature Essay, “Th e 400 Million Customers of China ,” pp. 508–510 , for more on U.S. trade in China.)
The policy’s first test came just three months later with the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in Peking (now Beijing). In June 1900, a secret, intensely nationalistic Chinese society called the Boxers tried to oust all foreigners from their country. Overrunning Peking, they drove foreigners into their lega- tions and penned them up for nearly two months. In the end, the United States joined Britain, Germany, and other powers in sending troops to lift the siege.
Fearing that the rebellion gave some nations, especially Germany and Russia, an excuse to expand their spheres of infl u- ence, Hay took quick action to emphasize American policy. In July, he sent off another round of Open Door notes affi rming
Cuba proved a trickier matter. McKinley asserted the authority of the United States over conquered territory and promised to govern the island until the Cubans had established a fi rm and stable government of their own. “I want you to go down there to get the people ready for a republican form of gov- ernment,” he instructed General Leonard Wood, commander of the army in Cuba until 1902. “I leave the details of procedure to you. Give them a good school system, try to straighten out their ports, and put them on their feet as best you can. We want to do all we can for them and to get out of the island as soon as we safely can.”
Wood moved quickly to implement the instructions. Early in 1900, he completed a census of the Cuban population, conducted municipal elections, and arranged the election of delegates to a constitutional convention. Th e convention adopted a constitu- tion modeled on the U.S. Constitution and, at Wood’s prodding, included provisions for future relations with the United States. Known as the Platt Amendment to the new Cuban Constitution, the provisions stipulated that Cuba should make no treaties with other powers that might impair its independence, acquire no debts it could not pay, and lease naval bases such as Guantánamo Bay to the United States. Most important, the amendment empowered the United States to intervene in Cuba to maintain orderly government.
Between 1898 and 1902, the American military government worked hard for the economic and political revival of the island, though it oft en demonstrated a paternalistic attitude toward the
Emilio Aguinaldo in the Philippines, 1896. Aguinaldo’s forces helped the Americans drive Spain out of the Philippines, expecting that the United States would recognize Filipino independence. When the United States failed to do so, Aguinaldo led his forces in warfare against the Americans.
Emilio AguinaldoView the Image
508
1880s and 1890s became increas- ingly concerned that the avalanche of goods pouring out of the nation’s farms and factories outpaced the pur- chasing power of customers at home. Presidents from McKinley to Woodrow Wilson pointed out that businesses must fi nd new markets abroad or face collapse. “[O]ur industries have expanded to such a point,” Wilson argued in 1912, “that they will burst their jackets if they cannot fi nd a free outlet to the markets of the world.”
But doing that was not easy in China, whose great distances, dif- ferent language, and restrictive laws stymied even some of America’s most legendary business leaders. Both J. P. Morgan, the famed fi nancier who bought up railroads everywhere
a member of Congress exclaimed in 1898, “Look to the land of the set- ting sun, look to the Pacifi c! There are teeming millions there who will ere long want to be fed and clothed the same as we are.”
Step-by-step, Americans in the 1800s moved closer to those teem- ing millions, by actions including Secretary of State William H. Seward’s 1867 purchase of Alaska and the later decisions to acquire Hawaii and con- struct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. President William McKinley offered several reasons for retain- ing the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War, but one of them was their nearness to China.
Adding a sense of urgency, busi- ness and political leaders during the
The issue of American trade with China, so much in the news today, has been a concern of the United States for more than two centuries. Many of the things Americans now buy and wear carry the label, “Made in China.” The United States had long hoped that the Chinese would be buying goods “Made in the U.S.A.,” but it has not worked out entirely that way.
For a time it seemed it would. When the United States won indepen- dence from Great Britain, it opened up markets the British had monopolized, such as China, whose huge popula- tion of 400 million people fascinated American business leaders through- out the nineteenth century. “Let me say to the businessmen of America,”
The 400 Million Customers of China
Feature Essay
Duke’s Cameo Cigarettes card depicting the ruler, fl ag, and coat of arms of China. The W. Duke & Sons Company merged with other tobacco manufacturers in 1890 to form the American Tobacco Company, which began selling cigarettes in China that same year.
Complete the Assignment The 400 Million Customers of China on myhistorylab
509
Army had closed the door to trade. China emptied of Americans. The last American diplomats left in the spring of 1950, followed soon after by busi- ness fi gures and missionaries.
It took two decades to begin a thaw, even longer to begin the serious busi- ness of trading once again. President Richard M. Nixon visited China in 1972 in a historic trip that signaled a new direction in relations between the two countries. Six years later, President Jimmy Carter restored diplomatic relations. Sounding very much like his nineteenth-century predecessors, President Bill Clinton noted in 2000 that “China, with more than a billion people, is home to the largest potential market in the world.” Backed by the United States, China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, with much of American business, still hopeful of cap- turing the China trade, in favor.
And the Chinese did buy American goods as those businesses hoped, $35 billion worth in the year 2000, making China America’s fi fth largest market in the world. American tobacco companies continue to sell millions of cigarettes in China; com- panies dealing in aircraft engines, power plant equipment, soybeans, cotton, and fruit also do well. But the old dream proves elusive still. Americans buy from China far more than the Chinese buy from the United States, about six times more, in fact. By the end of 2005, the U.S. defi cit with China reached $202 billion, “the largest trade defi cit in the history of the world,” the U.S. trade representa- tive said in a recent speech in Beijing.
That defi cit continues to grow. With many American name brands now made in China, the Chinese have begun to wonder what a “Made in the U.S.A.” label really means.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did American business in the late nineteenth century want to tap the China market?
2. What social reforms did Americans in the Progressive Era want to export to China?
magazine said in 1915, “must give way to parks, and sewers, and fi ltered water, and war on rats and mosquitoes.”
American agencies and universi- ties eagerly took up “the Far Eastern question,” as Lillian Wald, a promi- nent female reformer, put it. The Rockefeller Foundation worked to encourage cultivation of arable land; the Suffragist magazine campaigned to give Chinese women the vote; Americans in China tried to improve the postal service and introduce the wireless radio; the American Red Cross employed engineers to elimi- nate fl oods on Chinese rivers and open up new farmland.
Before long, the Young Men’s Christian Association extended its mission to China, aiming to improve schools, form settlement houses in major cities, and reform the sanita- tion of China’s prisons, parks, and businesses. Drawing on its staff of young, dedicated college graduates, it held literacy campaigns, worked for better public health, paid for social sur- veys, and tried to provide recreation and residences for some of China’s poor. Students from Princeton University established a settlement house soon known as Princeton-in-Peking. In 1906, Yale University students founded the Yale-in-China Medical College at Changsha, to function, as one of the founders said, as a center for the “uplifting of leading Chinese young men toward civilization.”
Heady ideas, they were typical of the United States in the Progressive period, a conviction that changing the environment would change people, a desire to expand business growth and progressive reform, and export both to other countries. Business leaders, eager to acquire more and more of the vast China market, were among those who urged the McKinley administra- tion to establish the famed Open Door.
The Great Depression and World War II diverted American attention from the China market, but once the war ended, business leaders again fl ocked there, only to fi nd that the victory in 1949 of Mao Tse-tung and his Communist People’s Liberation
and created the gigantic U.S. Steel Company, and E. H. Harriman, a rail- road magnate who dreamed of China as part of a transportation system that circled the globe, tried and failed.
Others, who took account of Chinese customs and conditions, suc- ceeded. “Bring me the atlas,” James B. Duke, head of the American Tobacco Company, said to an aide soon after he founded the company. Turning the pages, he quickly scanned population fi gures until he came to one he liked: “Pop.: 430,000,000.” “That,” he said, “is where we are going to sell cigarettes.”
And that place, of course, was China. American Tobacco shipped its fi rst cigarettes to China in 1890 and watched sales rise dramatically, from 1.25 billion cigarettes in 1902 to 9.75 billion in 1912 and 12 billion in 1916. It built large plants in two Chinese cities, established key distri- bution centers, and advertised widely. The company employed some native Chinese to market its cigarettes but also hired teams of Westerners, usu- ally bachelors under the age of 25 who could accept the risks of living and working in China. Urging them to learn colloquial Chinese, the com- pany held language exams every six months and awarded a $500 bonus to anyone who passed. Before long, American Tobacco produced nearly two-thirds of the cigarettes consumed in China.
Other businesses adopted simi- lar strategies, among them John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, which by 1910 marketed more than half the kerosene sold in China. Standard’s famous red kerosene tin, fl attened to make roofs and walls of houses around the world, became a symbol of America’s economic reach.
Signifi cantly, Americans in the Progressive period exported not only oil and tobacco but also major social reforms, refl ecting a certainty, so com- mon in our history, that the Chinese could not do it for themselves. “The pigtails, the old pinched shoes, the parasols and banners,” a leading reform
510 CHAPTER 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain
The war with Spain over, Roosevelt and the Rough Riders sailed for home in mid-August 1898. Th ey sauntered through the streets of New York, the heroes of the city. A few weeks later, Roosevelt bade them farewell. Th ey presented him with a reproduction of Frederick Remington’s famed bronze The Bronco-Buster , and, close to tears, he told them, “I am proud of this regiment beyond measure.” Roosevelt later wrote an account of the war in which he played so central a role that Mr. Dooley suggested, “If I was him, I’d call th’ book ‘Alone in
U.S. commitment to equal commercial opportunity and respect for China’s independence. While the fi rst Open Door notes had implied recognition of China’s continued independence, the second notes explicitly stated the need to preserve it. Together, the two notes composed the Open Door policy, which became a central element in American policy in the Far East.
To some degree, the policy tried to help China, but it also led to further American meddling in the aff airs of another country. Moreover, by committing itself to a policy that Americans were not prepared to defend militarily, the McKinley administration left the opportunity for later controversy with Japan and other expansion-minded powers in the Pacifi c.
An American cartoon of 1900 showing Uncle Sam opening China to free trade with the key of American diplomacy while economic competitors England and Russia look on.
Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain 511
Cubia.”’ By then, Roosevelt was already governor of New York and on his way to the White House.
Other soldiers were also glad to be home, although they were sometimes resentful of the reception they found. “Th e war is over now,” said Winslow Hobson, a black trooper from the Ninth Ohio, “and Roosevelt . . . ; and others (white of course) have all there is to be gotten out of it.” Bravery in Cuba and the Philippines won some recognition for black soldiers, but the war itself set back the cause of civil rights. It spurred talk about “inferior” races, at home and abroad, and united whites in the North and South. “Th e Negro might as well know it now as later,” a black editor said, “the closer the North and South get together by this war, the harder he will have to fi ght to maintain a footing.”
A fresh outburst of segregation and lynching occurred during the decade aft er the war.
McKinley and the Republican party soared to new heights of popularity. Firmly established, the Republican majority dominated politics until 1932. Scandals arose about the canned beef and the conduct of the War Department, but there was none of the sharp sense of deception and betrayal that was to mark the years aft er World War I. In a little more than a century, the United States had grown from thirteen states stretched along a thin Atlantic coast- line into a world power that reached from the Caribbean to the Pacifi c. As Seward and others had hoped, the nation now domi- nated its own hemisphere, dealt with European powers on more equal terms, and was a major power in Asia.
512 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER REVIEW
1895 Cuban insurgents rebel against Spanish rule 1898 Battleship Maine explodes in Havana harbor
(February); Congress declares war against Spain (April); Commodore Dewey defeats Spanish fl eet at Manila Bay (May); United States annexes Hawaii (July); Americans defeat Spanish at El Caney, San Juan Hill (actually Kettle Hill), and Santiago (July); Spain sues for peace (August); Treaty of Paris ends Spanish-American War (December)
1899 Congress ratifi es Treaty of Paris; United States sends Open Door notes to Britain, Germany, Russia, France, Japan, and Italy; Philippine-American War erupts
1900 Foraker Act establishes civil government in Puerto Rico
1901 Platt Amendment authorizes American intervention in Cuba
1902 Philippine-American War ends with American victory
1867 United States purchases Alaska from Russia; Midway Islands are annexed
1871 Treaty of Washington between United States and Great Britain sets precedent for peaceful settlement of international disputes
1875 Reciprocity treaty with Hawaii binds Hawaii economically and politically to United States
1878 United States acquires naval base in Samoa 1883 Congress approves funds for construction
of fi rst modern steel ships; beginning of modern navy
1887 New treaty with Hawaii gives United States exclusive use of Pearl Harbor
1889 First Inter-American Conference meets in Washington, D.C.
1893 American settlers in Hawaii overthrow Queen Liliuokalani; provisional government established
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 21 Toward Empire on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
America Looks Outward
Why did Americans look outward in the last half of the nineteenth century?
In the late nineteenth century, Americans increasingly looked overseas, influenced by the example of other nations and confidence in what their country could offer other
peoples, including Christianity, commerce, and American values. Policy makers were sure that the nation needed a navy, colonial outposts, foreign markets, and a new foreign policy. (p. 492 )
War with Spain
What were the causes and results of the war with Spain?
In 1898, the United States fought a war with Spain, which resulted in a quick victory and enormous changes for American society, including a larger military, an increased
role for the federal government in American life, the acquisition of colo- nies, and increased power for the presidency. (p. 497 )
Acquisition of Empire
What were the various viewpoints about the acquisition of empire after the war with Spain?
In the peace treaty ending the war with Spain, the United States acquired a new empire, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. For the first time, the United States
owned territories overseas, to which it did not intend to grant statehood. That, together with historical, racial, and other arguments, caused an angry debate between those in favor and those opposing the new colonies. Adding to the furor was the outbreak of warfare between American troops and Filipino insurgents in the Philippines. (p. 503 )
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Hawaiian Is. 1898
American Samoa 1899
Palmyra Is. 1898 Kingman Reef 1858
Johnston Is. 1858
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K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Isolationism A belief that the United States should avoid entangle- ments with other nations. p. 492
Imperialism The policy of extending a nation’s power over other areas through military conquest, economic domination, or annexation. p. 492
Yellow journalism To sell newspapers before and during the Spanish- American War, publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer engaged in blatant sensationalization of the news, which became known as “yellow journalism.” Although it did not cause the war, it helped turn U.S. public opinion against Spain. p. 498
Teller Amendment In this amendment to the declaration of war on Spain in 1898, the United States pledged that it did not intend to annex Cuba and that it would recognize Cuban independence after the Spanish- American War. p. 499
Treaty of Paris Treaty in December 1898 ending the Spanish-American War. Under its terms, Spain recognized Cuba’s independence, assumed the Cuban debt, and ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States. p. 504
Anti-Imperialist League An organization formed in 1898 to fight the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War. Members opposed acquiring overseas colonies, believing it would subvert American ideals and institutions. Membership centered in New England; the cause was less popular in the South and West. p. 504
Philippine-American War A war fought from 1899 to 1903 to quell Filipino resistance to U.S. control of the Philippine Islands. p. 505
Open Door policy This policy established free trade between the United States and China in 1900 and attempted to induce European nations and Japan to recognize the territorial integrity of China. It marked a depar- ture from the American tradition of isolationism and signaled the country’s growing involvement in the world. p. 507
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What were the key developments in leading the United States to look abroad between the 1870s and the 1890s, and how did these develop- ments ultimately lead to the war with Spain in 1898?
2. Why did the important causes and events of the Spanish-American War lead to the crucial decision to acquire and overseas empire?
3. What were the most important effects of the end of the war and the acquisition of empire?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
War with Spain
America Looks Outward
Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story p. 495
Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America in Sea Power p. 497
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document Read the Document Josiah Strong, from Our Country (1885) p. 493
Carl Schurz, Platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League p. 505
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders p. 491 Watch the Video
Acquisition of Empire
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Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 21 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
The 400 Million Customers of China p. 508
Emilio Aguinaldo p. 507 View the Image
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Burial of the Maine Victims p. 499 Watch the Video
The Spanish-American War p. 501 View the Map
American Empire p. 503 View the Closer Look ◾
Complete the Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
linking politics and some of the city’s respected business leaders. Eager for help, Folk did not mind naming names to the visiting editor from New York. “It is good busi- ness men that are corrupting our bad politicians,” he emphasized again and again. “It is the leading citizens that are battening on our city.” Steffens’s story, “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” appeared in the October 1902 issue of McClure’s .
The November McClure’s carried the first install- ment of Ida Tarbell’s scathing “History of the Standard Oil Company,” and in January 1903, Steffens was back with “The Shame of Minneapolis,” another tale of corrupt partnership between business and politics. McClure had what he wanted, and in the January issue he printed an editorial, “Concerning Three Articles in This Number of McClure’s , and a Coincidence That May Set Us Thinking.” Steffens on Minneapolis, Tarbell on Standard Oil, and an article on abuses in labor unions—all, McClure said, on different topics but actually on the same theme: corruption in American life. “Capitalists, workingmen, politicians, citizens— all breaking the law, or letting it be broken.”
Readers were enthralled, and articles and books by other muckrakers —Theodore Roosevelt coined the term in 1906 to describe the writers who made a practice of exposing the corruption of public and
Muckrakers Call for Reform In 1902, Samuel S. McClure, the shrewd owner of McClure’s Magazine , sensed something astir in the country that his reporters were not covering. Like Life , Munsey’s , the Ladies’ Home Journal , and Cosmopolitan , McClure’s was reaching more and more people—more than a quarter million readers a month. Americans were snapping up the new popular magazines filled with eye-catching illustrations and up-to-date fiction. Advances in photoengraving during the 1890s dramati- cally reduced the cost of illustrations; at the same time, income from advertisements rose sharply. By the turn of the century, some magazines earned as much as $60,000 an issue from advertising alone, and publishers could price them as low as 10 cents a copy.
McClure was always chasing new ideas and readers, and in 1902, certain that something was happening in the public mood, he told one of his editors, 36-year-old Lincoln Steffens, a former Wall Street reporter, to find out what it was. “Get out of here, travel, go—somewhere,” he said to Steffens. “Buy a railroad ticket, get on a train, and there, where it lands you, there you will learn to edit a magazine.”
McClure’s , it turned out, had an unpaid bill from the Lackawanna Railroad, and Steffens traveled west. In St. Louis, he came across a young district attorney named Joseph W. Folk who had found a trail of corruption
THE CHANGING FACE OF INDUSTRIALISM PG. 515 How did industrialism change after 1900?
SOCIETY’S MASSES PG. 519 How did mass production affect women, children, immigrants, and African Americans?
C ONFLICT IN THE WORKPLACE PG. 524 Why were there so many strikes in this period?
A NEW URBAN CULTURE PG. 530 What happened to art and culture in these years so fi lled with change?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Triangle Fire
The Progressive Era 22
Chapter 22 The Progressive EraListen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
A s McClure had hoped, Steff ens had found something astir in the country, something so important and pervasive that it altered the course of American history in the twentieth century. Th e muckrakers were a journalistic voice of this larger movement in American society. Called progressivism , it lasted from the mid-1890s through World War I. Like muckraking itself, progres- sivism refl ected worry about the state of society, the eff ects of indus- trialization and urbanization, social disorder, political corruption, and a host of other issues. With concerns so large, progressivism oft en had a sense of crisis and urgency, although it was rooted in a spirit of hopefulness and confi dence in human progress. For vary- ing reasons, thousands of people became concerned about their society, and, separately and together, they set out to cure some of the ills they saw around them. Th e eff orts of the so-called progres- sives changed the nation and gave the era its name.
The Changing Face of Industrialism
How did industrialism change after 1900?
“Life in the States,” an English visitor said in 1900, “is one perpetual whirl of telephones, telegrams, phonographs, electric bells, motors, lift s, and automatic instruments.” If not quite as automated as the visitor described, conditions in America were better than just a few years before. Farms and factories were once again prosperous; in 1901, for the fi rst time in years, the econ- omy reached full capacity. Farm prices rose almost 50 percent between 1900 and 1910. Unemployment dropped. “In the United States of today,” a Boston newspaper said in 1904, “everyone is middle class. Th e resort to force, the wild talk of the nineties are over. Everyone is busily, happily getting ahead.”
Everyone, of course, was not middle class, nor was everyone getting ahead. “Wild talk” persisted. Many of the problems that had angered people in the 1890s continued into the new century, and millions of Americans still suff ered from poverty and disease. Racism sat even more heavily on African Americans in both South and North, and there was increasing hostility against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and from Mexico and Asia. Yet to some degree the Boston newspaper was right: Economic conditions were better for many people, and as a result, prosperity became one of the keys to understanding the era and the nature of progressive reform.
Th e start of the new century was another key as well, for it infl uenced people to take a fresh look at themselves and their times. Excited about beginning the twentieth century, people believed technology and enterprise would shape a better life. Savoring the word new , they talked of the new poetry, new cinema, new history, new democracy, new woman, new art, new immigration, new morality, and new city. Magazines picked up the word; there were the New Republic and the New Statesman . Presidents Th eodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson called their political programs the New Nationalism and the New Freedom.
Th e word mass also cropped up frequently. Victors in the recent war with Spain, Americans took pride in teeming cities, burgeoning corporations, and other marks of the mass society. Th ey enjoyed the fruits of mass production, read mass circulation newspapers
prominent figures—spread swiftly. Collier’s had articles on questionable stock market practices, patent medi- cines, and the beef trust. Novelist Upton Sinclair tackled the meatpackers in The Jungle (1906). In 1904, Steffens collected his McClure’s articles in The Shame of the Cities , with an introduction expressing confidence that reform was possible, “that our shamelessness is super- ficial, that beneath it lies a pride which, being real, may save us yet.”
Muckraking flourished from 1903 to 1909, and while it did, good writers and bad investigated almost every corner of American life: government, labor unions, big business, Wall Street, health care, the food industry, child labor, women’s rights, prostitution, ghetto living,
and life insurance.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, magazines enjoyed increasing popularity. McClure’s Magazine pioneered investigative journalism. The November 1902 edition featured the first installment of Ida Tarbell’s two-year series on Standard Oil that exposed the corrupt practices and deals that had helped create the company.
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nearly fi ve million, and the automobile had already helped work a small revolution in industrial methods and social mores.
Mass production of automobiles began in the fi rst years of the century. Using an assembly-line system that foreshadowed later techniques, Ransom E. Olds turned out fi ve thousand Olds runabouts in 1904. But Olds’s days of leadership were numbered. In 1903, Henry Ford and a small group of associates formed the Ford Motor Company, the fi rm that transformed the business.
Ford was forty years old. He had tried farming and hated it. During the 1890s, he worked as an engineer for Detroit’s Edison Company but spent his spare time designing internal combustion engines and automobiles. At fi rst, like many others in the indus- try, he concentrated on building luxury and racing cars. Racing his own cars, Ford became the “speed demon” of Detroit; in 1904, he set the world’s land speed record—more than ninety miles per hour—in the 999, a large red racer that shot fl ames from the motor.
In 1903, Ford sold the fi rst Ford car. Th e price was high, and in 1905, Ford raised prices still higher. Sales plummeted. In 1907,
and magazines, and took mass transit from the growing spiral of suburbs into the central cities.
Behind mass production lay signifi cant changes in the nation’s industrial system. Businesses grew at a rapid rate. Th ey were large in the three decades aft er the Civil War, but in the years between 1895 and 1915, industries became mammoth, employing thousands of workers and equipped with assembly lines to turn out huge quanti- ties of the company’s product. Inevitably, changes in management attitudes, business organization, and worker roles infl uenced the entire society. Inevitably, too, the growth of giant businesses gave rise to a widespread fear of “trusts” and a desire among many progressive reformers to break them up or regulate them.
The Innovative Model T In the movement toward large-scale business and mass production, the automobile industry was one of those that led the way. In 1895, there were only four cars on the nation’s roads; in 1917, there were
The Rise and Fall of the Automobile Economy Watch the Video
The twentieth century was the century of the expansive automobile industry. It remade American culture. In the Model T Era of 1908 to 1927, automobiles transitioned from being toys to being household necessities.
The Changing Face of Industrialism 517
dream just a few years before. For decades, competition had sent rail prices up and down; now they stayed at $28 a ton, and through the famous “Gary dinners” in which Elbert H. Gary of U.S. Steel brought steel executives from “competing” firms together to set prices, market conditions were fi xed for wide areas of the industry.
Though the trend has been overstated, finance capitalists such as J. P. Morgan tended to replace the industrial capitalists of an earlier era. Able to fi nance the mergers and reorganiza- tions, investment bankers played a greater and greater role in the economy. A multibillion- dollar fi nancial house, J. P. Morgan and Company operated a network of control that ran from New York City to every industrial and fi nancial center in the nation. Like other investment fi rms, it held directorships in many corpora- tions, creating “interlocking directorates” that allowed it to control many businesses. In 1913, two banking groups—Morgan’s and Rockefeller’s—held 341 directorships in 112 corporations with an aggregate capital of more than $22 billion.
Massive business growth set off a decade-long debate over what government should do about the trusts. Some critics who believed that the giant companies were responsible for stifl ing individual opportunity and raising prices wanted to break them up into small competitive units. Others argued that large-scale business was a mark of the times, and that it produced more goods and better lives.
Th e debate over the trusts was one of the issues that shaped the Progressive Era, but it was never a simple contest between high-minded reformers and greedy business titans. Some progres- sives favored big business; others wanted it broken up. Business leaders themselves were divided in their viewpoints, and some welcomed reform-led assaults on giant competitors. As a rule, both progressives and business leaders drew on similar visions of the country: complex, expansive, hopeful, managerially minded,
he lowered the price; sales and revenues rose. Ford learned an important lesson of the modern economy: A smaller unit profi t on a large number of sales meant enormous revenues. Early in 1908, he introduced the Model T, a four-cylinder, 20-horsepower “Tin Lizzie,” costing $850, and available only in black. Eleven thousand were sold the fi rst year.
“I am going to democratize the automobile,” Ford proclaimed. “When I’m through everybody will be able to aff ord one, and about everyone will have one.” Th e key was mass production, and aft er many experiments, Ford copied the techniques of meat- packers who moved animal carcasses along overhead trolleys from station to station. Adapting the process to automobile assembly, Ford in 1913 set up moving assembly lines in his plant in Highland Park, Michigan, that dramatically reduced the time and cost of producing cars. Emphasizing continuous movement, he strove for a nonstop fl ow from raw material to fi nished product. In 1914, he sold 248,000 Model T cars.
That year, Ford workers assembled a car in ninety-three minutes, one-tenth the time it had taken just eight months before. On a single day in 1925, Ford set a record by turning out 9109 Model Ts, a new car for every ten seconds of the workday.
While Ford was putting more and more cars on the road, the 1916 Federal Aid Roads Act, a little noticed measure, set the frame- work for road building in the twentieth century. Removing control from county governments, it required every state desiring federal funds to establish a highway department to plan routes, oversee construction, and maintain roads. In states that had such depart- ments, the federal government paid half the cost of building the roads. Providing for a planned highway system, the act produced a national network of two-lane all-weather intercity roads.
The Burgeoning Trusts As businesses like Ford’s grew, capital and organization became increasingly important, and the result was the formation of a growing number of trusts. Standard Oil started the trend in 1882, but the greatest momentum came two decades later. Between 1898 and 1903, a series of mergers and consolidations swept the economy. Many smaller fi rms disappeared, swallowed up in giant corporations. By 1904, large-scale combinations of one form or another controlled nearly two-fi ft hs of the capital in manufacturing in the country.
The result was not monopoly but oligopoly—control of a commodity or service by a small number of large, powerful com- panies. Six great fi nancial groups dominated the railroad indus- try; a handful of holding companies controlled utilities and steel. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil owned about 85 percent of the oil business. Large companies such as Standard Oil and American Tobacco had weathered the depression of the 1890s, and aft er 1898, fi nanciers and industrialists followed their example and formed the Amalgamated Copper Company, Consolidated Tobacco, U.S. Rubber, and a host of others.
By 1909, just 1 percent of the industrial fi rms were producing nearly half of all manufactured goods. Giant businesses reached abroad for raw materials and new markets. United Fruit, an empire of plantations and steamships in the Caribbean, exploited oppor- tunities created by victory in the war with Spain. U.S. Steel worked with overseas companies to fi x the price of steel rails, an unattainable
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518 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
In a development that rivaled assembly lines in importance, businesses established industrial research laboratories where scientists and engineers developed new products. General Electric founded the fi rst one in 1900, housed in a barn. It soon attracted experts who designed improvements in light bulbs, invented the cathode-ray tube, worked on early radio, and even tinkered with atomic theory. Du Pont opened its labs in 1911, Eastman Kodak in 1912, and Standard Oil in 1919. As the source of new ideas and technology, the labs altered life in the twentieth century.
Th rough all this, business became large-scale, mechanized, and managed. While many shops still employed fewer than a dozen workers, the proportion of such shops shrank. By 1920, close to one-half of all industrial workers toiled in factories employing more than 250 people. More than one-third worked in factories that were part of multiplant companies.
Industries that processed materials—iron and steel, paper, cement, and chemicals—were increasingly automated and oper- ated continuously. In the glass industry, machines ended the domination of highly skilled and well-paid craft speople. In 1908, Irving W. Colburn invented a machine to manufacture plate glass; the Libbey-Owens-Ford Company bought the patent; and Ford soon had a glassmaking machine from which emerged every day for two years a 3½-mile ribbon of automobile window glass. Eventually, the plant produced almost two thousand miles of glass.
Workers tending such ribbons could not fall behind. Foremen still managed the laborers on the factory fl oor, but more and more, the rules came down from a central offi ce where trained profes- sional managers supervised production fl ow. Systematic record keeping, cost accounting, and inventory and production controls became widespread. Workers lost control of the work pace. “If you need to turn out a little more,” a manager at Swift and Company said, “you speed up the conveyor a little and the men speed up to keep pace.” It worked. For that and other reasons, in the automobile industry, output per worker-hour multiplied an extraordinary four times between 1909 and 1919.
Folkways of the workplace—workers passing job-related knowledge to each other, performing their tasks with little supervision, setting their own pace, and in eff ect running the shop—began to give way to “scientific” labor management. More than anyone else, Frederick Winslow Taylor, an inventive mechanical engineer, strove to extract maximum effi ciency from each worker. “In the past,” he believed, “the man has been fi rst; in the future the system must be fi rst.”
In his book The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), Taylor proposed two major reforms. First, management must take responsibility for job-related knowledge and classify it into “rules, laws, and formulae.” Second, management should control the workplace “through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and work- ing conditions, and enforced cooperation.” Although few facto- ries wholly adopted Taylor’s principles, he had great influence, and the doctrines of scientific management spread through American industry.
Workers caught up in the changing industrial system experi- enced the benefi ts of effi ciency and productivity; in some indus- tries, they earned more. But they suff ered important losses as well.
and oriented toward results and effi ciency. Th ey both believed in private property and the importance of economic progress. In fact, in working for reform, the progressives oft en drew on the manage- rial methods of a business world they sought to regulate.
Managing the Machines Mass production changed the direction of American industry. Size, system, organization, and marketing became increasingly important. Management focused on speed and product, not on workers. Assembly-line technology changed tasks and, to some extent, values. Th e goal was no longer to make a unique product that would be better than the one before. “Th e way to make auto- mobiles,” Ford said as early as 1903, “is to make one automobile like another automobile, to make them all alike, to make them come through the factory just alike.”
Read the Document Frederick Winslow Taylor, Scientific Management (1911)
In 1911, Frederick Winslow Taylor published his book The Principles of Scientific Management. In this work, Taylor proposed two major reforms. First, management must take responsibility for job-related knowledge and classify it into rules. Second, management should control the workplace through standardization of methods.
Society’s Masses 519
of mail to the farm door opened that door to a wider world; it exposed farmers to urban thinking, national advertising, and political events. In 1911, more than one billion newspapers and magazines were delivered over RFD routes.
Parcel post (1913) permitted the sending of packages through the U.S. mail. Mail-order houses flourished; rural merchants suffered. Packages went both ways—President Woodrow Wilson’s fi rst parcel-post delivery held 8 pounds of New Jersey apples—and within a year, 300 million packages were being mailed annually. While telephones and electricity did not reach most rural areas for decades, better roads, mail-order cata- logs, and other innovations knit farmers into the larger society. Early in the new century, Mary E. Lease—who in her Populist days had urged Kansas farmers to raise less corn and more hell— moved to Brooklyn.
Farmers still had problems. Land prices rose with crop prices, and farm tenancy increased, especially in the South. Tenancy grew from one-quarter of all farms in 1880 to more than one-third in 1910. In South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, nearly two-thirds of the farms were run by tenant farmers. Many southern tenant farmers were African Americans, and they suff ered from farm-bred diseases. In one of the reforms of the Progressive Era, in 1909, the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, acting on recent scientifi c discoveries, began a sanitation campaign that eventu- ally wiped out the hookworm disease, and in 1912, the U.S. Public Health Service began work on rural malaria.
In the arid West, irrigation transformed the land as the federal government and private landholders joined to import water from mountain watersheds. Th e dry lands bloomed, and so did a rural
Performing repetitive tasks, they seemed part of the machinery, moving to the pace and needs of their mechanical pacesetters. Bored, they might easily lose pride of workmanship, though many workers, it is clear, did not. Effi ciency engineers experimented with tools and methods, a process many workers found unsettling. Yet the goal was to establish routine—to work out, as someone said of a garment worker, “one single precise motion each second, 3,600 in one hour, and all exactly the same.” Praising that worker, the manager said, “She is a sure machine.”
Jobs became not only monotonous but dangerous. As machines and assembly lines sped up, boredom or miscalcula- tion could bring disaster. Meat cutters sliced fi ngers and hands. Illinois steel mills, a magazine said, were “Making Steel and Killing Men”; one mill had forty-six deaths in 1906 alone. Injuries were part of many jobs. “Th e machines go like mad all day,” a garment worker said, “because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste I get my fi nger caught and the needle goes right through it . . . I bind the fi nger up with a piece of cotton and go on working.”
Society’s Masses
How did mass production affect women, children, immigrants, and African Americans?
Spreading consumer goods through society, mass production not only improved people’s lives but sometimes cost lives, too. Tending the machines took hard, painful labor, oft en under dan- gerous conditions. As businesses expanded, they required more and more people, and the labor force increased tremendously to keep up with the demand for workers in the factories, mines, and forests. Women, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans played larger and larger roles. Immigration soared. Between 1901 and 1910, nearly 8.8 million immigrants entered the United States; between 1911 and 1920, another 5.7 million came.
For many of these people, life was harsh, spent in crowded slums and long hours on the job. Fortunately, the massive unem- ployment of the 1890s was over, and in many skilled trades, such as cigar making, there was plenty of work to go around. Though the economic recovery helped nearly everyone, the less skilled continued to be the less fortunate. Migrant workers, lumberjacks, ore shovelers, and others struggled to find jobs that paid decently.
Under such circumstances, many people fought to make a living, and many, too, fought to improve their lot. Th eir eff orts, along with the eff orts of the reform-minded people who came to their aid, became another important hallmark of the Progressive Era.
Better Times on the Farm While people continued to fl ee the farms—by 1920, fewer than one-third of all Americans lived on farms, and fewer than one-half lived in rural areas—farmers themselves prospered, the benefi ciaries of greater production and expanding urban markets. Rural free delivery, begun in 1896, helped diminish the farmers’ sense of isolation and changed farm life. Th e delivery
Watch the Video Rural Free Delivery Mail
The West Virginia experiment with rural free delivery was launched in relative obscurity and in an atmosphere of hostility. Critics of the plan claimed it was impractical and too expensive to have a postal carrier trudge over rutted roads and through forests trying to deliver mail in all kinds of weather.
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India called picking asparagus a “ghastly” job, paid at the rate of ten cents a box:
Th ey gave us miles and miles of asparagus rows. As soon as I had knelt down with my knife and cut out one head and put it in the box, there would be another one sprouting before me. Th en I would have to stoop again, and it was continuous pick- ing and stooping that made it a terrible form of exercise. It is walk and bend, bend and walk, from half past four [in the morning] or thereabouts, until seven in the evening.
Women and Children at Work Women worked in larger and larger numbers. In 1900, more than fi ve million worked—one-fi ft h of all adult women—and among those aged fourteen to twenty-four, the employment rate was almost one-third. Of those employed, single women outnumbered married women by seven to one, yet more than one-third of married women worked. Most women held service jobs. Only a small number held higher-paying jobs as professionals or managers.
In the 1890s, women made up more than one-quarter of medical school graduates. Using a variety of techniques, men gradually squeezed them out, and by the 1920s, only about 5 percent of the graduates were women. Few women taught in colleges and universities, and those who did were expected to resign if they married. In 1906, Harriet Brooks, a promising physicist at Barnard College in New York, became engaged and refused to resign; the dean told her icily that Barnard expected a married woman to “ dignify her home-making into a profes- sion, and not assume that she can carry on two full professions at a time.”
More women than men graduated from high school, and with such professions as medicine and science largely closed to them, women oft en turned to the new “business schools” that off ered training in stenography, typing, and bookkeeping. In 1920, more than one-quarter of all employed women held clerical jobs. Many others taught school.
In 1907 and 1908, investigators studied twenty-two thousand women workers in Pittsburgh; 60 percent of them earned less than $7 a week, a minimum for “decent living.” Fewer than 1 percent held skilled jobs; most tended machines, wrapped and labeled, or did handwork that required no particular skill. In New York, many women toiled six days a week as garment workers from eight in the morning to six in the evening, with an extra hour off on Saturdays. Th ey earned $7 to $12 a week, nothing at all during slack season. Th ey had to buy their own needles and thread and pay for electricity and chairs to sit on.
Black women had always worked, and in far larger numbers than their white counterparts. Th e reason was usually economic; an African American man or woman alone could rarely earn enough to support a family. Unlike many white women, black women tended to remain in the labor force aft er marriage or the start of a family. Th ey also had less opportunity for job advancement, and in 1920, between one-third and one-half of all African American women who were working were restricted to personal and domestic service jobs.
class structure that sharply separated owners from workers. Under the Newlands Act of 1902, the secretary of the interior formed the U.S. Reclamation Service, which gathered a staff of thousands of engineers and technicians, “the largest bureaucracy ever assembled in irrigation history.”
Dams and canals channeled water into places such as California’s Imperial Valley, and as the water streamed in, cotton, cantaloupes, oranges, tomatoes, lettuce, and a host of other crops streamed out to national markets. By 1920, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Oregon had extensive irrigation systems, all drawing on scarce water supplies; California, the foremost importer of water, had 4.2 million acres under irrigation, many of them picked by migrant workers from Mexico, China, and Japan. Th e work was backbreaking—and poorly paid. A worker from
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IRRIGATION AND CONSERVATION IN THE WEST TO 1917 To make the arid lands of the western states productive, the state and federal governments regulated the water supply through irrigation projects and the creation of water reservoirs. The federal government also created land reserves.
Read the Document Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (1910)
Society’s Masses 521
spurred by the data, the Children’s Bureau was formed within the U.S. Bureau of Labor, with Grace Abbott, a social worker, at its head. It immediately began its own investigations, showing among other things the need for greater protection of maternal and infant health. In 1921, Congress passed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, which helped fund maternity and pediatric clinics. Providing a precedent for the Social Security Act of 1935, it demonstrated the increasing eff ectiveness of women reformers in the Progressive Era.
Numerous middle-class women became involved in the fi ght for reform, while many others, refl ecting the ongoing changes in the family, took increasing pride in homemaking and motherhood. Mother’s Day, the national holiday, was formally established in 1913. Women who preferred smaller numbers of children turned increasingly to birth control, which became a more acceptable practice. Margaret Sanger, a nurse and outspoken social reformer, led a campaign to give physicians broad discretion in prescribing contraceptives. When Sanger became involved in the birth control movement, the federal Comstock Law banned the interstate trans- port of contraceptive devices and information.
The Niagara Movement and the NAACP At the turn of the century, eight of every ten African Americans still lived in rural areas, mainly in the South. Most were poor sharecroppers. Jim Crow laws segregated many schools, railroad cars, hotels, and hospitals. Poll taxes and other devices disfran- chised blacks and many poor whites. Violence was common; from 1900 to 1914, white mobs murdered more than a thousand black people.
Two murders occurred near Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1904, and they revealed a great deal about the kind of violence African Americans faced. Looking for the killer of a white planter, a mob captured a black man and woman, their guilt or innocence unknown. Th ey were tied to trees, and their fi ngers and ears were cut off as souvenirs. “Th e most excruciating form of punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. Th is instrument was bored into the fl esh of the man and the woman, in the arms, legs and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw, quivering fl esh every time it was withdrawn.” Finally, both people were thrown on a fi re and burned to death, “a relief,” a witness said, “to the maimed and suff ering victims.”
Many African Americans labored on the cotton farms and in the railroad camps, sawmills, and mines of the South under condi- tions of peonage. Peons traded their lives and labor for food and shelter. Oft en illiterate, they were forced to sign contracts allow- ing the planter “to use such force as he or his agents may deem necessary to require me to remain on his farm and perform good and satisfactory services.” Armed guards patrolled the camps and whipped those trying to escape. “In the woods,” a peon said, “they can do anything they please, and no one can see them but God.”
Few blacks belonged to labor unions, and blacks almost always earned less than whites in the same job. In Atlanta, white electricians earned $5.00 a day, blacks $3.50. Black songs such as “I’ve Got a White Man Workin’ for Me” (1901) voiced more hope than reality. Th e illiteracy rate among African Americans dropped from 45 percent in 1900 to 30 percent in 1910, but nowhere were
Critics charged that women’s employment endangered the home, threatened their reproductive functions, and even, as one man said, stripped them of “that modest demeanor that lends a charm to their kind.” Adding to these fears, the birthrate contin- ued to drop between 1900 and 1920, and the divorce rate soared, in part because working-class men took advantage of the newer moral freedom and deserted their families in growing numbers. By 1916, there was one divorce for every nine marriages as compared to one for twenty-one in 1880.
Many children also worked. In 1900, about three million children—nearly 20 percent of those between the ages of 5 and 15—held full-time or almost full-time jobs. Twenty-fi ve thousand boys under 16 worked in mining; twenty thousand children under 12, mainly girls, worked in southern cotton mills. Gradually, as public indignation grew, the use of child labor shrank.
Determined to do something about the situation, the Women’s Trade Union League lobbied the federal Bureau of Labor to investi- gate the conditions under which women and children worked. Begun in 1907, the investigation took four years and produced nineteen volumes of data, some of it shocking, all of it factual. In 1911,
Read the Document John Spargo, from The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906)
Breaker boys, who picked out pieces of slate from the coal as it rushed past, often became bent-backed and suffered respiratory diseases such as bronchitis and tuberculosis after years of working fourteen hours a day in the coal mines. Accidents—and deaths—were common in the mines.
522 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
1960s, white mobs invaded black neighbor- hoods, burning, looting, and killing. Th ey lynched two blacks—one eighty-four years old—in Springfi eld.
Outrage was voiced by William E. Walling, a wealthy southerner and settlement house worker; Mary Ovington, a white anthropology student; and Oswald Garrison Villard, grand- son of the famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Along with other reformers, white and black (among them Jane Addams and John Dewey), they issued a call for the conference that organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) , which swiftly became the most important civil rights organization in the country. Created in 1909, within fi ve years the NAACP grew to fi ft y branches and more than six thousand members. Walling headed it, and Du Bois, the only African American among the top offi cers, directed publicity and edited Th e Crisis , the voice of the organization.
Joined by the National Urban League, which was created in 1911, the NAACP pres- sured employers, labor unions, and the govern- ment on behalf of African Americans. It had some victories. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the Supreme Court overturned a “grandfather clause” that kept African Americans from vot- ing in Oklahoma, and in Buchanan v. Worley
(1917), it struck down a law in Louisville, Kentucky, that required residential segregation. In 1918, in the midst of World War I, the NAACP and the National Urban League persuaded the federal gov- ernment to form a special Bureau of Negro Economics within the Labor Department to look aft er the interests of African American wage earners.
Despite these gains, African Americans continued to experience disfranchisement, poor job opportunities, and segregation. As Booker T. Washington said in 1913, “I have never seen the colored people so discouraged and so bitter as they are at the present time.”
“I Hear the Whistle”: Immigrants in the Labor Force While women and African Americans worked in growing numbers, much of the huge increase in the labor force in these years came from outside the country, particularly from Europe and Mexico. Between 1901 and 1920, the extraordinarily high total of 14.5 million immigrants entered the country, more than in any previous twenty-year period. Continuing the trend begun in the 1880s, many came from southern and eastern Europe. Still called the “new” immigrants, they met hostility from “older” immigrants of northern European stock who questioned their values, religion (oft en Catholic or Jewish), traditions, and appearance.
Labor agents—called padroni among the Italians, Greeks, and Syrians—recruited immigrant workers, found them jobs,
they given equal school facilities, teachers’ salaries, or educational materials. In 1910, scarcely eight thousand African American youths were attending high schools in all the states of the Southeast. South Carolina spent $13.98 annually for the education of each white child, $1.13 for each black child.
African American leaders grew increasingly impatient with this kind of treatment, and in 1905 a group of them, led by sociolo- gist W. E. B. DuBois, met near Niagara Falls, New York (they met on the Canadian side of the Falls, since no hotel on the American side would take them). Th ere they pledged action in the matters of voting, equal access to economic opportunity, integration, and equality before the law. Rejecting Booker T. Washington’s gradu- alist approach, the Niagara Movement claimed for African Americans “every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest.”
Th e Niagara Movement focused on equal rights and the edu- cation of African American youth, of whom it said, “Th ey have a right to know, to think, to aspire.” Keeping alive a program of mili- tant action, it spawned later civil rights movements. Du Bois was its inspiration. In Th e Souls of Black Folk (1903) and other works, he called eloquently for justice and equality. “By every civilized and peaceful method,” he said, “we must strive for the right which the world accords to man.”
Peace was sometimes hard to come by. Race riots broke out in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1906 and in Springfi eld, Illinois, in 1908, the latter the home of Abraham Lincoln. Unlike the riots of the
The Conflict Between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
Watch the Video
The differences between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois were differences of personality, differences of leadership, and, quite frankly, differences over who was going to exercise power—a southern former slave or a northern African American intellectual.
Society’s Masses 523
program, the WTUL in 1912 published “New World Lessons for Old World Peoples,” which provided quite a diff erent kind of English lesson:
A Union girl takes me into the Union. Th e Union girls are glad to see me. Th ey call me sister. I will work hard for our Union. I will come to all the Union meetings.
In another signifi cant development at the beginning of the twentieth century, Mexicans for the fi rst time immigrated in large numbers, especially aft er a revolution in Mexico in 1910 forced many to fl ee across the northern border into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Their exact numbers were unknown. American offi cials did not count border crossings until 1907, and even then, many migrants avoided the offi cial immigration stations. Almost all came from the Mexican lower class, eager to escape
and deducted a fee from their wages. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Leonidas G. Skliris, the “czar of the Greeks,” provided workers for the Utah Copper Company and the Western Pacifi c Railroad. In Chicago at the turn of the century, padroni employed more than one-fi ft h of all Italians; in New York City, they controlled two-thirds of the entire labor force.
Immigrant patterns oft en departed from traditional stereotypes. Immigrants, for example, moved both to and from their homelands. Fift y percent or more of the members of some groups returned home, although the proportion varied. Jews and Czechs often brought their families to resettle in America; Serbs and Poles tended to come singly, intent on earning enough money to make a fresh start at home. Some migrants—Italian men, in particular—virtually commuted, returning home every slack season. Th ese temporary migrants became known as birds of passage . Th e outbreak of World War I interrupted the practice and trapped thousands of Italians and others who had planned to return to Europe.
Older residents lumped the newcomers together, ignoring geographic, religious, and other diff erences. Preserving impor- tant regional distinctions, Italians tended to settle as Calabreses, Venetians, Abruzzis, and Sicilians. Old-stock Americans viewed them all simply as Italians. Henry Ford and other employers tried to erase the diff erences through English classes and deliberate “Americanization” programs.
Th e Ford Motor Company ran a school where immigrant employees were fi rst taught to say, “I am a good American.” At the graduation ceremony, the pupils acted out a gigantic panto- mime in which, clad in their old-country dress, they fi led into a large “melting pot.” When they emerged, they were wearing identical American-made clothes, and each was waving a little American fl ag.
In similar fashion, the International Harvester Corporation taught Polish laborers to speak English, but it had other lessons in view as well. According to Lesson One, drilled into the Polish “pupils”:
I hear the whistle. I must hurry. I hear the fi ve minute whistle. It is time to go into the shop. I take my check from the gate board and hang it on the department board. I change my clothes and get ready to work. Th e starting whistle blows. I eat my lunch. It is forbidden to eat until then. Th e whistle blows at fi ve minutes of starting time. I get ready to go to work. I work until the whistle blows to quit. I leave my place nice and clean. I put all my clothes in the locker. I must go home.
Labor groups soon learned to counter these techniques. Th e Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) urged workers to ignore business-sponsored English lessons because they did not “tell the girl worker the things she really wants to know. Th ey do not suggest that $5 a week is not a living wage. Th ey tell her to be respectful to her employer.” Designing its own educational
IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1900–1920 (BY AREA OF ORIGIN)
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Northern and Western Europe
Southern and Eastern Europe
1905 1910 1915 1920
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Immigrants (thousands)
Asia, Africa, and America
Note: For purposes of classifi cation, “Northern and Western Europe” includes Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, and Germany. “Southern and Eastern Europe” includes Poland, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria, European Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. “Asia, Africa, and America” includes Asian Turkey, China, Japan, India, Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, and all of Africa.
S ource: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975.
524 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
men outnumbered women by ten to one in the Chinese American population, and with a male median age of 42, their communities were generally dominated by the elderly.
Th e Chinese American population diff ered in another respect as well. Unlike other immigrant groups, whose numbers tended to grow, the number of Chinese Americans shrank in these years— from about 125,000 in the early 1880s to just over 60,000 in 1920. Aft er 1910, the U.S. government set up a special immigration facility at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, but unlike European immi- grants who landed at Ellis Island in New York and were quickly sent on, Chinese immigrants were kept for weeks and months, examined and reexamined, before being allowed to cross the narrow band of water to San Francisco. Angel Island remained open until 1940, and a poem carved into the wall of Building 317 showed the feelings of some of those who waited:
Th ere are tens of thousands of poems composed on these walls, Th ey are all cries of complaint and sadness. Th e day I am rid of this prison and attain success, I must remember that this prison once existed. In my daily needs I must be frugal. Needless extravagance leads youth to ruin. All my compatriots please be mindful. Once you have some small gains, return home early. By One from Xiangshan
Many Japanese also arrived at Angel Island, and though at fi rst fewer in numbers than the Chinese, they developed communities along the Pacifi c coast, where they settled mainly on farms. Th e number of Japanese Americans grew. In 1907, the heaviest year of immigration from Japan, nearly 31,000 Japanese entered the United States; by 1920, there were 111,000 Japanese in the country, nearly three-quarters of them in California.
As the newcomers arrived from Asia, Europe, and Mexico, nativist sentiment, which had criticized earlier waves of immi- grants, intensified. Old-stock Americans sneered at their dress and language. Racial theories emphasized the superiority of northern Europeans, and the new “science” of eugenics sug- gested the need to control the population growth of “inferior” peoples. Hostility toward Catholics and Jews was common but touched other groups as well.
In 1902, Congress enacted a law prohibiting immigration from China. Statutes requiring literacy tests designed to curtail immigra- tion from southern and eastern Europe were vetoed by William Howard Taft in 1913 and by Woodrow Wilson in 1915 and 1917. In 1917, such a measure passed despite Wilson’s veto. Other measures tried to limit immigration from Mexico and Japan.
Confl ict in the Workplace
Why were there so many strikes in this period?
Assembly lines, speedups, long hours, and low pay produced a dramatic increase in American industrial output (and profi ts) aft er 1900; they also gave rise to numerous strikes and other kinds of labor unrest. Sometimes strikes took place through the
peonage and violence in their native land. Labor agents called coyotes —usually in the employ of large corporations or working for ranchers—recruited Mexican workers.
Between 1900 and 1910, the Mexican population of Texas and New Mexico nearly doubled; in Arizona, it more than doubled; in California, it quadrupled. In all four states, it dou- bled again between 1910 and 1920. Aft er the turn of the century, almost 10 percent of the total population of Mexico moved to the American Southwest.
In time, these Mexican Americans and their children trans- formed the Southwest. Th ey built most of the early highways in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona; dug the irrigation ditches that watered crops throughout the area; laid railroad track; and picked the cotton and vegetables that clothed and fed millions of Americans. Many lived in shacks and shanties along the railroad tracks, isolated in a separate Spanish-speaking world. Like other immigrant groups, they also formed enclaves in the cities; these barrios became cultural islands of family life, foods, church, and festivals.
Fewer people immigrated from China in these years, deterred in part by anti-Chinese laws and hostility. Like many other immi- grants, most Chinese who came did not intend to remain. Wanting to make money and return home, they mined, farmed, and worked as common laborers. In their willingness to work hard for low wages, their desire to preserve clan and family associa- tions from China, and their maintenance of strong ties with their home villages, Chinese Americans resembled other immigrant groups, but they diff ered in two important respects. As late as 1920,
6
9
12
15
18
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30
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36
39
42
45
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51
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Immigrants (thousands)
1900
3
19101905 1915 1920
MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES, 1900–1920
Confl ict in the Workplace 525
Organizing Labor Samuel Gompers’s American Federation of Labor increased from 250,000 members in 1897 to 1.7 million in 1904. By far the largest union organization, it remained devoted to the interests of skilled craft speople. While it aimed partly at better wages and working conditions, it also sought to limit entry into the craft s and pro- tect worker prerogatives. Within limits, the AFL found acceptance among giant business corporations eager for conservative policies and labor stability.
Of the eight million female workers in 1910, only 125,000 belonged to unions. Gompers continued to resist organizing them, saying they were too emotional and, as union organizers, “had a way of making serious mistakes.” Margaret Dreier Robins, an orga- nizer of proven skill, scoff ed at that. “Th ese men died twenty years ago and are just walking around dead!” she protested.
Robins helped found the Women’s Trade Union League in 1903. Th e WTUL led the eff ort to organize women into trade unions, to lobby for legislation protecting female workers, and to educate the
action of unions; sometimes workers just decided they had had enough and walked off the job. Whatever the cause, strikes were frequent. In one industry, in one city—the meatpacking industry in Chicago—there were 251 strikes in 1903 alone.
Strikes and absenteeism increased aft er 1910; labor productivity dropped 10 percent between 1915 and 1918, the fi rst such decline in memory. In many industries, labor turnover became a serious prob- lem; workers changed jobs in droves. Union membership grew. In 1900, only about a million workers—less than 4 percent of the workforce— belonged to unions. By 1920, fi ve million workers belonged, increas- ing the unionized portion of the workforce to about 13 percent.
As tensions grew between capital and labor, some people in the middle class became fearful that, unless something was done to improve the workers’ situation, there might be violence or even revolution. Th is fear motivated some of the labor-oriented reforms of the Progressive Era. While some reform supporters genuinely wanted to improve labor’s lot, others embraced reform because they were afraid of something else.
Japanese picture brides arrive at Angel Island and are lined up for passport inspection before meeting their new husbands.
526 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Triangle Shirtwaist Company tried to form a union, the company fired them, and they walked out; twenty thousand men and women in fi ve hundred other shops followed. Strike meetings were conducted in three languages—English, Yiddish, and Italian—and before being forced to go back to work, the strikers won a shorter workweek and a few other gains. Sadly, the Triangle women lost out on another important demand—for unlocked shop doors and safe fi re escapes. Th eir loss proved lethal in the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911 (see the Feature Essay, “The Triangle Fire ,” pp. 528 – 529 ).
The WTUL also backed a strike in 1910 against Hart, Schaff ner and Marx, Chicago’s largest manufacturer of men’s clothing. One day, Annie Shapiro, the 18-year-old daughter of Russian immigrants, was told her wages were being cut from
public on the problems and needs of working women. It took in all working women who would join, regardless of skill (although not, at fi rst, African American women), and it won crucial fi nancial support from well-to-do women such as Anne Morgan, daughter of the feared fi nancier J. P. Morgan. Robins’s close friend Jane Addams belonged, as did Mary McDowell, the “Angel of the Stockyards,” who worked with slaughterhouse workers in Chicago; Julia Lathrop, who tried to improve the lot of wage-earning children; and Dr. Alice Hamilton, a pioneer in American research on the causes of industrial disease.
Th e WTUL never had many members—a few thousand at most—but its infl uence extended far beyond its membership. In 1909, it supported the “Uprising of the 20,000,” a strike of shirt- waist workers in New York City. When female employees of the
Read the Document Samuel Gompers, The American Labor Movement (1914)
Samuel Gompers (second from bottom left) co-founded the American Federation of Labor in 1886 and served as its president in 1914 when its membership approached two million skilled workers. Gompers’s trade union philosophy focused on the economic ends of skilled workers including achieving higher wages, the eight-hour day, and safe working conditions through collective bargaining with employers.
Confl ict in the Workplace 527
the boss as a little sabotage in the right place.” Joe Hill, the IWW’s legendary folk poet, reminded labor of its potential strength:
If the workers took a notion Th ey could stop all speeding trains; Every ship upon the ocean Th ey can tie with mighty chains. Every wheel in the creation Every mine and every mill; Fleets and armies of the nation, Will at their command stand still.
IWW leaders included Mary Harris (“Mother”) Jones, a famous veteran of battles in the Illinois coalfi elds; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a fi ery young radical who joined as a teenager; and Big Bill Haywood himself, the strapping one-eyed founder of the Western Federation of Miners.
Th e IWW led a number of major strikes. Strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts (1912), and Paterson, New Jersey (1912), attracted national attention: in Lawrence, when the strikers sent their children, ill-clad and hungry, out of the city to stay with sympa- thetic families; in Paterson, when they rented New York’s Madison Square Garden for a massive labor pageant. IWW leaders welcomed the revolutionary tumult sweeping Russia and other countries. In the United States, they thought, a series of local strikes would bring about capitalist repression, then a general strike, and eventually a workers’ commonwealth.
Th e IWW fell short of these objectives, but during its lifetime— from 1905 to the mid-1920s—it made major gains among immigrant workers in the Northeast, migrant farm laborers on the Plains, and loggers and miners in the South and Far West. In factories like Ford’s, it recruited workers resentful of the speedups on the assembly lines. Although IWW membership probably amounted to no more than one hundred thousand at any one time, workers came and left so oft en that its total membership may have reached as high as one million.
Working with Workers Concerned about labor unrest, some business leaders used vio- lence and police action to keep workers in line, but others turned to the new fi elds of applied psychology and personnel manage- ment. A school of industrial psychology emerged. As had Taylor, industrial psychologists studied workers’ routines, and, further, they showed that output was also aff ected by job satisfaction. While most businesses pushed ahead with effi ciency campaigns, a few did establish industrial relations departments, hire pub- lic relations fi rms to improve their corporate image, and link productivity to job safety and worker happiness.
Ivy L. Lee, a pioneer in the fi eld of corporate public relations, advised clients such as the Pennsylvania Railroad and Standard Oil on how to improve relations with labor and the public. Calling himself a “physician to corporate bodies,” Lee urged complete openness on the company’s part. To please employees, companies printed news- letters and organized soft ball teams; they awarded prizes and cel- ebrated retirements. Ford created a “sociology department” staff ed by 150 experts who showed workers how to budget their incomes and care for their health. Th ey even taught them how to shop for meat.
$7 a week to $6.20. Th at was a large cut, and along with sixteen other young women, Shapiro refused to accept it and walked out. “We had to be recognized as people,” she said later. Soon other women walked out, and the revolt spread. Managers quickly promised to restore the cuts, but as one woman said, “just then there was big noise outside and we all rushed to the windows and there we saw the police beating the strikers on our account, and when we saw that we went out.”
In a matter of days, some forty thousand garment workers were on strike, about half of them women. Manufacturers hurried to negotiate, and the result was the important Hart, Schaff ner agreement, which created an arbitration committee composed of management and labor to handle grievances and settle disputes. Th e fi rst successful experiment in collective bargaining, the Hart, Schaff ner agreement became the model for the kind of agreements that govern industrial relations today.
Another union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) , attracted by far the greatest attention (and the most fears) in these years. Unlike the WTUL, it welcomed everyone regardless of gen- der or race. Unlike the AFL, it tried to organize the unskilled and foreign-born laborers who worked in the mass production industries. Founded in Chicago in 1905, it aimed to unite the American working class into a mammoth union to promote labor’s interests. Its motto— ”An injury to one is an injury to all”—emphasized labor solidarity, as had the earlier Knights of Labor. But unlike the Knights, the IWW, or Wobblies as they were oft en known, urged social revolution.
“It is our purpose to overthrow the capitalist system by forcible means if necessary,” William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, one of its founders, said; and he went on in his speeches to say he knew of nothing a worker could do that “will bring as much anguish to
1897 1900
Millions
1905 1910 1915 1920
5
4
3
2
1
LABOR UNION MEMBERSHIP, 1897–1920
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1982–1983 , 103rd ed., Washington, DC, 1982.
528
Women’s fashion changed rather dra- matically in the 1890s and early 1900s, refl ecting in part the desires of women for greater freedom in many parts of their lives. Confi ning corsets began to disappear, as women turned to looser, more casual designs. The “shirtwaist,” or blouse, became especially pop- ular, fl attering to the fi gure and tapered to a fi tted waistline, usu- ally worn with a tailored skirt.
That trend brought business, a great deal of it, to the Triangle Waist Company of New York City, which employed more than 500 people and was the largest maker of blouses in the city. It produced 2,000 of them a day, a million dollars’ worth a year.
At Triangle, as at similar compa- nies, immigrants from Eastern Europe provided much of the labor. The Triangle Company did not pay well— none of the companies did—but to many immigrants it was a good place to work because, unlike many compet- itors, it offered jobs all year round.
Triangle also refl ected an impor- tant factory movement, characteristic of these years, in which the garment industry changed from the traditional piece-work system to large, effi cient, and mass-production factories. Under the old system, each worker had pushed a treadle, usually in her own apartment, to power her machine; now, electricity powered long drive shafts that connected machine after machine.
Triangle Company employees worked hard, fi ve nine-hour days a week, plus a shorter seven-hour day on Saturdays. Saturday was also payday. That was why people were at work on Saturday, March 25, 1911.
At 4:45 P.M. that day, fl oor leader Annah Gullo rang the closing bell and shut off the power to the drive shafts; the machines fell silent. Chairs pushed back on the wooden fl oors as workers made their way to the exits to pick up their pay and get their coats for home.
Then suddenly, a worker came running across the fl oor, shouting, “Fire!” Workers grabbed the fi re pails from a ledge above the tables and poured water on the fi re, but to no avail. Other workers were already lined up at wooden partitions near the exits, which channeled them through one at a time so that watchmen could look in their handbags for stolen lace or blouses.
Smoke pouring from the eighth fl oor windows soon attracted a crowd of bystanders outside. When a large, dark bundle fell from one of the windows, an onlooker said, “He’s trying to save his best cloth.” When another bundle hit the ground, people realized that this was not cloth; it was a human being. “I learned a new sound,” a reporter said that day, “a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speed- ing, living body on a stone sidewalk.”
The fi rst person jumped at about 4:50 P.M., deciding not to die in the rag- ing fi re. But it was hard to survive the jump, too; the street was nearly 100 feet below, and in March 1911, ladders on fi re trucks could reach no higher than the sixth fl oor. Inside, people screamed as they searched for the exits, eyes blinded by the shifting smoke. As they crowded onto the fl imsy fi re escape, it twisted and fell, the victim of its own poor design.
Adding to the tragedy, workers at Triangle had gone on strike in 1909, two years before, in the famous Uprising of the 20,000, “the largest strike ever organized by working women anywhere
in the world,” as one journalist has noted. Some garment workers had won, but the Triangle women had not. They had asked for adequate fi re escapes and unblocked exits; they got neither.
“I remembered their great strike . . ., in which these girls demanded more sanitary workrooms, and more safety precautions in the shops,” a reporter wrote after the fi re. “These dead bodies told the result.”
In the days following the fi re, protest meetings were held across the city. “I would be a traitor to those poor burned bodies if I were to come here to talk good fellowship,” Rose Schneiderman, a dynamic 29-year-old organizer for the Women’s Trade Union League, told one rally. “We have tried you good peo- ple of the public—and we have found you wanting . . . . This is not the fi rst time girls have been burned alive in this city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred!”
One hundred forty-six people, nearly all young women, died in the fi re.
The fi re galvanized reformers inter- ested in factory safety, and there were many of them in this Progressive Era. Frances Perkins, later secretary of labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the fi rst female cabinet member in the country’s history, was visiting friends near the Triangle factory on the day of the fi re. They heard the fi re engines and rushed out to see what was happening. “We got there just as they started to jump,” Perkins recalled. “I shall never forget the frozen horror which came over us as we stood with our hands on our throats, watching that horrible sight, knowing that there was no help.”
The Triangle Fire Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment The Triangle Fire on myhistorylab
529
On April 5, signaling public pro- test, eighty thousand people marched silently in the rain in a funeral proces- sion up Fifth Avenue. A quarter-million people lined the route.
In response to the outcry, New York State authorities created a Factory Investigating Commission that sent examiners into factories across the state. In all, the tragedy spurred pas- sage of thirty-six new labor laws, a new
Industrial Code for the State of New York, and higher national standards for factory safety. New laws required automatic fi re sprinklers in high-rise buildings, man- datory fi re drills, and unlocked doors at factory exits.
Frances Perkins, who had advised the Commission, thought the events at Triangle had lasting consequences. “The Triangle fi re,” she later said, “was the fi rst day of the New Deal.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What changes in American society and industry lay behind the circum- stances of the Triangle Fire?
2. Why were so many women killed in the Triangle Fire?
3. Why did Frances Perkins say that the Triangle Fire was “the fi rst day of the New Deal”?
Triangle Fire: March 25, 1911 View the Closer Look
Crowds of young women who made it out onto the fire escape perished when it gave way under their weight.
530 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
which aimed to increase productivity, accustom immigrants to industrial work, instill company loyalty, and curb labor unrest. Playgrounds and visiting nurses, home-buying plans, a cooking school, and dental service were part of the plan. Th e Amoskeag Textile Club held employee dinners and picnics, organized shoot- ing clubs and a baseball team, sponsored Christmas parties for the children, and published the Amoskeag Bulletin , a monthly magazine of employee news.
From 1885 to 1919, no strike touched the mills. Th ereaft er, however, labor unrest increased. Overproduction and foreign com- petition took their toll, and Amoskeag closed in 1935.
A New Urban Culture
What happened to art and culture in these years so fi lled with change?
For many Americans, the quality of life improved signifi cantly between 1900 and 1920. Jobs were relatively plentiful, and, in a development of great importance, more and more people were entering the professions as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and engineers. With comfortable incomes, a growing middle class could take advantage of new lifestyles, inventions, and forms of entertainment. Mass production could not have worked without mass consumption, and Americans in these years increasingly became a nation of consumers.
Production and Consumption In 1900, business fi rms spent about $95 million on advertising; twenty years later, they spent more than $500 million. Ads and bill- boards touted cigarettes, cars, perfumes, and cosmetics. Advertising agencies boomed. Using new sampling techniques, they developed modern concepts of market testing and research. Sampling cus- tomer preferences aff ected business indirectly as well, making it more responsive to public opinion on social and political issues.
Mass production swept the clothing industry and dressed more Americans better than any people ever before. Using lessons learned in making uniforms during the Civil War, manufacturers for the fi rst time developed standard clothing and shoe sizes that fi t most bodies. Clothing prices dropped; the availability of inexpensive “off -the-rack” clothes lessened distinctions between rich and poor. By 1900, nine of every ten men and boys wore the new “ready-to-wear” clothes.
In 1900, people employed in manufacturing earned on aver- age $418 a year. Two decades later, they earned $1,342 a year, though infl ation took much of the increase. While the middle class expanded, the rich also grew richer. In 1920, the new income tax showed the fi rst accurate tabulation of income, and it confi rmed what many had suspected all along. Five percent of the population received almost one-fourth of all income.
Living and Dying in an Urban Nation In 1920, the median age of the population was only 25. (It is now 35.) Immigration accounted for part of the population’s youthfulness, since most immigrants were young. Thanks to
On January 5, 1914, Ford took another signifi cant step. He announced the fi ve-dollar day, “the greatest revolution,” he said, “in the matter of rewards for workers ever known to the industrial world.” With a stroke, he doubled the wage rate for common labor, reduced the working day from nine hours to eight, and established a personnel department to place workers in appropriate jobs. Th e next day, ten thousand applicants stood outside the gates.
As a result, Ford had the pick of the labor force. Turnover declined; absenteeism, previously as much as one-tenth of all Ford workers every day, fell to 0.3 percent. Output increased; the IWW at Ford collapsed. Th e plan increased wages, but it also gave the com- pany greater control over a more stable labor force. Workers had to meet a behavior code in order to qualify for the fi ve-dollar day. At fi rst scornful of the “utopian” plan, business leaders across the country soon copied it, and on January 2, 1919, Ford announced the six-dollar day.
Amoskeag In size, system, and worker relations, the record of the Amoskeag Company textile mills was revealing. Located beside the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire, the mills—an enormous complex of factories, warehouses, canals, and machinery—had been built in the 1830s. By the turn of the century, they were pro- ducing nearly fi ft y miles of cloth an hour, more cloth each day than any other set of mills in the entire world.
Th e face of the mills, an almost solid wall of red brick, stretched nearly a mile. Archways and bridges pierced the facade. Amoskeag resembled a walled medieval city within which workers found “a total institution, a closed and almost self-contained world.” At fi rst the mills employed young women for labor, but by 1900, more and more immigrant males staff ed the machines. French Canadians, Irish, Poles, and Greeks—seventeen thousand in all—worked there, and their experiences revealed a great deal about factory work and life at the turn of the century.
Th e company hired and fi red at will, and it demanded relent- less output from the spindles and spinning frames. Yet it also viewed employees as its “children” and looked for total loyalty in return, an expectation oft en realized. Workers identifi ed with Amoskeag and, decades later, still called themselves Amoskeag men and women. “We were all like a family,” one said.
Most Amoskeag workers preferred the industrial world of the mills to the farms they had left behind. Th ey did not feel displaced; they knew the pains of industrial life, and they adapted in ways that fi t their own needs and traditions. Families played a large role. Th ey neither disintegrated nor lost their relationships. French Canadians and others oft en came in family units. One or two family members left the farm for the mills, maintained close ties with those back home, and then sent for others, creating a form of “chain migration.”
Once in Manchester, families oft en toiled in the same work- rooms. Looking after each other, they asked for transfers and promotions for relatives; they taught their children technical skills and how to get along with bosses and fellow workers. Although low paid, Amoskeag employees took pride in their work, and for many of them, a well-turned-out product provided dignity and self-esteem.
As part of its paternal interest in employee welfare, in 1910 the company inaugurated a welfare and efficiency program,
A New Urban Culture 531
Popular Pastimes Thanks to changing work rules and mechanization, many Americans enjoyed more leisure time. Th e average workweek for manufacturing laborers fell from 60 hours in 1890 to 51 in 1920. By the early 1900s, white-collar workers might spend only 8 to 10 hours a day at work and a half day on weekends. Greater leisure time gave more people more opportunity for play, and people fl ocked to places of entertainment. Baseball entrenched itself as the national pastime. Automobiles and streetcars car- ried growing numbers of fans to ballparks; attendance at major league games doubled between 1903 and 1920. Football also drew fans, although critics attacked the sport’s violence and the use of “tramp athletes,” nonstudents whom colleges paid to play. In 1905, the worst year, 18 players were killed and 150 seriously injured.
Alarmed, President Th eodore Roosevelt—who had once said, “I am the father of three boys [and] if I thought any one of them would weigh a possible broken bone against the glory of being chosen to play on Harvard’s football team I would disinherit him”—called a White House conference to clean up college sports. The conference founded the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, which in 1910 became the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).
Movie theaters opened everywhere. By 1910, there were ten thousand of them, drawing a weekly audience of ten million people. Admission was usually five cents, and movies full of laughter and pathos appealed to a mass market. In 1915, D. W. Griffi th, a talented and creative director—as well as a racist—produced the first movie spectacular: Birth of a Nation . Griffith adopted new film techniques, including close-ups, fade-outs, and artistic camera angles, and he staged dramatic battle scenes.
Phonographs brought ready-made entertainment into the home. By 1901, phonograph and record companies included the Victor Talking Machine Company, the Edison Speaking Machine Company, and Columbia Records. Ornate mahogany Victrolas became standard fixtures in middle-class parlors. Early records were usually of vaudeville skits; orchestral recordings began in 1906. In 1919, 2.25 million phonographs were produced; two years later, more than 100 million records were sold.
As record sales grew, families sang less and listened more. Music became a business. In 1909, Congress enacted a copyright law that provided a two-cent royalty on each piece of music on phonograph records or piano rolls. The royalty, small as it was, offered welcome income to compos- ers and publishers, and in 1914, composer Victor Herbert and others formed the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) to protect musical rights and royalties.
Th e faster rhythms of syncopated ragtime became the rage, especially aft er 1911, when Irving Berlin, a Russian immigrant, wrote “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” Ragtime set off a nationwide dance craze. Secretaries danced on their lunch hour, the fi rst night- clubs opened, and restaurants and hotels introduced dance fl oors. Waltzes and polkas gave way to a host of new dances, many with
medical advances and better living conditions, the death rate dropped in the early years of the century; the average life span increased. Between 1900 and 1920, life expectancy rose from 49 to 56 years for white women and from 47 to 54 years for white men. It rose from 33 to 45 years for blacks and other racial minorities.
Despite the increase in life expectancy, infant mortality remained high; nearly 10 percent of white babies and 20 percent of minority babies died in the fi rst year of life. In comparison to today, fewer babies on average survived to adolescence, and fewer people survived beyond middle age. In 1900, the death rate among people between 45 and 65 was more than twice the modern rate. As a result, there were relatively fewer older people—in 1900, only 4 percent of the population was older than 65 compared to nearly 13 percent today. Fewer children than today knew their grandparents. Still, improvements in health care helped people live longer, and as a result, the incidence of cancer and heart disease increased.
Cities grew, and by any earlier standards, they grew on a colossal scale. Downtowns became a central hive of skyscrap- ers, department stores, warehouses, and hotels. Strips of factories radiated from the center. As street railways spread, cities took on a systematic pattern of socioeconomic segregation, usually in rings. Th e innermost ring fi lled with immigrants, circled by a belt of working-class housing. Th e remaining rings marked areas of ris- ing affl uence outward toward wealthy suburbs, which themselves formed around shopping strips and grid patterns of streets that restricted social interaction.
Th e giants were New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, indus- trial cities that turned out every kind of product from textiles to structural steel. Smaller cities such as Rochester, New York, or Cleveland, Ohio, specialized in manufacturing a specifi c line of goods or processing regional products for the national market. Railroads instead of highways tied things together; in 1916, the rail network, the largest in the world, reached its peak—254,000 miles of track that carried more than three-fourths of all intercity freight tonnage.
Step by step, cities adopted their twentieth-century forms. Between 1909 and 1915, Los Angeles, a city of three hundred thou- sand people, passed a series of ordinances that gave rise to modern urban zoning. For the fi rst time, the ordinances divided a city into three districts of specifi ed use: a residential area, an industrial area, and an area open to residence and a limited list of industries. Other cities followed. Combining several features, the New York zoning law of 1916 became the model for the nation; within a decade, 591 cities copied it.
Zoning ordered city development, keeping skyscrapers out of factory districts, factories out of the suburbs. It also had powerful social repercussions. In the South, zoning became a tool to extend racial segregation; in northern cities, it acted against ethnic minorities. Jews in New York, Italians in Boston, Poles in Detroit, African Americans in Chicago—zoning laws held them all at arm’s length. Like other migrants, African Americans oft en preferred to settle together, but zoning also helped put them there. By 1920, ten districts in Chicago were more than three-quarters black. In Los Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., most blacks lived in only two or three wards.
532 CHAPTER 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
Another musical innovation came north from New Orleans. Charles (Buddy) Bolden, a cornetist; Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, a pianist; and a youngster named Louis Armstrong played an improvisational music that had no formal name. Reaching Chicago, it became “jas,” then “jass,” and fi nally “jazz.” Jazz jumped, and jazz musicians relied on feeling and mood. A restaurant owner once asked Jelly Roll Morton to play a waltz. “Waltz?” Morton exclaimed. “Man, these people want to dance! And you talking about waltz. Th is is the Roll you’re talking to.”
Popular fi ction refl ected changing interests. Kate Douglas Wiggins’s Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903) and Lucy M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908) showed the continuing popularity of rural themes. Westerns also sold well, but readers turned more and more to detective thrillers with hard-bitten city detec- tives and science fi ction featuring the latest dream in technology. The Tom Swift series, begun in 1910, looked ahead to spaceships, ray guns, and gravity nullifi ers.
Edward L. Stratemeyer, the mind behind Tom Swift, brought the techniques of mass production to book writing. In 1906, he formed the Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate, which employed a stable of writers to turn out hundreds of Tom Swift , Rover Boys, and Bobbsey Twins stories for young readers. Burt Standish, another prolifi c author, took the pen
name Gilbert Patten and created the character of Frank Merriwell, wholesome college athlete. As Patten said, “I took the three quali- ties I most wanted him to represent—frank and merry in nature, well in body and mind—and made the name Frank Merriwell.” Th e Merriwell books sold twenty-fi ve million copies.
Experimentation in the Arts “Th ere is a state of unrest all over the world in art as in all other things,” the director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum said in 1908. “It is the same in literature, as in music, in painting, and in sculpture.”
Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis transformed the dance. Departing from traditional ballet steps, both women emphasized improvisation, emotion, and the human form. “Listen to the music with your soul,” Duncan told her students. “Unless your dancing springs from an inner emotion and expresses an idea, it will be meaningless.” Draped in fl owing robes, she revealed more of her legs than some thought tasteful, and she proclaimed that the “noblest art is the nude.” Aft er a triumphant performance with the New York Symphony in 1908, her ideas and techniques swept the country. Duncan died tragically in 1927, her neck broken when her long red scarf caught in the wheel of a racing car.
Th e loft s and apartments of New York’s Greenwich Village attracted artists, writers, and poets interested in experimentation
animal names: the fox-trot, bunny hop, turkey trot, snake, and kangaroo dip. Partners were not permitted to dance too close; bouncers tapped them on the shoulder if they got closer than nine inches. Th e aging John D. Rockefeller hired a private instructor to teach him the tango; Yale University, however, banned that dance at its 1914 junior prom.
Vaudeville, increasingly popular aft er 1900, reached matu- rity around 1915. Drawing on the immigrant experience, it voiced the variety of city life and included skits, songs, comics, acrobats, and magicians. Dances and jokes showed an earthiness new to mass audiences. By 1914, stage runways extended into the crowd; women performers had bared their legs and were beginning to show glimpses of the midriff . Fanny Brice; Ann Pennington, the “shimmy” queen; and Eva Tanguay, who sang “It’s All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It,” starred in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies, the peak of vaudeville.
In such songs as “St. Louis Blues” (1914), W. C. Handy took the black southern folk music of the blues to northern cities. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, the daughter of minstrels, sang in black vaudeville for nearly thirty-fi ve years. Performing in Chattanooga, Tennessee, about 1910, she came across a twelve-year-old orphan, Bessie Smith, who became the “Empress of the Blues.” Smith’s voice was huge and sweeping. Recording for the Race division of Columbia Records, she made more than eighty records that together sold nearly ten million copies.
A Vaudeville Act Watch the Video
Consisting of a wide variety, vaudeville was probably the most popular mass entertainment in the early 1900s. With the addition of jugglers, pantomimists, magicians, and others, the number of vaudeville theaters increased exponentially.
Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform 533
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoveling, Wrecking, Planning, Building, breaking, rebuilding, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform
Manners and morals change slowly, and many Americans over- looked the importance of the fi rst two decades of the twentieth century. Yet sweeping change was under way; anyone who doubted it could visit a gallery, see a fi lm, listen to music, or read one of the new literary magazines. Garrets and galleries were fi lled with a breathtaking sense of change. “Th ere was life in all these new things,” Marsden Hartley, a modernist painter, recalled. “Th ere was excitement, there was healthy revolt, investigation, discovery, and an utterly new world out of it all.”
Th e ferment of progressivism in city, state, and nation reshaped the country. In a burst of reform, people built playgrounds, restructured taxes, regulated business, won the vote for women, shortened working hours, altered political systems, opened kin- dergartens, and improved factory safety. Th ey tried to fulfi ll the national promise of dignity and liberty.
Marsden Hartley, it turned out, had voiced a mood that went well beyond painters and poets. Across society, people in many walks of life were experiencing a similar sense of excite- ment and discovery. Racism, repression, and labor confl ict were present, to be sure, but there was also talk of hope, progress, and change. In politics, science, journalism, education, and a host of other fi elds, people believed for a time that they could make a d iff erence, and in trying to do so, they became part of the p rogressive generation.
and change. To these artists, the city was the focus of national life and the sign of a new culture. Robert Henri and the realist painters—known to their critics as the Ashcan School —relished the city’s excitement. Th ey wanted, a friend said, “to paint truth and to paint it with strength and fearlessness and individuality.”
To the realists, a painting carried into the future the look of life as it happened. Th eir paintings depicted street scenes, color- ful crowds, and slum children swimming in the river. In paint- ings such as the Cliff Dwellers , George W. Bellows captured the color and excitement of the tenements; John Sloan, one of Henri’s most talented students, painted the vitality of ordinary people and familiar scenes.
In 1913, a show at the New York Armory presented sixteen hundred modernist paintings, prints, and sculptures. Th e work of Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, Brancusi, Van Gogh, and Gauguin dazed and dazzled American observers. Critics attacked the show as worthless and depraved; a Chicago offi cial wanted it banned from the city because the “idea that people can gaze at this sort of thing without [it] hurting them is all bosh.”
Th e postimpressionists changed the direction of twentieth- century art and influenced adventuresome American painters. John Marin, Max Weber, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, and other modernists experimented in ways foreign to Henri’s realists. Defiantly avant-garde, they shook off convention and experi- mented with new forms. Using bold colors and abstract patterns, they worked to capture the energy of urban life. “I see great forces at work, great movements,” Marin said, “the large buildings and the small buildings, the warring of the great and the small. . . . I can hear the sound of their strife, and there is a great music being played.”
Th ere was an extraordinary outburst of poetry. In 1912, Harriet Monroe started the magazine Poetry in Chicago, the hotbed of the new poetry; Ezra Pound and Vachel Lindsay, both daring experi- menters with ideas and verse, published in the fi rst issue. T. S. Eliot published the classic “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Poetry in 1915. Attacked bitterly by conservative critics, the poem established Eliot’s leadership among a group of poets, many of them living and writing in London, who rejected traditional meter and rhyme as artifi cial constraints. Eliot, Pound, and Amy Lowell, among others, believed the poet’s task was to capture fl eeting images in verse.
Others experimenting with new techniques in poetry included Robert Frost ( North of Boston , 1914), Edgar Lee Masters ( Spoon River Anthology , 1915), and Carl Sandburg ( Chicago Poems , 1916). Sandburg’s poem “Chicago” celebrated the vitality of the city:
Come and show me another city with lift ed head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
534 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER REVIEW
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 22 The Progressive Era on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
1898 Mergers and consolidations begin to sweep the business world, leading to fear of trusts
1903 Ford Motor Company formed; W. E. B. DuBois calls for justice and equality for African Americans in The Souls of Black Folk ; Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) formed to organize women workers
1905 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) established; African American leaders inaugurate the Niagara Movement, advocating integration and equal opportunity for African Americans
1909 Shirtwaist workers in New York City strike in the Uprising of the 20,000; Campaign by Rockefeller Sanitary Commission wipes out hookworm disease
1910 NAACP founded; Strike at Hart, Schaffner and Marx leads to pioneering collective bargaining agreement; National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) formed
1911 Fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company kills 146 people; Irving Berlin popularizes rhythm of ragtime with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”;
Frederick Winslow Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientifi c Management
1912 Harriet Monroe begins publishing magazine Poetry ; IWW leads strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey
1913 Ford introduces the moving assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan, plant; Mother’s Day becomes national holiday
1915 D. W. Griffi th produces the fi rst movie spectacular, Birth of a Nation ; T. S. Eliot publishes “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
1916 Margaret Sanger forms New York Birth Control League; Federal Aid Roads Act creates national road network; New York zoning law sets the pattern for zoning laws across the nation
1917 Congress passes law requiring literacy test for all immigrants
1921 Congress passes the Sheppard-Towner Act to help protect maternal and infant health
Confl ict in the Workplace
Why were there so many strikes in this period?
Low wages, speeded-up assembly lines, and dangerous con- ditions in the workplace brought about numerous attempts to organize workers for their own defense. The Women’s Trade Union League had many successes. The International
Workers of the World, a radical union, wanted to place workers in control. In the end, Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor won the allegiance of most workers. (p. 524 )
A New Urban Culture
What happened to art and culture in these years so fi lled with change?
In the dozen years after 1900, American culture changed in important ways. Cities took on their modern form. Suburbs flourished. Sports became increasingly popular,
reflecting people’s increased leisure time. Experimentation occurred in literature, poetry, painting, and the arts. (p. 530 )
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The Changing Face of Industrialism
How did industrialism change after 1900?
As prosperity returned after the late 1890s, the American industrial system underwent important changes. Mass production, spurred by the spread of the moving assembly line, turned out more and more products for American
and foreign consumers. New management methods organized workers on the factory floor. Jobs became both routine and more dangerous. Trusts grew. (p. 515 )
Society’s Masses
How did mass production affect women, children, immigrants, and African Americans?
While life improved for many people in the post-1900 industrial society, many others faced challenges: women and children in the workforce, and laborers in their efforts
to organize. Between 1901 and 1920, some 14.8 million immigrants entered the country and began the difficult process of adjusting to life in their new home. All of these people faced difficult challenges due to low wages, dangerous working conditions, and the steady demands of the fac- tory system. (p. 519 )
STUDY RESOURCES 535
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
Muckrakers Writers who made a practice between 1903 and 1909 of exposing the wrongdoings of public figures and corporations and high- lighting social and political problems. p. 514
Progressivism Movement for social change between the late 1890s and World War I. Its orgins lay in a fear of big business and corrupt govern- ment and a desire to improve living conditions. Progressives set out to cure the social ills brought about by industrialization and urbanization, social disorder, and corruption. p. 515
Niagara Movement A movement, led by W. E. B. DuBois, that focused on equal rights for and the education of African American youth. Rejecting the gradualist approach of Booker T. Washington, it favored militant action and claimed for African Americans all the rights afforded to other Americans. p. 522
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Created in 1909, this organization became the most impor- tant civil rights organization in the country. p. 522
Birds of passage Immigrants who came to the United States to work and save money and then returned to their native countries during the slack season. p. 523
Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) Founded in 1903, this group worked to organize women into trade unions. It also lobbied for laws to safeguard female workers and backed strikes, especially in the garment industry. While it never attracted many members, its leaders were influen- tial enough to give the union considerable power. p. 523
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Founded in 1905, this radical union, also known as the Wobblies, aimed to unite the American working class into one union. It organized unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution, and led strikes. p. 527
Ashcan School Early twentieth-century realist painters who portrayed the slums and streets of the nation’s cities and the lives of ordinary urban dwellers. They often advocated political and social reform. p. 533
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. How did the changing nature of industrialism after the 1890s influence the beginnings of a Progressive Era?
2. In what specific ways did workers, African Americans, and immigrants respond to the changing nature of industrial society and in the process help bring about the Progressive Era?
3. How did workers organize to try to improve their lot in the cities and factories of the advancing industrial society?
4. How did changes in popular culture mold attitudes in the new Progressive Era?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 22 on MyHistoryLab
Society’s Masses
The Changing Face of Industrialism
Rural Free Delivery Mail p. 519 Watch the Video
Frederick Winslow Taylor, Scientific Management (1911) p. 518
◾ Read the Document
Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation (1910) p. 520
Read the Document
John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906) p. 521
Read the Document
The Conflict Between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois p. 522
Watch the Video
Conflict in the Workplace
Samuel Gompers: The American Labor Movement (1914) p. 526
◾ Read the Document
The Triangle Fire p. 528 ◾ Complete the Assignment
A New Urban Culture
View the Closer Look Triangle Fire, March 25, 1911 p. 529
Watch the Video A Vaudeville Act p. 532
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
The Rise and Fall of the Automobile Economy p. 516
Watch the Video
◾
◾
Contents and Learning Objectives
the king and queen of Italy—an experience he likened to “a Jewish wedding on the East Side of New York”—and happily spent five hours reviewing troops of the German empire. Less happily, he followed events back home where, in the judgment of many friends, Taft was not working out as president. Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s close companion in the conservation movement, came to Italy to complain personally about Taft, and at almost every stop there were letters waiting for him from other disappointed Republicans.
For his part, Taft was puzzled by it all. Honest and warmhearted, he had intended to continue Roosevelt’s policies, even writing Roosevelt that he would “see to it that your judgment in selecting me as your suc- cessor and bringing about that succession shall be vindicated.” But events turned out differently. The conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party split, and Taft often sided with the conservatives. Among progressive Republicans, Taft’s troubles stirred talk of a Roosevelt “back from Elba” movement, akin to Napoleon’s return from exile.
Thousands gathered to greet Roosevelt on his return from Europe. He sailed into New York harbor on June 18, 1910, to the sound of naval guns and loud cheers.
The Republicans Split On a sunny spring morning in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt, wearing the greatcoat of a colonel of the Rough Riders, left New York for a safari in Africa. An ex-president at the age of 50, he had turned over the White House to his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, and was now off for “the joy of wandering through lonely lands, the joy of hunting the mighty and terrible lords” of Africa, “where death broods in the dark and silent depths.”
Some of Roosevelt’s enemies hoped he would not return. “I trust some lion will do its duty,” Wall Street magnate J. P. Morgan said. Always prepared, Roosevelt took nine extra pairs of eyeglasses, and, just in case, sev- eral expert hunters accompanied him. When the near- sighted Roosevelt took aim, three others aimed at the same moment. “Mr. Roosevelt had a fairly good idea of the general direction,” the safari leader said, “but we couldn’t take chances with the life of a former president.” Though he had built a reputation as an ardent conserva- tionist, Roosevelt shot nine lions, five elephants, thirteen rhinoceroses, seven hippopotamuses, and assorted other game—acquiring nearly three hundred trophies in all.
It was all good fun, and afterward Roosevelt set off on a tour of Europe. He attended the funeral of the king of England with the crowned heads of Europe, dined with
THE SPIRIT OF PROGRESSIVISM PG. 537 What were the six major characteristics of progressivism?
REFORM IN THE CITIES AND STATES PG. 544 What methods did progressive reformers use to attack problems in the cities and states?
THE REPUBLICAN ROOSEVELT PG. 546 How would you describe the personality and programs of Theodore Roosevelt?
ROOSEVELT PROGRESSIVISM AT ITS HEIGHT PG. 548 What were the major measures of Theodore Roosevelt’s term from 1905 to 1909?
THE ORDEAL OF WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT PG. 550 Why was the presidency of William Howard Taft so diffi cult for him?
WOODROW WILSON’S NEW FREEDOM PG. 553 What were the central principles of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer
From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism 23
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 23 From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism
A 1910 Puck cartoon shows Taft snarled in the intricacies of office as his disappointed mentor looks on.
In characteristic fashion, he had helped make the arrange- ments: “If there is to be a great crowd, do arrange it so that the whole crowd has a chance to see me and that there is as little disappointment as possible.” Greeting Pinchot, one of Taft’s leading opponents, with a hearty “Hello, Gifford,” Roosevelt slipped away to his home in Oyster Bay, New York, where other friends awaited him.
He carried with him a touching letter from Taft, received just before he left Europe. “I have had a hard time—I do not know that I have had harder luck than other Presidents, but I do know that thus far I have succeeded far less than have others. I have been conscientiously try- ing to carry out your policies but my method of doing so has not worked smoothly.” Taft invited Teddy to spend a night or two at the White House, but Roosevelt declined, saying that ex-presidents should not visit Washington. Relations between the two friends cooled. “It is hard, very hard,” Taft said in 1911, “to see a devoted friendship going to pieces like a rope of sand.”
A year later, there was no longer thought of friendship, only a desperate fi ght between Taft and Roosevelt for the Republican presidential nomination. Taft won the nomination, but, angry and ambitious, Roosevelt bolted and helped form a
new party, the Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) party, to unseat Taft and capture the White House. With Taft , Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson (the Democratic party’s candidate), and Socialist party can- didate Eugene V. Debs all in the race, the election of 1912 became one of the most exciting in American history.
It was also one of the most important. People were worried about the social and economic eff ects of urban-industrial growth. Th e election of 1912 provided a forum for those worries, and, to a degree unusual in American politics, it pitted deeply opposed candi- dates against one another and outlined diff ering views of the nation’s future. In the spirited battle between Roosevelt and Wilson, it also brought to the forefront some of the currents of progressive reform.
Th ose currents built on a number of important developments, including the rise of a new professional class, reform movements designed to cure problems in the cities and states, and the activist, achievement-oriented administrations of Roosevelt and Wilson. Together they produced the age of progressivism.
The Spirit of Progressivism
What were the six major characteristics of progressivism?
In one way or another, progressivism touched all aspects of s ociety. Politically, it fostered a reform movement that sought cures for the problems of city, state, and nation. Intellectually, it drew on the expertise of the new social sciences and refl ected a
538 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
shift from older absolutes such as religion to newer schools of thought that emphasized relativism and the role of the environ- ment in human development. Culturally, it inspired fresh modes of expression in dance, fi lm, painting, literature, and architecture. Touching individuals in diff erent ways, progressivism became a set of attitudes as well as a defi nable movement.
Th ough broad and diverse, progressivism as a whole had a half dozen characteristics that gave it defi nition. First, the progressives acted out of concern about the eff ects of industrialization and the conditions of industrial life. While their viewpoints varied, they did not, as a rule, set out to harm big business, but instead sought to humanize and regulate it.
In pursuing these objectives, the progressives displayed a second characteristic: a fundamental optimism about human nature, the possibilities of progress, and the capacity of people to recognize problems and take action to solve them. Progressives believed they could “investigate, educate, and legislate”—learn about a problem, inform people about it, and, with the help of an informed public, fi nd and enforce a solution.
Th ird, more than many earlier reformers, the progressives were willing to intervene in people’s lives, confi dent that it was their right to do so. Th ey knew best, some of them thought, and as a result, there was an element of coercion in a number of their ideas. Fourth, while progressives preferred if possible to use voluntary means to achieve reform, they tended to turn more and more to the authority of the state and government at all levels in order to put into eff ect the reforms they wanted.
As a fi ft h characteristic, many progressives drew on a combi- nation of evangelical Protestantism (which gave them the desire— and, they thought, the duty—to purge the world of sins such as prostitution and drunkenness) and the natural and social sciences (whose theories made them confi dent that they could understand and control the environment in which people lived). Progressives tended to view the environment as a key to reform, thinking—in the way some economists, sociologists, and other social scientists were suggesting—that if they could change the environment, they could change the individual.
Finally, progressivism was distinctive because it touched virtually the whole nation. Not everyone, of course, was a progres- sive, and there were many who opposed or ignored the ideas of the movement. Th ere were also those who were untouched by pro- gressive reforms and those whom the movement overlooked. But in one way or another, a remarkable number of people were caught up in it, giving progressivism a national reach and a mass base.
Th at was one of the features, in fact, that set it off from populism, which had grown mostly in the rural South and West. Progressivism drew support from across society. “Th e thing that constantly amazed me,” said William Allen White, a leading progressive journalist, “was how many people were with us.” Progressivism appealed to the expanding middle class, prosperous farmers, and skilled laborers; it also attracted signifi cant support in the business community.
Th e progressives believed in progress and disliked waste. No single issue or concern united them all. Some progressives wanted to clean up city governments, others to clean up city streets. Some wanted to purify politics or control corporate abuses, others to eradi- cate poverty or prostitution. Some demanded social justice in the form of women’s rights, child labor laws, temperance, and factory safety. Th ey were Democrats, Republicans, Socialists, and independents.
Progressives believed in a better world and in the ability of people to achieve it. Th ey paid to people, as a friend said of social reformer Florence Kelley, “the high compliment of believing that, once they knew the truth, they would act upon it.” Progress depended on knowledge. Th e progressives emphasized individual morality and collective action, the scientifi c method, and the value of expert opinion. Like contemporary business leaders, they valued system, planning, management, and predictability. Th ey wanted not only reform but effi ciency. In the introduction to Th e Shame of the Cities , Steff ens said that the cure for American ills lay in “good conduct in the individual, simple honesty, courage, and effi ciency.”
Historians once viewed progressivism as the triumph of one group in society over another. In this view, farmers took on the hated and powerful railroads; upstart reformers challenged the city bosses; business interests fought for favorable legislation; youthful professionals carved out their place in society. Now,
Lincoln Steffens, from The Shame of the Cities (1904)
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Lincoln Steffens was among the best known of the muckraking journalists. His famous book The Shame of the Cities was a collection of articles on municipal corruption that he wrote for McClure's Magazine in 1902 and 1903. In his articles, he reflected the disgust that reformers felt for political machines and their methods.
The Spirit of Progressivism 539
to the University of Michigan Medical School, one of a shrinking number of medical schools that admitted women, and then settled in Chicago, where she met Jane Addams and took a room in Hull House. Soon thereaft er, she traced a local typhoid epidemic to fl ies carrying germs from open privies. Th e study won national acclaim, but Hamilton had already turned her attention to the work-related illnesses she found everywhere around Hull House.
Combining fi eld study with meticulous laboratory techniques, she pioneered research into the causes of lead poisoning and other industrial disease. In 1908, the governor of Illinois appointed her to a commission on occupational diseases; two years later, she headed a statewide survey of industrial poisons. Th anks to her work, in 1911, Illinois passed the fi rst state law providing compensation for industrial disease caused by poisonous fumes and dust. By the end of the 1930s, all the major industrial states had such laws.
One of the new professionals, Hamilton had used her educa- tion and skill to broaden knowledge of her subject, change indus- trial practices, and improve the lives of countless workers. “For me,” she said later in a comment characteristic of the progressives, “the satisfaction is that things are better now, and I had some part in it.”
The Social-Justice Movement As Alice Hamilton’s career exemplifi ed, progressivism began in the cities during the 1890s. It fi rst took form around settlement workers and others interested in freeing individuals from the crushing impact of cities and factories.
Ministers, intellectuals, social workers, and lawyers joined in a social-justice movement that focused national attention on the need for tenement house laws, more stringent child labor legisla- tion, and better working conditions for women. Th ey brought pres- sure on municipal agencies for more and better parks, playgrounds, day nurseries, schools, and community services. Blending private and public action, settlement leaders turned increasingly to govern- ment aid. “Private benefi cence,” Jane Addams said, “is totally inad- equate to deal with the vast numbers of the city’s disinherited.”
Social-justice reformers were more interested in social cures than individual charity. Unlike earlier reformers, they saw prob- lems as endless and interrelated; individuals became part of a city’s larger patterns. With that insight, social-service casework shift ed from a focus on an individual’s well-being to a scientifi c analysis of neighborhoods, occupations, and classes.
In the spring of 1900, the Charity Organization Society of New York held a tenement house exhibition that graphically presented the new kind of sociological data. Put together by Lawrence Veiller, a young social worker, the exhibition included more than a thou- sand photographs, detailed maps of slum districts, statistical tables and charts, and graphic cardboard depictions of tenement blocks. Never before had so much information been pulled together in one place. Veiller correlated data on poverty and disease with housing conditions, and he pointed out that new slums were springing up in more areas of the city. Stirred by the public outcry, Governor Theodore Roosevelt appointed the New York State Tenement House Commission to do something about the problem.
With Veiller’s success as a model, study aft er study analyzed the condition of the poor. Books and pamphlets such as Th e Standard of Living Among Working Men’s Families in New York City (1909) con- tained pages of data on family budgets, women’s wages and working
historians emphasize the way progressivism brought people together rather than drove them apart. Disparate groups united in an eff ort to improve the well-being of many groups in society.
The Rise of the Professions Progressivism fed on an organizational impulse that encour- aged people to join forces, share information, and solve problems. Between 1890 and 1920, a host of national societies and associations took shape—nearly four hundred of them in just three decades. Groups such as the National Child Labor Committee, which lob- bied for legislation to regulate the employment and working condi- tions of children, were formed to attack specifi c issues. Other groups refl ected one of the most signifi cant developments in American society at the turn of the century—the rise of the professions.
Growing rapidly in these years, the professions—law, medicine, religion, business, teaching, and social work—were the source of much of the leadership of the progressive movement. Th e professions attracted young, educated men and women, who in turn were part of a larger trend: a dramatic increase in the number of individuals working in administrative and professional jobs. In businesses, these people were managers, architects, technicians, and accountants. In city governments, they were experts in everything from education to sanitation. Th ey organized and ran the urban-industrial society.
Th ese professionals formed part of a new middle class whose members did not derive their status from birth or inherited wealth, as had many members of the older middle class. Instead, they moved ahead through education and personal accomplishment and worked to become doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. Proud of their skills, they were ambitious and self-confi dent, and they thought of themselves as experts who could use their knowledge for the benefi t of society. (See the Feature Essay, “Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer ,” pp. 556–557 .)
As a way of asserting their status, they formed professional societies to look aft er their interests and govern entry into their pro- fessions. Just a few years before, for example, a doctor had become a doctor simply by stocking up on patent medicines and hanging out a sign. Now doctors began to insist they were part of a medi- cal profession, and they wanted to set educational requirements and minimum standards for practice. In 1901, they reorganized the American Medical Association (AMA) and made it into a modern national professional society. Th e AMA had 8,400 members that year. A decade later, it had more than 70,000, and by 1920, nearly two-thirds of all doctors belonged.
Other groups and professions showed the same pattern. Lawyers formed bar associations, created examining boards, and lobbied for regulations restricting entry into the profession. Teachers organized the National Education Association (1905) and pressed for teacher certifi cation and compulsory education laws. Social workers formed the National Federation of Settlements (1911); business leaders created the National Association of Manufacturers (1895) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (1912); and farmers joined the National Farm Bureau Federation to spread information about farming and to try to improve their lot.
Working both as individuals and groups, members of the pro- fessions had a major eff ect on the era, as the career of one of them, Dr. Alice Hamilton, illustrated. Hamilton early decided to devote her life to helping the less fortunate. Choosing medicine, she went
540 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
conditions, child labor, and other matters. Between 1910 and 1913, the U.S. Commissioner of Labor issued a massive nineteen-volume report on Conditions of Women and Children Wage-Earners in the United States.
Social-justice reformers, banding together to work for change, formed the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, which in 1915 became the National Conference of Social Work. Controlled by social workers, the conference refl ected the growing professional- ization of reform. Th rough it, social workers discovered each other’s eff orts, shared methodology, and tried to establish themselves as a separate fi eld within the social sciences. Once content with infor- mal training sessions in a settlement house living room, they now founded complete professional schools at Chicago, Harvard, and other universities. Aft er 1909, they had their own professional mag- azine, the Survey , and instead of piecemeal reforms, they aimed at a comprehensive program of minimum wages, maximum hours, workers’ compensation, and widows’ pensions.
The Purity Crusade Working in city neighborhoods, social-justice reformers were oft en struck by the degree to which alcohol aff ected the lives of the people they were trying to help. Workers drank away their wages; some men spent more time at the saloon than at home. Drunkenness caused violence, and it angered employers who did not want intoxi- cated workers on the job. In countless ways, alcohol wasted human resources, the reformers believed, and along with business leaders, ministers, and others, they launched a crusade to remove the evils of drink from American life.
At the head of the crusade was the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), which had continued to grow since it was founded in the 1870s. By 1911, the WCTU had nearly a quarter of a million members; it was the largest organization of women in American history to that time. In 1893, it was joined by the Anti-Saloon League, and together the groups pressed to abolish alcohol and the places where it was consumed. By 1916, they had succeeded in nineteen states, but as drinking continued elsewhere, they pushed for a nationwide law. In the midst of the moral fervor of World War I, they succeeded, and the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors, took eff ect in January 1920.
Th e amendment encountered troubles later in the 1920s as the social atmosphere changed, but at the time it passed, progressives thought Prohibition was a major step toward eliminating social instability and moral wrong. In a similar fashion, some progressive reformers also worked to get rid of prostitution, convinced that pov- erty and ignorance drove women to the trade. By 1915, nearly every state had banned brothels, and in 1910, Congress passed the Mann Act, which prohibited the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. Like the campaign against liquor, the campaign against prostitution refl ected the era’s desire to purify and elevate, oft en through the instrument of government action.
Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights Women played a large role in the social-justice movement. Feminists were particularly active, especially in the political sphere, between 1890 and 1914—feminists were more active then, in fact,
Read the Document Report of the Vice Commission (1915)
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Progressive reformers set out to improve society. One strategy they employed was eradicating vice. Termed vice crusaders, these reformers attempted to stamp out prostitution, especially in large cities, as well as homosexuality. The pinnacle of the anti-vice movement was the passage of the Mann Act of 1910, which made it illegal to transport women across state lines for “immoral purposes.”
than at any other time until the 1960s. Some working-class women pushed for higher wages and better working conditions. College- educated women—fi ve thousand a year graduated aft er 1900—took up careers in the professions, from which some of them supported reform. From 1890 to 1910, the work of a number of national women’s organizations, including the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Congress of Mothers, and the Women’s Trade Union League, furthered the aims of the progressive movement.
Excluded from most of these organizations, African American women formed their own groups. Th e National Association of
The Spirit of Progressivism 541
Legislation for Women and Children, the federation supported reforms to safeguard child and women workers, improve schools, ensure pure food, and beautify the community.
Reluctant at fi rst, the federation fi nally lent support in 1914 to woman suff rage, a cause that dated back to the fi rst women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. Divided over tactics since the Civil War, the suff rage movement suff ered from disunity, male opposition, indecision over whether to seek action at the state or at the national level, resistance from the Catholic Church, and opposition from liquor interests, who linked the cause to Prohibition.
Women in the social-justice movement needed to infl uence elected offi cials—most of them men, whom they could not reach
Colored Women was founded in 1895, fourteen years before the better known male-oriented National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Aimed at social w elfare, the women’s organization was the fi rst African American social-service agency in the country. At the local level, African American women’s clubs established kindergartens, day nurseries, playgrounds, and retirement homes.
From two hundred thousand members in 1900, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs grew to more than one million by 1912. Th e clubs met, as they had before, for coff ee and literary conversation, but they also began to look closely at conditions around them. Forming an Industrial Section and a Committee on
“Changing Lives of American Women, 1880–1930” View the Map
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1908, Salem, OR. Miller v. State of Oregon U.S. Supreme Court upholds Oregon’s 10 hour work day for women.
1916, Helena, MT. Jeanette Rankin is elected the first woman to the U.S. House of Representatives.
1894, Denver, CO. First U.S. women elected to State House of Representatives.
1932, Little Rock, AR. Hattie Wyatt Caraway is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.
1889, Chicago, IL. Jane Addams establishes Hull House.
1839, Jackson, MS. First married women’s property act passed granting married women ownership over limited property.
1892, Memphis, TN. Journalist Ida B. Wells launches an anti-lynching campaign.
1916, Brooklyn, NY. Margaret Sanger opens first U.S. birth control clinic.
1848, Seneca Falls, NY. Women gather for convention to organize women’s rights.
1848, Albany, NY. Model married women’s property act passed granting married women legal right to own property in their own name.
Wyoming was the first of several western states to grant women the right to vote; however, in most eastern states women's suffrage came only with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The number of women in the workforce grew steadily to 18 percent by 1900, a figure that reflects an emphasis on industrial workers and ignores workers more informally employed in agricultural and domestic occupations.
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542 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
laws to protect workers, and other reforms. This argument attracted many progressives who believed the women’s vote would purify poli- tics. In 1918, the House passed a constitutional amendment stating simply that the right to vote shall not be denied “on account of sex.” Th e Senate and enough states fol- lowed, and, aft er three generations of suff ragist eff orts, the Nineteenth Amendment took eff ect in 1920.
The social justice movement had the most success in passing state laws limiting the working hours of women. By 1913, thirty-nine states set maximum working hours for women or banned the employ- ment of women at night. Illinois had a ten-hour law; California and Washington had eight-hour laws. Wisconsin, Oregon, and Kansas allowed expert commissions to set different hours depending on the degree of strain in various occupa- tions. As early as 1900, thanks to groups such as the National Child Labor Committee, twenty-eight states had laws regulating child labor. But the courts often ruled against such laws, and families— needing extra income—sometimes ignored them. Parents sent children off to jobs with orders to lie about their ages.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson backed a law to limit child labor, the Keating-Owen Act, but in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Supreme Court overturned it as an improper regulation of local labor conditions. In 1919, Congress tried again in the Second Child Labor Act, but in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922) the leg- islation was again struck down. Not until the 1930s did Congress succeed in passing a court-supported national child labor law.
A Ferment of Ideas: Challenging the Status Quo A dramatic shift in ideas became one of the most important forces behind progressive reform. Most of the ideas focused on the role of the environment in shaping human behavior. Progressive reform- ers accepted society’s growing complexity, called for factual treat- ment of piecemeal problems, allowed room for new theories, and, above all, rejected age-encrusted divine or natural “laws” in favor of thoughts and actions that worked.
A new doctrine called pragmatism emerged in this ferment of ideas. It came from William James, a brilliant Harvard psycholo- gist who became the key fi gure in American thought from the 1890s to World War I. A warm, tolerant person, James was impatient with theories that regarded truth as abstract. Truth, he believed, should
through the vote. Because politics was an avenue for reform, growing numbers of women activists became involved in the suff rage move- ment. Aft er years of disagreement, the two major suff rage organiza- tions, the National Woman Suff rage Association and the American Woman Suff rage Association, merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association . Th e merger opened a new phase of the suff rage movement, characterized by unity and a tightly controlled national organization.
In 1900, Carrie Chapman Catt, a superb organizer, became president of the National American Woman Suff rage Association, which by 1920 had nearly two million members. Catt and Anna Howard Shaw, who became the association’s head in 1904, believed in organization and peaceful lobbying to win the vote. Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, founders of the Congressional Union, were more militant; they interrupted public meetings, focused on Congress rather than the states, and in 1917 picketed the White House.
Signifi cantly, Catt, Paul, and others made a major change in the argument for woman suff rage. When the campaign began in the nineteenth century, suff ragists had claimed the vote as a nat- ural right, owed to women as much as men. Now, they empha- sized a pragmatic argument: Since women were more sensitive to moral issues than men, they would use their votes to help create a better society. Th ey would support temperance, clean government,
National American Woman Suffrage Association, Mother’s Day Letter
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The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was formed in 1890 from the merger of two organizations founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, respectively, in 1869. Under the leadership of Carrie Chapman Catt, membership in the organization rose to 2 million. Catt's organization was relatively mainstream, especially in contrast to the militant National Woman's Party, which adopted radical tactics including hunger strikes, demonstrations, and pickets.
The Spirit of Progressivism 543
Rejecting the older view of the law as universal and unchanging, lawyers and legal theorists instead viewed it as a refl ection of the environment—an instrument for social change. Law refl ected the environment that shaped it. A movement grew among judges for “socio- logical jurisprudence” that related the law to social reform instead of only to legal precedent, a shift most evident in the famed Brandeis brief, presented in the case of Muller v. Oregon that came before the Supreme Court in 1908.
In Denver, Colorado, aft er Judge Ben Lindsey sentenced a boy to reform school for stealing coal, the boy’s mother rushed forward and, grief stricken, beat her head against the wall. Lindsey investigated the case and found that the father was a smelting worker dying of lead poisoning; the family needed coal for heat. From such experiences, Lindsey concluded that children were not born with a genetic tendency to crime; they were made good or bad by the envi- ronment in which they grew. Lindsey “sentenced” youthful off enders to education and good care. He worked for playgrounds, slum clearance, public baths, and technical schools. Known as the “Kids’ Judge,” he attracted visitors from as far away as Japan, who wanted to study and copy his methods.
Socialism, a reformist political philosophy, grew dramatically before World War I. Socialist political parties, composed of followers of Karl Marx, fi rst
appeared in New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities aft er the Civil War. Th ey urged workers to join a worldwide revolution to overthrow capitalism. Such public appeals, however, drew little support. Leaders of a new Socialist Labor Party, founded in 1877, tried in secret to gain control of important labor unions. Th at strategy also failed.
Daniel De Leon, a brilliant tactician, took over leadership of the Socialist Labor Party during the 1890s, but he too lacked mass support. Arguing for a more moderate form of socialism, Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, in 1896 formed a rival organization, the Social Democratic Party. Gentle and refl ec- tive, not at all the popular image of the wild-eyed radical, Debs was thrust into prominence by the Pullman strike. In 1901, persuading opponents of De Leon to join him, he formed the Socialist party of America. Neither Debs nor the party ever developed a cohesive plat- form, nor was Debs an eff ective organizer. But he was eloquent, pas- sionate, and visionary. An excellent speaker, he captivated audiences, attacking the injustices of capitalism and urging a workers’ republic.
Th e Socialist Party of America enlisted some intellectuals, f actory workers, disillusioned Populists, tenant farmers, miners, and lumberjacks. By 1911, there were Socialist mayors in thirty-two cities, including Berkeley, California; Butte, Montana; and Flint, Michigan. Although its doctrines were aimed at an urban prole- tariat, the Socialist Party drew support in rural Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Idaho, and Washington. In Oklahoma, it attracted as much as one-third of the vote.
Although torn by factions, the Socialist Party doubled in membership between 1904 and 1908, then tripled in the four years aft er that. Running for president, Debs garnered 100,000 votes in 1900; 400,000 in 1904; and 900,000 in 1912, the party’s peak year.
Eugene V. Debs, from “The Outlook for Socialism in America” (1900)
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Presidential campaign poster for Eugene V. Debs on the Socialist party of America ticket in 1904. The poster’s imagery appeals to industrial workers, miners, and farmers, and its slogan, “Workers of the world unite,” was a key call to action of the party to challenge the injustices of capitalism.
work for the individual, and it worked best not in abstraction, but in action. “True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corrobo- rate, and verify. False ideas are those we cannot.”
People, James thought, not only were shaped by their environ- ment; they shaped it. In Pragmatism (1907), he praised “tough- minded” individuals who could live eff ectively in a world with no easy answers. Th e tough-minded accepted change; they knew how to pick manageable problems, gather facts, discard ideas that did not work, and act on those that did. Ideas that worked became truth. “What is the ‘cash value’ of a thought, idea, or belief?” James asked. Does it work? Does it make a diff erence to the individ- ual who experiences it? “Th e ultimate test for us of what a truth means,” said James, “is the conduct it dictates.”
The most influential educator of the Progressive Era, John Dewey, applied pragmatism to educational reform. A friend and dis- ciple of William James, he argued that thought evolves in relation to the environment and that education is directly related to expe- rience. In 1896, Dewey founded a separate School of Pedagogy at the University of Chicago, with a laboratory in which educational theory based on the newer philosophical and psychological studies could be tested and practiced.
Dewey introduced an educational revolution that emphasized children’s needs and capabilities. He described his beliefs and meth- ods in a number of books, notably School and Society (1899) and Democracy and Education (1916). New ideas in education, he said, are “as much a product of the changed social situation, and as much an eff ort to meet the needs of the society that is forming, as are changes in modes of industry and commerce.” He opposed memo- rization, rote learning, and dogmatic, authoritarian teaching meth- ods; he emphasized personal growth, free inquiry, and creativity.
544 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
Reform in the Cities During the early years of the twentieth century, urban reform movements, many of them born in the depression of the 1890s, spread across the nation. In 1894, the National Municipal League was organized, and it became the forum for debate over civic reform, changes in the tax laws, and municipal ownership of public utilities. Within a few years, nearly every city had a variety of clubs and organizations directed at improving the quality of city life.
In the 1880s, reformers would call an evening conference, pass resolutions, and then go home; aft er 1900, they formed asso- ciations, adopted long-range policies, and hired a staff to achieve them. In the mid-1890s, only Chicago had an urban reform league with a full-time paid executive; within a decade, there were such leagues in every major city.
In city after city, reformers reordered municipal govern- ment. Tightening controls on corporate activities, they broadened the scope of utility regulation and restricted city franchises. Th ey updated tax assessments, oft en skewed in favor of corporations, and tried to clean up the electoral machinery. Devoted to effi ciency, they developed a trained civil service to oversee planning and operations. Th e generation of the 1880s also had believed in civil service, but the goal then was mostly negative: to get spoilsmen out and “good” people in. Now the goal was effi ciency and, above all, results.
In constructing their model governments, urban reformers oft en turned to recent advances in business management and orga- nization. Th ey emphasized continuity and expertise, a system in which professional experts staff ed a government overseen by elected offi cials. At the top, the elected leader surveyed the breadth of city,
Reform in the Cities and States
What methods did progressive reformers use to attack problems in the cities and states?
Progressive reformers realized government could be a crucial agent in accomplishing their goals. Th ey wanted to curb the infl uence of “special interests” and, through such measures of political reform as the direct primary and the direct election of senators, make govern- ment follow the public will. Once it did, they welcomed government action at whatever level was appropriate.
As a result of this thinking, the use of federal power increased, as did the power and prestige of the presidency. Progressives not only lobbied for government-sponsored reform but also worked actively in their home neighborhoods, cities, and states; much of the signifi cant change occurred in local settings, outside the national limelight. Most important, the progressives believed in the ability of experts to solve problems. At every level—local, state, and f ederal—thousands of commissions and agencies took form. Staff ed by trained experts, they oversaw a multitude of matters ranging from railroad rates to public health.
Interest Groups and the Decline of Popular Politics Placing government in the hands of experts was one way to get it out of the hands of politicians and political parties. Th e direct primary, which allowed voters rather than parties to choose candi- dates for offi ce, was another way. Th ese initiatives and others like them were part of a fundamental change in the way Americans viewed their political system.
As one sign of the change, fewer and fewer people were going to the polls. Voter turnout dropped dramatically aft er 1900, when the intense partisanship of the decades aft er the Civil War gave way to media-oriented political campaigns based largely on the person- alities of the candidates. From 1876 to 1900, the average turnout in presidential elections was 77 percent. From 1900 to 1916, it was 65 percent, and in the 1920s, it dropped to 52 percent, close to the average today. Turnout was lowest among young people, immi- grants, the poor, and, ironically, the newly enfranchised women.
It was particularly low in the South where conservative whites used restrictive election laws to keep blacks and others from the polls. Turnout in the South fell sharply, from an average of 64 percent in the presidential elections of the 1880s to just 20 percent in 1920 and 1924. Although the decline in the North was less sharp, the reasons for it were more complex. By the 1920s, as many as one- quarter of all eligible northern voters never cast a ballot.
Th ere were numerous causes for the falloff , but among the most important was the fact that people had found another way to achieve some of the objectives they had once assigned to political parties. Th ey had found the “interest group,” a means of action that assumed importance in this era and became a major feature of poli- tics ever aft er. Professional societies, trade associations, labor orga- nizations, farm lobbies, and scores of other interest groups worked outside the party system to pressure government for things their members wanted. Social workers, women’s clubs, reform groups, and others learned to apply pressure in similar ways, and the result was much of the signifi cant legislation of the Progressive Era.
VOTER PARTICIPATION IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1876–1920
1876 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
81.8 79.4
77.5
79.3
74.7
79.3
73.2
65.2
65.4
58.8
61.6
49.2
1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 1920
Percentage
Reform in the Cities and States 545
and strengthen commissions to regulate railroads and utilities, to impose corporate and inheritance taxes, to improve mental and penal institutions, and to allocate more funds for state universi- ties, which were viewed as the training ground for the experts and educated citizenry needed for the new society.
Maryland passed the fi rst workers’ compensation law in 1902; soon most industrial states had such legislation. Aft er 1900, many states adopted factory inspection laws, and by 1916, almost two-thirds of the states mandated insurance for the victims of factory accidents. By 1914, twenty-fi ve states had enacted employers’ liability laws.
To regulate business, virtually every state created regulatory commissions empowered to examine corporate books and hold public hearings. Building on earlier experience, state commis- sions aft er 1900 were given new power to initiate actions, rather than await complaints, and in some cases to set maximum prices and rates. Dictating company practices, they pioneered regulatory methods later adopted in federal legislation of 1906 and 1910. Some business leaders supported the federal laws in order to get rid of “the intolerable supervision” of dozens of separate state commissions.
Historians have long praised the regulation movement, but the commissions did not always act wisely or even in the public interest. Elective commissions oft en produced commissioners who had little knowledge of corporate aff airs. In addition, to win an election, some promised specifi c rates or reforms, obligations that might bias the commission’s investigative functions. Appointive commissions sometimes fared better, but they too had to oversee extraordinarily complex businesses such as the railroads. Shaping everything from wages to train schedules, the regulatory commis- sions aff ected railroad profi ts and growth negatively and, in the end, damaged the railroad industry.
To the progressives, commissions off ered a way to end the cor- rupt alliance between business and politics. Th ere was another way, too, and that was to “democratize” government by reducing the power of politicians and increasing the infl uence of the electorate. To do that, progressives backed three measures to make offi ce hold- ers responsive to popular will: the initiative, which allowed voters to propose new laws; the referendum, which allowed them to accept or reject a law at the ballot box; and the recall, which gave them a way to remove an elected offi cial from offi ce.
Oregon adopted the initiative and referendum in 1902; by 1912, twelve states had them. Th at year Congress added the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. senators. By 1916, all but three states had direct primaries, which allowed the people, rather than nominating conventions, to choose candidates for offi ce.
As attention shift ed from the cities to the states, reform governors throughout the country earned greater visibility. Joseph Folk, Steff ens’s hero in St. Louis, became the governor of Missouri in 1904. Hiram Johnson won fame in California for his shrewd and forceful campaign against the Southern Pacifi c Railroad. In the East, the cause of reform was upheld by Charles Evans Hughes in New York and Woodrow Wilson, the former president of Princeton University, in New Jersey.
Robert M. La Follette became the most famous reform g overnor. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, La Follette served three terms in Congress during the late 1880s. A staunch Republican, he supported the tariff and other Republican doctrines, but the Democratic landslide of 1890 turned him out of offi ce. Moving to state politics, he became interested in reform,
state, or national aff airs and defi ned directions. Below, a corps of experts—trained in the various disciplines of the new society— funneled the defi nition into specifi c, scientifi cally based policies.
Reformers created a growing number of regulatory commissions and municipal departments. Th ey hired engineers to oversee util- ity and water systems, physicians and nurses to improve municipal health, and city planners to oversee park and highway development. Th ey created specialized “academies” to train police and fi refi ghters. Imitated by the state and federal governments, the proliferation of experts and commissions widened the gap between voters and deci- sion makers but dramatically improved the effi ciency of government.
As cities exploded in size, they freed themselves from the tight controls of state legislatures and began to experiment with their own governments. Struggling to recover from a devastating hurricane in 1900, Galveston, Texas, pioneered the commission form of government: a form of municipal government in which commissions of appointed experts, rather than elected offi cials, ran the city. Wanting nonpartisan expertise, Staunton, Virginia, was the fi rst to hire a city manager. Other cities followed, and by 1910 more than one hundred cities were using either the commission or manager type of government.
In the race for reform, a number of city mayors won national reputations—among them Seth Low in New York City and Hazen S. Pingree in Detroit—working to modernize taxes, clean up politics, lower utility rates, and control the awarding of valuable city franchises. In Toledo, Ohio, Mayor Samuel M. (“Golden Rule”) Jones, a wealthy manufacturer, took billy clubs away from the police; established free kindergartens, playgrounds, and night schools; and improved wages for city workers.
In Cleveland, Ohio, Tom L. Johnson demonstrated an innova- tive approach to city government. A millionaire who had made his fortune manipulating city franchises, Johnson one day read Henry George’s Progress and Poverty and turned to reform. Elected mayor of Cleveland, he served from 1901 to 1909 and collected a group of aggressive and talented young advisers. Frederic C. Howe, Newton D. Baker, and Edward Bemis—all of whom later won national reputations—shaped Johnson’s ideas on taxes, prison reform, utility regulation, and other issues facing the city.
Johnson combined shrewdness and showmanship. Believing in an informed citizenry, he held outdoor meetings in huge tents. He used colorful charts to give Cleveland residents a course in utilities and taxation. He cut down on corruption, cut off special privilege, updated taxes, and gave Cleveland a reputation as the country’s best governed city.
Finding it diffi cult to regulate powerful city utilities and keep their costs down, Johnson and mayors in other cities turned more and more to public ownership of gas, electricity, water, and trans- portation. Th e idea of “gas and water socialism”—in which cities owned their own gas, electricity, water, and other utilities—spread swift ly. In 1896, fewer than half of American cities owned their own waterworks; by 1915, almost two-thirds did.
Action in the States Reformers soon discovered, however, that many problems lay beyond a city’s boundaries, and they turned for action to the state governments. From the 1890s to 1920, reformers worked to stiff en state laws regulating the labor of women and children, to create
546 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
In 1901, Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, the prominent African American educator, to dinner at the White House. Many southerners protested—“a crime equal to treason,” a newspaper said—and they protested again when Roosevelt appointed several African Americans to important federal offi ces in South Carolina and Mississippi. At fi rst, Roosevelt considered building a biracial “black-and-tan” southern Republican party, thinking it would foster racial progress and his own renomination in 1904. He denounced lynching and ordered the Justice Department to act against peonage.
But Roosevelt soon retreated. In some areas of the South, he supported “lily-white” Republican organizations, and his poli- cies oft en refl ected his own belief in African American inferiority. He said nothing when a race riot broke out in Atlanta in 1906, although twelve persons died. He joined others in blaming African American soldiers stationed near Brownsville, Texas, aft er a night of violence there in August 1906. Acting quickly and on little evidence, he discharged “without honor” three companies of African American troops. Six of the soldiers who were discharged held the Congressional Medal of Honor.
spurred in part, as so many were, by the depression of the 1890s. In 1901, he became governor of Wisconsin. Th en forty-fi ve years old, La Follette was talented, aggressive, and a superb stump speaker.
In the following six years, he put together the “Wisconsin Idea,” one of the most important reform programs in the history of state government. He established an industrial commission, the fi rst in the country, to regulate factory safety and sanitation. He improved education, workers’ compensation, public utility controls, and resource conservation. He lowered railroad rates and raised railroad taxes. Under La Follette’s prodding, Wisconsin became the fi rst state to adopt a direct primary for all political nominations. It also became the fi rst to adopt a state income tax.
Like other progressives, La Follette drew on expert advice and relied on academic fi gures such as Richard Ely and Edward Ross at the University of Wisconsin. La Follette supporters established the fi rst Legislative Reference Bureau in the university’s library; the bureau stocked the governor and his allies with facts and fi gures to support the measures they wanted. Th eodore Roosevelt called La Follette’s Wisconsin “the laboratory of democracy,” and the Wisconsin Idea soon spread to many other states, including New York, California, Michigan, Iowa, and Texas.
After 1905, the progressives looked more and more to Washington. For one thing, Teddy Roosevelt was there with his zest for publicity and his alluring grin. Progressives also had a growing sense that many concerns—corporations and conservation, factory safety and child labor—crossed state lines. Federal action seemed desirable; specifi c reforms fi t into a larger plan perhaps best seen from the nation’s center. Within a few years, La Follette and Hiram Johnson became senators, and while reform went on back home, the focus of progressivism shift ed to Washington.
The Republican Roosevelt
How would you describe the personality and programs of Theodore Roosevelt?
When President William McKinley died of gunshot wounds in September 1901, Vice President Th eodore Roosevelt succeeded him in the White House. Th e new president initially vowed to carry on McKinley’s policies. He continued some, developed others of his own, and in the end brought to them all the particular exuberance of his own personality.
At age forty-two, Roosevelt was then the youngest president in American history. In contrast to the dignifi ed McKinley, he was open, aggressive, and high spirited. At his desk by 8:30 every morning, he worked through the day, usually with visitors for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Politicians, labor leaders, industrialists, poets, artists, and writers paraded through the White House.
If McKinley cut down on presidential isolation, Roosevelt v irtually ended it. The presidency, he thought, was the “bully p ulpit,” a forum of ideas and leadership for the nation. Th e presi- dent was “a steward of the people bound actively and affi rmatively to do all he could for the people.” Self-confi dent, Roosevelt enlisted talented associates, including Elihu Root, secretary of war and later secretary of state; William Howard Taft , secretary of war; Giff ord Pinchot, the nation’s chief forester and leading conservationist; and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., whom he named to the Supreme Court.
Theodore Roosevelt, from The Strenuous Life (1900)
Read the Document
This photograph of TR (Theodore Roosevelt) captures key parts of his personality: exuberant, jovial, expansive, self-confident, personally warm, outgoing, aggressive, spirited, and friendly. These characteristics, among others, are important because they shaped his presidency between 1901 and 1909.
The Republican Roosevelt 547
Busting the Trusts “Th ere is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare,” Roosevelt reported to Congress in 1901. Like most people, however, the presi- dent wavered on the trusts. Large-scale production and industrial growth, he believed, were natural and benefi cial; they needed only to be controlled. Still, he distrusted the trusts’ impact on local enterprise and individual opportunity. Distinguishing between “good” and “bad” trusts, he pledged to protect the former while controlling the latter.
At fi rst, Roosevelt hoped the combination of investigative journalism and public opinion would be enough to uncover and correct business evils, and in public he both praised and attacked the trusts. Mr. Dooley poked fun at his wavering: “‘Th ’ trusts,’ says he, ‘are heejous monsthers built up be th’ enlightened intherprise iv th’ men that have done so much to advance progress in our beloved country,’ he says. ‘On wan hand I wud stamp thim undher fut; on th’ other hand not so fast.”’
In 1903, Roosevelt asked Congress to create a Department of Commerce and Labor, with a Bureau of Corporations empow- ered to investigate corporations engaged in interstate commerce. Congress balked; Roosevelt called in reporters and, in an off - the-record interview, charged that John D. Rockefeller had orga- nized the opposition to the measure. Th e press spread the word, and in the outcry that followed, the proposal passed easily in a matter of weeks. Roosevelt was delighted. With the new Bureau of Corporations publicizing its fi ndings, he thought, the glare of publicity would eliminate most corporate abuses.
Roosevelt also undertook direct legal action. On February 18, 1902, he instructed the Justice Department to bring suit against the Northern Securities Company for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. It was a shrewd move. A mammoth holding com- pany, Northern Securities controlled the massive rail networks of the Northern Pacifi c, Great Northern, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads. Some of the most prominent names in business were behind the giant company—J. P. Morgan and Company; the Rockefeller interests; Kuhn, Loeb and Company; and railroad oper- ators James J. Hill and Edward H. Harriman.
Shocked by Roosevelt’s action, Morgan charged that the president had not acted like a “gentleman,” and Hill talked glumly of having “to fi ght for our lives against the political adventurers who have never done anything but pose and draw a salary.” Morgan rushed to Washington to complain and to ask whether there were plans to “attack my other interests,” notably U.S. Steel. “No,” Roosevelt replied, “unless we fi nd out they have done something that we regard as wrong.”
In 1904, the Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, upheld the suit against Northern Securities and ordered the company dissolved. Roosevelt was jubilant, and he followed up the victory with several other antitrust suits. In 1902, he had moved against the beef trust, an action applauded by western farmers and urban consumers alike. Aft er a lull, he initiated suits in 1906 and 1907 against the American Tobacco Company, the Du Pont Corporation, the New Haven Railroad, and Standard Oil.
But Roosevelt’s policies were not always clear, nor his actions always consistent. He invited Morgan to the White House to confer with him and allowed the president of National City Bank to pre- view a draft of the president’s third annual message to Congress.
Roosevelt also asked for (and received) business support in his bid for reelection in 1904. Large donations came in from industrial leaders, and Morgan himself later testifi ed that he gave $150,000 to Roosevelt’s campaign. In 1907, acting in part to avert a threatened fi nancial panic, the president permitted Morgan’s U.S. Steel to absorb the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, an important competitor.
Roosevelt, in truth, was not a trustbuster, although he was frequently called that. William Howard Taft, his successor in the White House, initiated forty-three antitrust indictments in four years—nearly twice as many as the twenty-five Roosevelt initiated in the seven years of his presidency. Instead, Roosevelt used antitrust threats to keep businesses within bounds. Regulation, he believed, was a better way to control large-scale enterprise.
“Square Deal” in the Coalfi elds A few months after announcing the Northern Securities suit, Roosevelt intervened in a major labor dispute involving the anthra- cite coal miners of northeastern Pennsylvania. Led by John Mitchell, a moderate labor leader, the United Mine Workers demanded wage increases, an eight-hour workday, and company recognition of the union. Th e coal companies refused, and in May 1902, one hundred forty thousand miners walked off the job. Th e mines closed.
As the months passed and the strike continued, coal prices rose. With winter coming on, schools, hospitals, and factories ran short of coal. Public opinion turned against the companies. Morgan and other industrial leaders privately urged them to settle, but George F. Baer, head of one of the largest companies, refused: “Th e rights and interests of the laboring man,” Baer said, “will be protected and cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his infi nite wisdom has given the control of the prop- erty interests of this country.”
Roosevelt was furious. Complaining of the companies’ arro- gance, he invited both sides in the dispute to an October 1902 confer- ence at the White House. Th ere, Mitchell took a moderate tone and off ered to submit the issues to arbitration, but the companies again refused to budge. Roosevelt ordered the army to prepare to seize the mines and then leaked word of his intent to Wall Street leaders.
Alarmed, Morgan and others again urged settlement of the dispute, and at last the companies retreated. Th ey agreed to accept the recommendations of an independent commission the presi- dent would appoint. In late October, the strikers returned to work, and in March 1903, the commission awarded them a 10 percent wage increase and a cut in working hours. It recommended, how- ever, against union recognition. Th e coal companies, in turn, were encouraged to raise prices to off set the wage increase.
More and more, Roosevelt saw the federal government as an honest and impartial “broker” between powerful elements in society. Rather than leaning toward labor, he pursued a middle way to curb corporate and labor abuses, abolish privilege, and enlarge individual opportunity. Conservative by temperament, he some- times backed reforms in part to head off more radical measures.
During the 1904 campaign, Roosevelt called his actions in the coal miners’ strike a “square deal” for both labor and capital, a term that stuck to his administration. Roosevelt was not the fi rst president to take a stand for labor, but he was the fi rst to bring opposing sides in a labor dispute to the White House to settle it.
548 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
jurisdiction to include oil pipeline, express, and sleeping car companies. ICC orders were binding, pending any court appeals, thus placing the burden of proof of injustice on the companies. Delighted, Roosevelt viewed the Hepburn Act as a major step in his plan for continuous expert federal control over industry.
Cleaning up Food and Drugs Soon Roosevelt was dealing with two other important bills, these aimed at regulating the food and drug industries. Muckraking articles had touched frequently on fi lthy conditions in meatpack- ing houses, but Upton Sinclair’s Th e Jungle (1906) set off a storm of
He was the fi rst to threaten to seize a major industry, and he was the fi rst to appoint an arbitration commission whose decision both sides agreed to accept.
Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height
What were the major measures of Theodore Roosevelt’s term from 1905 to 1909?
In the election of 1904, the popular Roosevelt soundly drubbed his Democratic opponent, Alton B. Parker of New York, and the Socialist party candidate, Eugene V. Debs of Indiana. Roosevelt attracted a large campaign chest and won votes everywhere. In a landslide victory, he received 57 percent of the vote to Parker’s 38 percent, and on election night, he savored the public’s confi dence. Overjoyed, he pledged that “under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination,” a statement he later regretted.
Upton Sinclair, from The Jungle (1906)
Read the Document
A poster for the movie version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle promises a “wonderful story of the beef packing industry.” The conditions that Sinclair described in the book brought to public attention the scandals of the meatpacking industry knowingly selling diseased meat and the filthy, disease-ridden, dangerous conditions in which the workers toiled for their subsistence wages.
THE ELECTION OF 1904
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
T. Roosevelt Republican 7,623,486 336
Parker Democrat 5,077,911 140
Debs Socialist 402,400 0
Swallow Prohibition 258,596 0
Regulating the Railroads Following his election, Roosevelt, in late 1904, laid out a reform program that included railroad regulation, employers’ liability for federal employees, greater federal control over corporations, and laws regulating child labor, factory inspection, and slum clearance in the District of Columbia. He turned fi rst to railroad regulation. In 1903, he had worked with Congress to pass the Elkins Act to prohibit railroad rebates and increase the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). Th e Elkins Act, a moderate law, was framed with the consent of railroad leaders. In 1904 and 1905, the president wanted much more, and he urged Congress to empower the ICC to set reasonable and nondiscriminatory rates and prevent inequitable practices.
Widespread demand for railroad regulation strengthened Roosevelt’s hand. In the Midwest and farther west, the issue was a popular one, and reform governors La Follette in Wisconsin and Albert B. Cummins in Iowa urged federal action. Roosevelt maneu- vered cannily. As the legislative battle opened, he released fi gures showing that Standard Oil had reaped $750,000 a year from railroad rebates. He also skillfully traded congressional support for a strong railroad measure in return for his promise to postpone a reduction of the tariff , a stratagem that came back to plague President Taft .
Triumph came with passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906. A signifi cant achievement, the act strengthened the rate-making power of the Interstate Commerce Commission. It increased membership on the ICC from fi ve to seven, empowered it to fix reasonable maximum railroad rates, and broadened its
Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height 549
of patent medicines in several sensational articles in Collier’s . Patent medicines, Adams pointed out, contained mostly alcohol, drugs, and “undiluted fraud.” Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, the chief chem- ist in the Department of Agriculture, led a “poison squad” of young assistants who experimented with the medicines. With evidence in hand, Wiley pushed for regulation; Roosevelt and the recently reorganized American Medical Association joined the fi ght, and the act passed on June 30, 1906. Requiring manufacturers to list certain ingredients on the label, it represented a pioneering eff ort to ban the manufacture and sale of adulterated, misbranded, or unsanitary food or drugs.
Conserving the Land An expert on birds, Roosevelt loved nature and the wilderness, and some of his most enduring accomplishments came in the fi eld of conservation . Working closely with Giff ord Pinchot, chief of the Forest Service, he established the fi rst comprehensive national con- servation policy. To Roosevelt, conservation meant the wise use of natural resources, not locking them away, so those who thought the wilderness should be preserved rather than developed generally opposed his policies.
Using experts in the federal government, Roosevelt undertook a major reclamation program, created the federal Reclamation Service, and strengthened the forest preserve program in the Department of Agriculture. Broadening the concept of conservation, he placed power sites, coal lands, and oil reserves as well as national forest in the public domain.
When Roosevelt took offi ce in 1901, there were 45 million acres in government preserves. In 1908, there were almost
indignation. Ironically, Sinclair had set out to write a novel about the packinghouse workers, the “wage slaves of the Beef Trust,” hoping to do for wage slavery what Harriet Beecher Stowe had done for chat- tel slavery. But readers largely ignored his story of the workers and seized instead on the graphic descriptions of the things that went into their meat:
Th ere would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thou- sands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. Th ese rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.
Sinclair was disappointed at the reaction. “I aimed at the public’s heart,” he later said, “and by accident I hit it in the stomach.” He had, indeed. After reading The Jungle , Roosevelt ordered an investigation. The result, he said, was “hideous,” and he threatened to publish the entire “sickening report” if Congress did not act. Meat sales plummeted in the United States and Europe. Demand for reform grew. Alarmed, the meat packers themselves supported a reform law, which they hoped would be just strong enough to still the clamor. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906, stronger than the packers wanted, set rules for sanitary meatpacking and government inspection of meat products.
A second measure, the Pure Food and Drug Act, passed more easily. Samuel Hopkins Adams, a muckraker, exposed the dangers
Puerto Rico Virgin Is.
Virgin Islands 1956
Haleakala 1916/1960
Hawaii Volcanoes 1916/1961
Katmai 1918/1980
Lake Clark 1978/1980
Denali 1917/1980
Kobuk Valley
1978/1980
Gates of the Arctic 1978/1980
Wrangel- St. Elias 1978/1980
Kenai Fjords 1978/1980
Glacier Bay
1925/1980
North Cascades 1968
Olympic 1909/1938 Mt. Rainier
1899
Crater Lake 1902
Redwood 1968
Lassen Volcanic 1907/1916
Yosemite 1890
Kings Canyon 1890/1940
Sequoia 1890
Channel Islands
1938/1980
Glacier 1910
Yellowstone 1872
Grand Teton 1929
Great Basin 1922/1986
Arches 1929/1978
Canyonlands 1964
Capitol Reef 1937/1971
Zion 1909/1919
Bryce Canyon 1923/1928
Mesa Verde 1906
Grand Canyon
1908/1919 Petrified Forest 1906/1962
Rocky Mountain 1915
Carlsbad Caverns 1923/1930
Guadalupe Mountains 1966/1972
Big Bend 1935/1944
Theodore Roosevelt 1947/1978
Wind Cave 1903
Badlands 1929/1978
Voyageurs 1971/1975
Isle Royale 1931
Hot Springs 1832/1921
Mammoth Cave 1926
Great Smoky Mountains 1926
Shenandoah 1926/1935
Acadia 1916/1929
Biscayne 1968/1980
Everglades 1934Dry Tortugas
1935/1992
Death Valley 1933/1994
Joshua Tree 1936/1994
Saguaro 1933/1994
ATLANTIC OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN
C A N A D A
M E X I C O
National parks with date of initial protection and date of current designation
National forests
NATIONAL PARKS AND FORESTS During the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who considered conservation his most important domestic achievement, millions of acres of land were set aside for national parks and forests.
550 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
THE ELECTION OF 1908
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Taft Republican 7,678,908 321
Bryan Democrat 6,409,104 162
Debs Socialist 402,820 0
Chafi n Prohibition 252,821 0
Weighing close to three hundred pounds, Taft enjoyed conversation, golf and bridge, good food, and plenty of rest. Compared to the hardworking Roosevelt and Wilson, he was lazy. He was also honest, kindly, and amiable, and in his own way he knew how to get things done. Refl ective, he preferred the life of a judge, but his wife, Helen H. Taft , who enjoyed politics, prodded him toward the White House. When a Supreme Court appointment opened in 1906, Taft reluctantly turned it down. “Ma wants him to wait and be president,” his youngest son said.
Taft ’s years as president were not happy. Mrs. Taft ’s health soon collapsed, and as it turned out, Taft presided over a Republican party torn with tensions that Roosevelt had either brushed aside or concealed. The tariff, business regulation, and other issues split conservatives and progressives, and Taft oft en wavered or sided with the conservatives. Taft revered the past and distrusted change; although an ardent supporter of Roosevelt, he never had Roosevelt’s faith in the ability of government to impose reform and alter individual behavior. He named fi ve corporation attorneys to his cabinet, leaned more to business than to labor, and spoke of a desire to “clean out the unions.”
At that time and later, Taft ’s reputation suff ered by compari- son to the fl air of Roosevelt and the moral majesty of Woodrow Wilson. He deserved better. Taft was an honest and sincere presi- dent, who—sometimes fi rm, sometimes befuddled—faced a series of important and troublesome problems during his term of offi ce.
Party Insurgency Taft started his term with an attempt to curb the powerful Republican speaker of the House, Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois. Using the powers of his position, Cannon had been set- ting House procedures, appointing committees, and virtually dic- tating legislation. Straightforward and crusty, he oft en opposed reform. In March 1909, thirty Republican congressmen joined Taft ’s eff ort to curb Cannon’s power, and the president sensed success. But Cannon retaliated and, threatening to block all tariff bills, forced a compromise. Taft stopped the anti-Cannon cam- paign in return for Cannon’s pledge to help with tariff cuts.
Republicans were divided over the tariff , and there was a grow- ing party insurgency against high rates. Th e House quickly passed a bill providing for lower rates, but in the Senate, protectionists raised them. Senate leader Nelson W. Aldrich of Rhode Island introduced a revised bill that added more than eight hundred amendments to the rates approved in the House.
Angry, La Follette and other Republicans attacked the bill as the child of special interests. In speeches on the Senate fl oor they called themselves “progressives,” invoked Roosevelt’s name,
195 million. That year, he called a National Conservation Congress attended by forty-four governors and hundreds of experts. Roosevelt formed the National Commission on the Conservation of Natural Resources to look aft er waters, forests, lands, and minerals. With Pinchot as head, it drew up an inven- tory of the nation’s natural resources.
As 1908 approached, Roosevelt became increasingly strident in his demand for sweeping reforms. He attacked “malefactors of great wealth,” urged greater federal regulatory powers, criticized the conservatism of the federal courts, and called for laws pro- tecting factory workers. Many business leaders blamed him for a severe fi nancial panic in the autumn of 1907, and conservatives in Congress stiff ened their opposition. Divisions between Republican conservatives and progressives grew.
Immensely popular, Roosevelt prepared in 1908 to turn over the White House to William Howard Taft , his close friend and col- league. “Th e Roosevelt policies will not go out with the Roosevelt administration,” a party leader said. “If Taft weakens, he will anni- hilate himself.” As expected, Taft soundly defeated the Democratic standard-bearer William Jennings Bryan, who was making his third try for the presidency. Th e Republicans retained control of Congress. Taft prepared to move into the White House, ready and willing to carry on the Roosevelt legacy.
The Ordeal of William Howard Taft
Why was the presidency of William Howard Taft so diffi cult for him?
Th e Republican national convention that nominated Taft had not satisfi ed either Roosevelt or Taft . True, Taft won the presidential nomination as planned, but conservative Republicans beat back the attempts of progressive Republicans to infl uence the con- vention. Th ey named a conservative, James S. Sherman, for vice president and built a platform that refl ected conservative views on labor, the courts, and other issues. Taft wanted a pledge to lower the tariff but got only a promise of revision, which might lower— or raise—it. La Follette, Cummins, Jonathan P. Dolliver of Iowa, Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, and other progressive Republicans were openly disappointed.
Taking offi ce in 1909, Taft felt “just a bit like a fi sh out of water.” Th e son of a distinguished Ohio family and a graduate of Yale Law School, he became an Ohio judge, solicitor general of the United States, and a judge of the federal circuit court. In 1900, McKinley asked him to head the Philippine Commission, charged with the diffi cult and challenging task of forming a civil government in the Philippines. Later Taft was named the fi rst governor general of the Philippines. In 1904, Roosevelt appointed him secretary of war. In all these positions, Taft made his mark as a skillful administra- tor. He worked quietly behind the scenes, avoided controversy, and shared none of Roosevelt’s zest for politics. A good-natured man, Taft had personal charm and infectious humor. He fl ed from fi ghts rather than seeking them out, and he disliked political maneuver- ing, preferring instead quiet solitude. “I don’t like politics,” he said. “I don’t like the limelight.”
The Ordeal of William Howard Taft 551
a special Commerce Court to hear appeals from ICC decisions because most judges were traditionally conservative in outlook and usually rejected attempts to regulate railroad rates. Th ey also thought the railroads had been consulted too closely in draw- ing up the bill. Democratic and Republican progressives tried to amend the bill to strengthen it; Taft made support of it a test of party loyalty.
Th e Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 gave something to everyone. It gave the ICC power to set rates, stiff ened long- and short-haul regulations, and placed telephone and telegraph companies under ICC jurisdiction. Th ese provisions delighted progressives. Th e act also created a Commerce Court, pleasing conservatives. In a trade- off , conservative Republican Senate leaders pledged their support for a statehood bill for Arizona and New Mexico, which were both predicted to be Democratic. In return, enough Democratic sena- tors promised to vote for the Commerce Court provision to pass the bill. While pleased with the act, Taft and the Republican party lost further ground. In votes on key provisions of the Mann-Elkins Act, Taft raised the issue of party regularity, and progressive Republicans defi ed him.
Taft attempted to defeat the progressive Republicans in the 1910 elections. He helped form antiprogressive organizations, and he campaigned against progressive Republican candidates for the Senate. In California, he opposed Hiram Johnson, the progressive Republican champion; in Wisconsin, the home of La Follette, he sent Vice President James S. Sherman to take con- trol of the state convention. Progressive Republicans retaliated
and urged Taft to defeat the high-tariff proposal. Caught between protectionists and progressives, Taft wavered, then tried to c ompromise. In the end, he backed Aldrich. Th e Payne-Aldrich Act, passed in November 1909, called for higher rates than the original House bill, though it lowered them from the Dingley Tariff of 1897. An unpopular law, Payne-Aldrich helped discredit Taft and revealed the tensions in the Republican party.
Republican progressives and conservatives drift ed apart. Th in- skinned, Taft resented the persistent pinpricks of the progressives who criticized him for virtually everything he did. He tried to fi nd middle ground but leaned more and more toward the conserva- tives. During a nationwide speaking tour in the autumn of 1909, he praised Aldrich, scolded the low-tariff insurgents, and called the Payne-Aldrich Act “the best bill that the Republican party ever passed.” Traveling through the Midwest, he pointedly ignored La Follette, Cummins, and other progressive Republicans.
By early 1910, progressive Republicans in Congress no longer looked to Taft for leadership. As before, they challenged Cannon’s power, and Taft wavered. In an outcome embarrassing to the p resident, the progressives won, managing to curtail Cannon’s authority to dictate committee assignments and schedule debate. In progressive circles there was growing talk of a Roosevelt return to the White House.
The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair Th e conservation issue dealt another blow to relations between Roosevelt and President Taft . In 1909, Richard A. Ballinger, Taft ’s secretary of the interior, off ered for sale a million acres of public land that Pinchot, who had stayed on as Taft ’s chief forester, had withdrawn from sale. Pinchot, fearing that Ballinger would hurt conservation programs, protested and, seizing on a report that Ballinger had helped sell valuable Alaskan coal lands to a syn- dicate that included J. P. Morgan, asked Taft to intervene. Aft er investigating, Taft supported Ballinger on every count, although he asked Pinchot to remain in offi ce.
Pinchot refused to drop the matter. Behind the scenes, he pro- vided material for two anti-Ballinger magazine articles, and he wrote a critical public letter that Senator Dolliver of Iowa read to the Senate. Taft had had enough. He fi red the insubordinate Pinchot, an action which, though appropriate, again lost support for Taft . Newspapers followed the controversy for months, and muckrakers assailed the administration’s “surrender” to Morgan and other “despoilers of the national heritage.”
Th e Ballinger-Pinchot controversy obscured Taft ’s important contributions to conservation. He won from Congress the power to remove lands from sale, and he used it to conserve more land than Roosevelt did. Still, the controversy tarred Taft , and it upset his old friend Roosevelt. Pinchot hurried to Italy where Roosevelt was on tour; he talked again with Roosevelt within days of the ex-president’s arrival home in June 1910.
Taft Alienates the Progressives Interested in railroad regulation, Taft backed a bill in 1910 to empower the ICC to fi x maximum railroad rates. Progressive Republicans favored that plan but attacked Taft ’s suggestion of
According to this 1913 cartoon, the new income tax legislation distributed the tax burden more evenly, so that contributions from the wealthy eased some of the burden on the working class.
552 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
now, Roosevelt listened to anti-Taft Republicans who urged him to run for president in 1912. In February 1912, he announced, “My hat is in the ring.”
Differing Philosophies in the Election of 1912 Delighted Democrats looked on as Taft and Roosevelt fought for the Republican nomination. As the incumbent president, Taft controlled the party machinery, and when the Republican convention met in June 1912, he took the nomination. In early July, the Democrats met in Baltimore and, confi dent of victory for the fi rst time in two decades, struggled through forty-six ballots before fi nally nominat- ing Woodrow Wilson, the reform-minded governor of New Jersey.
A month later, some of the anti-Taft and progressive Republicans—now calling themselves the Progressive Party — whooped it up in Chicago. Roosevelt was there to give a stirring “Confession of Faith” and listen to the delegates sing:
Th ou wilt not cower in the dust, Roosevelt, O Roosevelt!
Th y gleaming sword shall never rust, Roosevelt, O Roosevelt!
by organizing a nationwide network of anti-Taft Progressive Republican Clubs.
The 1910 election results were a major setback for Taft and the Republicans—especially conservative Republicans. A key issue in the election, the high cost of living, gave an edge to the progressive wings in both major parties, lending support to their attack on the tariff and the trusts. In party primaries, progressive Republicans overwhelmed most Taft candidates, and in the general election, they tended to fare better than the conservatives, which increased progressive influence in the Republican Party.
For Republicans of all persuasions, however, it was a diffi cult election. Th e Democrats swept the urban-industrial states from New York to Illinois. New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and even Taft ’s Ohio elected Democratic governors. For the fi rst time since 1894, Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate. In all, they lost fi ft y-eight seats in the House and ten in the Senate. Disappointed, Taft called it “not only a landslide, but a tidal wave and holocaust all rolled into one general cataclysm.”
Despite the defeat, Taft pushed through several impor- tant measures before his term ended. With the help of the new Democratic House, he backed laws to regulate safety in mines and on railroads, create a Children’s Bureau in the federal government, establish employers’ liability for all work done on government contracts, and mandate an eight-hour workday for government workers.
In 1909, Congress initiated a constitu- tional amendment authorizing an income tax, which, along with woman suff rage, was one of the most signifi cant legislative measures of the twentieth century. Th e Sixteenth Amendment took eff ect early in 1913. A few months later, an important progressive goal was realized when the direct election of senators was ratifi ed as the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution.
An ardent supporter of competition, Taft relentlessly pressed a campaign against trusts. Th e Sherman Antitrust Act, he said in 1911, “is a good law that ought to be enforced, and I pro- pose to enforce it.” Th at year, the Supreme Court in cases against Standard Oil and American Tobacco established the “rule of reason,” which allowed the Court to determine whether a busi- ness presented “reasonable” restraint on trade. Taft thought the decisions gave the Court too much discretion, and he pushed ahead with the antitrust eff ort.
In October 1911, he sued U.S. Steel for its acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company in 1907. Roosevelt had approved the acquisition (see p. 547 ), and the suit seemed designed to impugn his action. Enraged, he attacked Taft , and Taft , for once, fought back. He accused Roosevelt of undermin- ing the conservative tradition in the country and began working to undercut the infl uence of the progressive Republicans. Increasingly
Bull Moose Campaign Speech Watch the Video
Theodore Roosevelt campaigns for President in 1912. Roosevelt champions national health insurance and tries to ride his progressive Bull Moose Party back to the White House. It’s an idea ahead of its time; health insurance is a rarity and medical fees are relatively low because doctors cannot do much for most patients. But medical breakthroughs are beginning to revolutionize hospitals and drive up costs.
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom 553
Roosevelt’s nomination at Chicago, and she and other women played a leading role in his campaign. Some labor leaders, who saw potential for union growth, and some business leaders, who saw relief from destructive competition and labor strife, sup- ported the new party.
Wilson, in contrast, set forth a program called the New Freedom that emphasized business competition and small government. A states’ rights Democrat, he wanted to rein in federal authority, using it only to sweep away special privilege, release indi- vidual energies, and restore competition. Drawing on the thinking of Louis D. Brandeis, the brilliant shaper of reform-minded law, he echoed the Progressive party’s social-justice objectives, while con- tinuing to attack Roosevelt’s planned state. For Wilson, the vital issue was not a planned economy but a free one. “Th e history of lib- erty is the history of the limitation of governmental power,” he said in October 1912. “If America is not to have free enterprise, then she can have freedom of no sort whatever.”
In the New Nationalism and New Freedom, the election of 1912 off ered competing philosophies of government. Both Roosevelt and Wilson saw the central problem of the American nation as economic growth and its eff ect on individuals and society. Both focused on the government’s relation to business, both believed in bureaucratic reform, and both wanted to use government to protect the ordinary citizen. But Roosevelt welcomed federal power, national planning, and business growth; Wilson distrusted them all.
On election day, Wilson won 6.3 million votes to 4.1 million for Roosevelt (who had recovered quickly from his wound) and 900,000 for Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate. Taft , the incumbent president, fi nished third with 3.5 million votes; he car- ried only Vermont and Utah for 8 electoral votes. Th e Democrats also won outright control of both houses.
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom
What were the central principles of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom?
If under Roosevelt social reform took on the excitement of a circus, “under Wilson it acquired the dedication of a sunrise service.” Born in Virginia in 1856 and raised in the South, Wilson was the son of a Presbyterian minister. As a young man, he wanted a career in pub- lic service, and he trained himself carefully in history and oratory. A moralist, he reached judgments easily. Once reached, almost nothing shook them. Opponents called him stubborn and smug. “He gives me the creeps,” a Maryland ward boss said. “Th e time I met him, he said something to me, and I didn’t know whether God or him was talking.”
After graduating from Princeton University and the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson found that practicing law bored him. Shift ing to history, from 1890 to 1902 he served as professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Princeton. In 1902, he became president of the university. Eight years later, he was governor of New Jersey, where he led a campaign to reform election procedures, abolish corrupt practices, and strengthen railroad regulation.
Wilson’s rise was rapid, and he knew relatively little about national issues and personalities. But he learned fast, and in some
Naming Roosevelt for president at its convention, the Progressive Party—soon known as the Bull Moose Party—set the stage for the fi rst important three-cornered presidential contest since 1860.
Taft was out of the running before the campaign even began. “I think I might as well give up so far as being a candidate is con- cerned,” he said in July. “Th ere are so many people in the country who don’t like me.” Taft stayed at home and made no speeches before the election. Roosevelt campaigned strenuously, even complet- ing one speech aft er being shot in the chest by an anti-third-term fanatic. “I have a message to deliver,” he said, “and will deliver it as long as there is life in my body.”
Roosevelt’s message involved a program he called the New Nationalism . An important phase in the shaping of twentieth- century American political thought, it demanded a national approach to the country’s aff airs and a strong president to deal with them. Th e New Nationalism called for effi ciency in govern- ment and society. It exalted the executive and the expert; urged social-justice reforms to protect workers, women, and children; and accepted “good” trusts. Th e New Nationalism encouraged large concentrations of labor and capital, serving the nation’s inter- ests under a forceful federal executive.
For the fi rst time in the history of a major political party, the Progressive campaign enlisted women in its organization. Jane Addams, the well-known settlement worker, seconded
Woodrow Wilson, from The New Freedom (1913)
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Election of 1912
Electoral Vote by State
PROGRESSIVE (BULL MOOSE)
Theodore Roosevelt
DEMOCRATIC Woodrow Wilson
Popular Vote
4,119,538
6,293,454435
88
REPUBLICAN William H. Taft 3,484,9808
MINOR PARTIES 1,135,697
15,033,939531
554 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
A compromise law, the act blended public and private control of the banking system. Private bankers owned the federal reserve banks but answered to the presidentially appointed Federal Reserve Board. Th e reserve banks were authorized to issue currency, and through the discount rate—the interest rate at which they loaned money to member banks—they could raise or lower the amount of money in circulation. Monetary aff airs no longer depended solely on the price of gold. Within a year, nearly half the nation’s banking resources were in the Federal Reserve System.
Th e Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) completed Wilson’s initial legislative program. Like previous antitrust measures, it refl ected confusion over how to discipline a growing economy without put- ting a brake on output. In part it was a response to the revelations of the Pujo Committee of the House, publicized by Brandeis in a disquieting series of articles, “Other People’s Money.” In its inves- tigation of Wall Street, the committee discovered a pyramid of money and power capped by the Morgan-Rockefeller empire that, through “interlocking directorates,” controlled companies worth $22 billion, more than one-tenth of the national wealth.
Th e Clayton Act outlawed such directorates and prohibited unfair trade practices. It forbade pricing policies that created monopoly, and it made corporate offi cers personally responsible for antitrust violations. Delighting Samuel Gompers and the labor movement, the act declared that unions were not conspiracies in restraint of trade, outlawed the use of injunctions in labor disputes unless necessary to protect property, and approved lawful strikes and picketing. To Gompers’s dismay, the courts continued to rule against union activity.
A related law established a powerful Federal Trade Commission to oversee business methods. Composed of five members, the commission could demand special and annual reports, investigate complaints, and order corporate compliance, subject to court review. At fi rst, Wilson opposed the commission concept, which was an approach more suitable to Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, but he changed his mind and, along with Brandeis, called it the cornerstone of his antitrust plan. To reassure busi- ness leaders, he appointed a number of conservatives to the new c ommission and to the Federal Reserve Board.
In November 1914, Wilson proudly announced the completion of his New Freedom program. Tariff , banking, and antitrust laws promised a brighter future, he said, and it was now “a time of heal- ing because a time of just dealing.” Many progressives were aghast. Th at Wilson could think society’s ills were so easily cured, the New Republic said, “casts suspicion either upon his own sincerity or upon his grasp of the realities of modern social and industrial life.”
Wilson Moves Toward the New Nationalism Distracted by the start of war in Europe, Wilson gave less atten- tion to domestic issues for more than a year. When he returned to concern with reform, he adopted more and more of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism and blended it with the New Freedom to set it off from his earlier policies.
One of Wilson’s problems was the Congress. To his dismay, the Republicans gained substantially in the 1914 elections. Reducing
ways the lack of experience served him well. He had few political debts to repay, and he brought fresh perspectives to older issues. Ideas intrigued Wilson; details bored him. Although he was outgo- ing at times, he could also be cold and aloof, and aides soon learned that he preferred loyalty and fl attery to candid criticism.
Prone to self-righteousness, Wilson oft en turned diff erences of opinion into bitter personal quarrels. Like Roosevelt, he believed in strong presidential leadership. A scholar of the party system, he cooperated closely with Democrats in Congress, and his legislative record placed him among the most eff ective presidents in terms of passing bills that he supported. Forbidding in individual conversa- tion, Wilson could move crowds with graceful oratory. Unlike Taft , and to a greater degree than Roosevelt, he could inspire.
His inaugural address was eloquent. “Th e Nation,” he said, “has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too oft en debauched and made an instrument of evil. Th e feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence.”
The New Freedom in Action On the day of his inauguration, Wilson called Congress into s pecial session to lower the tariff . When the session opened on April 8, 1913, Wilson himself was there, the fi rst president since John Adams in 1801 to appear personally before Congress. In forceful language, he urged Congress to reduce tariff rates.
As the bill moved through Congress, Wilson showed excep- tional skill. He worked closely with congressional leaders, and when lobbyists threatened the bill in the Senate, he appealed for popular support. Th e result was a triumph for Wilson and the Democratic party. Th e Underwood Tariff Act passed in 1913. It lowered tariff rates about 15 percent and removed duties from sugar, wool, and several other consumer goods.
To make up for lost revenue, the act also levied a modest graduated income tax, authorized under the just ratifi ed Sixteenth Amendment. Marking a signifi cant shift in the American tax struc- ture, it imposed a 1 percent tax on individuals and corporations earning more than $4,000 annually and an additional 1 percent tax on incomes more than $20,000. Above all, the act refl ected a new unity within the Democratic party, which had worked together to pass a diffi cult tariff law.
Wilson himself emerged as an able leader. “At a single stage,” a foreign editor said, “[he went] from the man of promise to the man of achievement.” Encouraged by his success, Wilson decided to keep Congress in session through the hot Washington summer. Now he focused on banking reform, and the result in December 1913 was the Federal Reserve Act , the most important domestic law of his administration.
Meant to provide the United States with a sound yet fl exible currency, the act established the country’s fi rst effi cient banking system since Andrew Jackson killed the second Bank of the United States in 1832. It created twelve regional banks, each to serve the banks of its district. Th e regional banks answered to a Federal Reserve Board, appointed by the president, which governed the nationwide system.
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom 555
he reversed his stand on farm loans and accepted a rural credits bill to establish farm-loan banks backed by federal funds. Th e Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 created a Federal Farm Loan Board to give farmers credit similar to the Federal Reserve’s ben- efi ts for trade and industry.
Wilson was already popular within the labor movement. Going beyond Roosevelt’s policies, which had sought a balance between business and labor, he defended union recognition and collective bargaining. In 1913, he appointed William B. Wilson, a respected leader of the United Mine Workers, as the fi rst head of the Labor Department, and he strengthened the department’s Division of Conciliation. In 1914, in Ludlow, Colorado, state militia and mine guards fi red machine guns into a tent colony of coal strikers, killing twenty-one men, women, and children. Outraged, Wilson stepped in and used federal troops to end the violence while negotiations to end the strike went on.
In August 1916, a threatened railroad strike again revealed Wilson’s sympathies with labor. Like Roosevelt, he invited the two sides to the White House, where he urged the railroad compa- nies to grant an eight-hour day and labor leaders to abandon the demand for overtime pay. Labor leaders accepted the proposal; railroad leaders did not. “I pray God to forgive you, I never can,” Wilson said as he left the room. Soon he signed the Adamson Act (1916) that imposed the eight-hour day on interstate rail- ways and established a federal commission to study the railroad problem. Ending the threat of a strike, the act marked a mile- stone in the expansion of the federal government’s authority to regulate industry.
With Wilson leading the way, the fl ow of reform legislation con- tinued until the election. Th e Federal Workmen’s Compensation Act established workers’ compensation for government employees. Th e Keating-Owen Act, the fi rst federal child labor law, prohibited the shipment in interstate commerce of products manufactured by children under the age of fourteen. It too expanded the author- ity of the federal government, though it was soon struck down by the Supreme Court. Th e Warehouse Act authorized licensed ware- houses to issue negotiable receipts for farm products deposited with them.
In September, Wilson signed the Tariff Commission Act cre- ating an expert commission to recommend tariff rates. Th e same month, the Revenue Act of 1916 boosted income taxes and furthered tax reform. Four thousand members of the National American Woman Suff rage Association cheered when Wilson fi nally came out in support of woman suff rage. Two weeks later he endorsed the eight-hour day for all the nation’s workers.
Th e 1916 presidential election was close, but Wilson won it on the issues of peace and progressivism. By the end of 1916, he and the Democratic party had enacted most of the important parts of Roosevelt’s Progressive party platform of 1912. To do it, Wilson abandoned portions of the New Freedom and accepted much of the New Nationalism, including greater federal power and com- missions governing trade and tariff s. In mixing the two programs, he blended some of the competing doctrines of the Progressive Era, established the primacy of the federal government, and foreshad- owed the pragmatic outlook of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of the 1930s.
the Democratic majority in the House, they swept key industrial and farm states. At the same time, a recession struck the economy, which had been hurt by the outbreak of the European war in August 1914. Some business leaders blamed the tariff and other New Freedom laws. On the defensive, Wilson soothed business sen- timent and invited bankers and industrialists to the White House. He allowed companies fearful of antitrust actions to seek advice from the Justice Department.
Preoccupied with such problems, Wilson blocked signifi cant action in Congress through most of 1915. He refused to support a bill providing minimum wages for women workers, sidetracked a child labor bill on the ground that it was unconstitutional, and opposed a bill to establish long-term credits for farmers. He also refused to endorse woman suff rage, arguing that the right to vote was a state matter, not a federal one.
Wilson’s record on race disappointed African Americans and many progressives. He had appealed to African American vot- ers during the 1912 election, and a number of African American leaders campaigned for him. Soon aft er the inauguration, Oswald Garrison Villard, a leader of the NAACP, proposed a National Race Commission to study the problem of race relations. Initially sympathetic, Wilson rejected the idea because he feared he might lose southern Democratic votes in Congress. A Virginian himself, he appointed many Southerners to high offi ce, and for the fi rst time since the Civil War, southern views on race dominated the nation’s capital.
At one of Wilson’s fi rst cabinet meetings, the postmaster gen- eral proposed the segregation of all African Americans in the federal service. No one dissented, including Wilson. Several g overnment bureaus promptly began to segregate workers in offi ces, shops, rest rooms, and restaurants. Employees who objected were fi red. African American leaders protested, and they were joined by pro- gressive leaders and clergymen. Surprised at the protest, Wilson backed quietly away from the policy, although he continued to insist that segregation benefi ted African Americans.
As the year 1916 began, Wilson made a dramatic switch in focus and again pushed for substantial reforms. Th e result was a virtual river of reform laws, which was signifi cant because it began the second, more national-minded phase of the New Freedom. With scarcely a glance over his shoulder, Wilson embraced impor- tant portions of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism campaign.
In part, he was motivated by the approaching presidential election. A minority president, Wilson owed his victory in 1912 to the split in the Republican party, now almost healed. Roosevelt was moving back into Republican ranks, and there were issues con- nected with the war in Europe that he might use against Wilson. Moreover, many progressives were voicing disappointment with Wilson’s limited reforms and his failure to support more advanced reform legislation on matters such as farm credits, child labor, and woman suff rage.
Moving quickly to patch up the problem, Wilson named Brandeis to the Supreme Court in January 1916. Popular among progressives, Brandeis was also the fi rst person of Jewish faith to serve on the Court. When conservatives in the Senate tried to defeat the nomination, Wilson stood fi rm and won, earn- ing further praise from progressives, Jews, and others. In May,
556
At the 1912 convention of the National Negro Business League, a group devoted to promoting African American businesses, a 45-year-old woman, Madam C. J. Walker, tried to catch the eye of Booker T. Washington, the League’s founder and head. But Washington ignored her until fi nally, her patience gone, she sprang to her feet and said, “Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face. I feel that I am in a busi- ness that is a credit to the woman- hood of our race.”
“I . . . came from the cotton fi elds of the South,” she went on. “I was pro- moted from there to the washtub; then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations . . . I have built my own factory on my own ground.”
Had Washington listened, Madam Walker had a remarkable story to tell. She was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, the fi rst in her sharecropper family born free. Orphaned at age seven, she married at fourteen to escape a cruel brother-in-law and fi nd a home. Her husband died when she was twenty, leaving her with a young daughter and a back already aching from years of picking cotton and doing laundry. Looking for a better life, she moved to St. Louis and then to Denver, working as a cook and laundress. In Denver, she married Charles J. Walker and began calling herself “Madam,” a title that lent prestige to a new business she had just begun.
For years, Walker had had trouble with her hair. It came out in bunches, partly because of the painful “wrap and twist” method that was popular
for styling African American hair. After trying various remedies, she devel- oped her own formula that she said came to her in a dream. “I tried it on my friends,” she said. “It helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it.” Filling jars of the mixture in the attic of her home, she sold it door to door.
Madam Walker began promoting her system of hair care in 1905. The Walker system called for women fi rst to wash their hair with Madam Walker’s Vegetable Shampoo, then apply her Wonderful Hair Grower, add a light oil called Glossine, and fi nally press and relax the hair with a wide-toothed “hot comb.”
As her business grew, Walker opened schools to teach her system, hired thousands of African American women as sales agents, and in 1910 moved her factory to Indianapolis for its central location. Knowing that white
stores would not stock her products, she relied on churches and women’s clubs, two key institutions of the black com- munity. Sales soon extended through- out the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean; Josephine Baker, the famous dancer, used Walker’s prod- ucts in Paris.
Dressed in white shirts and long black skirts, Walker agents became a familiar sight in African American neighborhoods everywhere. There were twenty thousand agents by 1916, most of them former maids, laundresses, and farm workers. “I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for more pleasant and prof- itable occupation,” she said.
As her income grew, Walker gave generously to various causes, including the YMCA, Mary McLeod Bethune’s Educational and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (now Bethune-Cookman
Madam C. J. Walker African American Business Pioneer
Feature Essay
Photographs of Madam C. J. Walker before and after using her hair care formula. Madam Walker was the first black woman millionaire and a pioneer in the development and manufacture of beauty products for African American women.
Complete the Assignment Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer on myhistorylab
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College), the Tuskegee Institute, and the NAACP. “Lady Bountiful,” she was called, and she encouraged her agents to contribute to charity, too. “I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others,” she said.
When the country entered World War I, Walker helped sell war bonds and joined the many black leaders who encouraged African Americans to aid in the war effort, hoping that contribu- tions to victory abroad would improve race relations at home. But she grew impatient as lynchings and other racial incidents continued. Angered by a race riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, she supported the Negro Silent Protest Parade, in which ten thousand black New Yorkers marched in silence down Fifth Avenue while another twenty thousand African Americans looked on.
Walker went to Washington to ask President Woodrow Wilson to support legislation making lynching a federal crime, but Wilson was too “busy” to see her. Refusing to give up, Walker donated $5,000 to the NAACP’s anti- lynching campaign and defended the rights of returning war veterans.
In 1918, Walker built Villa Lewaro, a mansion overlooking the Hudson River above New York City, near the estate of John D. Rockefeller. Walker called her home a symbol, to show “young Negroes what a lone woman accomplished and to inspire them to do big things.” Madam Walker died at the villa in 1919, aged fi fty-one. At her death, The Crisis , the journal of the NAACP, said she had “revolutionized the personal habits and appearance of millions of human beings.”
According to the Guinness Book of World Records , Madam Walker was the fi rst self-made woman millionaire. What she did, said Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the militant black leader, “made me take pride anew in Negro womanhood.” Mary McLeod Bethune, the black edu- cator, said, “She has gone, but her work still lives and shall live as an inspiration to not only her race but to the world.” Walker bequeathed her company to her daughter—a sking that a woman always serve at the head—but it began to fail during the Great Depression. Housed in the Walker Building, a National Historic Landmark, the Madam Walker Theatre Center today serves as a cultural center for the per- forming arts in downtown Indianapolis.
Even at the height of Madam Walker’s business, “hot combs” and hair straighteners were controversial. Some black leaders (Booker T. Washington among them) denounced them as attempts to imitate whites, but many African American women straightened their hair anyway. Walker herself argued that she had no interest in straightening hair, only in boosting confi dence and personal hygiene.
Walker’s business dwindled, but the debate over hair continued, carrying important economic as well as social dimensions. In recent years, African Americans spent three times more per person than other consumer groups on hair-care products, cosmetics, toiletries, and other grooming aids.
Famous African American sing- ers, actresses, and television person- alities, including Oprah Winfrey, relax their hair. Others object. Alice Walker,
an African American and one of the nation’s foremost authors, calls hair straightening a form of oppression, a “ceiling on the brain” that keeps people from fulfi llment. Hip-hop music rein- forces the message, taking hair, as one music magazine has said, “back to its African roots. From dreads, cornrows, and braids to twists, coils to ‘fros, hip hop is keeping it real . . . natural. For many, hair is more than just a style—it’s a statement.”
Madam Walker would have agreed. Hair care, she believed, involved more than hair; it meant pride, bet- ter health, and new opportunities for black women everywhere. When she returned to the Negro Business League convention in 1913, she talked about economic independence for African American women. “The girls and women of our race,” she said, “must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor . . . wring success out of a number of business opportu- nities that lie at their very doors. . . . I want to say to every Negro woman present, don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. . . . Get up and make them!”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why was Madam C.J. Walker’s business so successful?
2. Why did some black people oppose using her products?
3. How did Walker try to empower black women and win more rights for black Americans?
558 CHAPTER 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
newer group of professional, educated, public-minded citizens to help him. “I believe in a strong executive,” he said; “I believe in power.”
At fi rst, Wilson had diff erent ideas, wanting to dismantle much of Roosevelt’s governing apparatus. But driven by outside forces and changes in his own thinking, Wilson soon moved in directions similar to those Roosevelt had championed. Starting out to disperse power, he eventually consolidated it.
Th rough such movements, government at all levels accepted responsibility for the welfare of various elements in the social order. A reform-minded and bureaucratic society took shape, in which men and women, labor and capital, political parties and social classes competed for shares in the expansive framework of twentieth-century life. But there were limits to reform. As both Roosevelt and Wilson found, the new government agencies, understaff ed and underfi nanced, depended on the responsiveness of those they sought to regulate.
Soon there was a far darker cloud on the horizon. Th e spirit of progressivism rested on a belief in human potential, peace, and progress. Aft er Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, a century of peace began in western Europe, and as the decades passed, war seemed a dying institution. “It looks as though this were going to be the age of treaties rather than the age of wars,” an American said in 1912, “the century of reason rather than the century of force.” It was not to be. Two years later, the most devastating of wars broke out in Europe, and in 1917, Americans were fi ghting on the battlefi elds of France.
Conclusion: The Fruits of Progressivism
Th e election of 1916 showed how deeply progressivism had reached into American society. “We have in four years,” Wilson said that fall, “come very near to carrying out the platform of the Progressive Party as well as our own; for we are also progressives.”
In retrospect, however, 1916 also marked the beginning of progressivism’s decline. At most, the years of progressive reform lasted from the 1890s to 1921, and in large measure they were compressed into a single decade between 1906 and American entry into World War I in 1917. Many problems the progressives addressed but did not solve; and some important ones, such as race, they did not even tackle. Yet their regulatory commissions, direct primaries, city improvements, and child labor laws marked an era of important and measured reform.
Th e institution of the presidency expanded. From the White House radiated executive departments that guided a host of activi- ties. Independent commissions, operating within fl exible laws, supplemented executive authority.
Th ese developments owed a great deal to both Roosevelt and Wilson. To manage a complex society, Roosevelt developed a sim- ple formula: expert advice; growth-minded policies; a balancing of business, labor, and other interests; the use of publicity to gather support; and stern but oft en permissive oversight of the economy. Roosevelt strengthened the executive offi ce, and he called on the
STUDY RESOURCES 559
The Spirit of Progressivism
What were the six major characteristics of progressivism?
Progressivism sought cures for social and economic problems and was defined by six major characteristics: (1) a desire not to harm big business but to humanize and
regulate it; (2) optimism about human nature; (3) a willingness to inter- vene in people’s lives; (4) a tendency to stress the authority of the state and the government; (5) belief in the environment as a key to reform; and (6) a nationwide base. p. 537
Reform in the Cities and States
What methods did progressive reformers use to attack problems in the cities and states?
Progressive reformers turned increasingly to the govern- ment to carry out their measures. At the same time, ironi- cally, fewer people tended to vote. Reformers focused on
life in the growing cities. Robert M. La Follette of Wisconsin personified the movement. His focus was on improving factory safety, regulating the railroads, and adopting political reforms. p. 544
The Republican Roosevelt
How would you describe the personality and programs of Theodore Roosevelt?
Roosevelt attacked some trusts and, through the courts, broke up a railroad holding company. His intervention in the coal strike of 1902 reflected his active, energetic per-
sonality and represented an advance in presidential power. p. 546
Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height
What were the major measures of Theodore Roosevelt’s term from 1905 to 1909?
Winning easy election in 1904, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to improve railroad regulation, backed pure food and drug laws, and enlarged national parks. In all these
actions, he reflected the values of the progressive generation: a reliance on experts, a faith in government power to initiate reform, and a desire to tame big business. p. 548
n 6
Arches 1929/1978
Canyonlands 1964
Capitol Reef 1937/1971
n 9
Bryce Canyon 1923/1928
Mesa Verde 1906
Grand Canyon
1908/1919 Petrified Forest 1906/1962
Roc 191
Carlsbad Caverns 1923/1930
Saguaro 1933/1994
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Study Resources
T I M E L I N E
1894 National Municipal League formed to work for reform in cities
1900 Galveston, Texas, is fi rst city to try commission form of government
1901 Theodore Roosevelt becomes president; Robert M. La Follette elected reform governor of Wisconsin; Doctors reorganize the American Medical Association; Socialist party of America organized
1902 Roosevelt sues Northern Securities Company for violation of Antitrust Act; Coal miners in northeastern Pennsylvania strike; Maryland is fi rst state to pass workers’ compensation law; Oregon adopts the initiative and referendum
1904 Roosevelt elected president 1906 Hepburn Act strengthens Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC); Upton Sinclair attacks meatpack- ing industry in The Jungle ; Congress passes Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act
1908 Taft elected president; Supreme Court upholds Oregon law limiting working hours for women in Muller v. Oregon
1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act divides Republican party 1910 Mann-Elkins Act passed to regulate railroads; Taft
fi res Gifford Pinchot, head of U.S. Forest Service; Democrats sweep midterm elections
1912 Progressive party formed; nominates Roosevelt for president; Woodrow Wilson elected president
1913 Underwood Tariff Act lowers rates; Federal Reserve Act reforms U.S. banking system; Sixteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to collect taxes on incomes
1914 Clayton Act strengthens antitrust legislation 1916 Wilson wins reelection 1918 Supreme Court strikes down federal law limiting
child labor in Hammer v. Dagenhart
1920 Nineteenth Amendment gives women the right to vote
y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 23 From Roosevelt to Wilson in the Age of Progressivism on MyHistoryLab
560 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER REVIEW
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom
What were the central principles of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom?
Victorious in 1912, Wilson set out to put into effect the central principles of his New Freedom program, including tariff reform, an antitrust law, and the Federal Reserve Act,
a measure that still guides our economy today. By 1916, however, Wilson found greater value in Roosevelt’s New Nationalism, which had empha- sized government intervention and measures to protect women, labor, and other groups. p. 553
The Ordeal of William Howard Taft
Why was the presidency of William Howard Taft so diffi cult for him?
Roosevelt had left Taft a variety of difficult problems, including the tariff and a widening split between progres- sive and conservative Republicans. Taft increasingly alien-
ated the progressives and Roosevelt. In the election of 1912, Taft finished third behind Woodrow Wilson and Roosevelt. p. 550
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) Party This political party was formed by Theodore Roosevelt to advance progressive ideas and unseat President William Howard Taft in 1912. p. 537
National American Woman Suffrage Association Founded by Susan B. Anthony in 1890, this organization worked to secure women the right to vote. It stressed careful organization and peaceful lobbying. p. 541
Pragmatism An early twentieth-century doctrine, based n the ideas of William James. Pragmatists were impatient with the concept of truth as an abstract reality. They believed that truth should work for the individual and that people were not only shaped by their environment but also helped to shape it. If an idea worked, it became truth. p. 542
Hepburn Act A 1906 law that strengthened the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate the railroads. p. 548
Conservation President Theodore Roosevelt made this principle one of his administration’s top goals. Conservation in his view aimed at protect- ing the nation’s natural resources, but called for the wise use of them rather than locking them away. p. 549
New Nationalism President Theodore Roosevelt’s program calling for a national approach to the country’s affairs and a strong president to deal with them; efficiency in government and society; and protection of children, women, and workers. It accepted “good” trusts; and exalted the expert and the executive. It also encouraged large concentrations of capital and labor. p. 553
New Freedom President Woodrow Wilson’s program, which empha- sized business competition and small government. It sought to rein in fed- eral authority, release individual energy, and restore competition. It achieved many of the progressive social-justice objectives while pushing for a free economy rather than a planned one. p. 553
Underwood Tariff Act This 1913 law reduced tariff rates and levied a graduated income tax to make up for the lost revenue. p. 554
Federal Reserve Act This 1913 act created a central banking system, consisting of 12 regional banks governed by the Federal Reserve Board. It was an attempt to provide the United States with a sound yet flexible currency. p. 554
Clayton Antitrust Act This law outlawed interlocking directorates (in which the same people served as directors for several competing com- panies), forbade policies that created monopolies, and made corporate offi- cers responsible for antitrust violations. It also declared that unions were not conspiracies in restraint of trade and outlawed the use of injunctions in labor disputes unless they were necessary to protect property. p. 554
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. How might American history have changed if the Progressive Era had not occurred?
2. How did the major measures of Roosevelt’s second term continue the progressive approaches on his first term?
3. How did the differences of opinion during the Progressive Era affect the Taft administration?
4. How did the Wilson administration draw on the characteristics of the Progressive Era?
STUDY RESOURCES 561
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height
The Republican Roosevelt
The Spirit of Progressivism
Lincoln Steffens, from The Shame of the Cities p. 538
Report of the Vice Commission (1915) p. 540
Changing Lives of American Women, 1880–1930 p. 541
National Woman Suffrage Association, Mother’s Day Letter p. 542
Eugene V. Debs, from “The Outlook for Socialism in America” p. 543
Theodore Roosevelt, from The Strenuous Life (1900) p. 546
The Ordeal of William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 23 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Upton Sinclair, from The Jungle (1906) p. 548
Bull Moose Campaign Speech p. 552
Woodrow Wilson, from The New Feedom p. 553
Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer p. 556
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Contents and Learning Objectives
since the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914. Alfred G. Vanderbilt, the millionaire sportsman, was aboard; so were Charles Frohman, a famous New York theat- rical producer, and Elbert Hubbard, a popular writer who jested that a submarine attack might help sell his new book. While some passengers chose the Lusitania for speed, others liked the modern staterooms, more comfortable than the older ships of the competing
American Line. Six days later, the Lusitania , back on schedule,
reached the coast of Ireland. German U-boats were known to patrol the dangerous waters. When the war began, Great Britain imposed a naval blockade of Germany. In return, Germany in February 1915 declared the area around the British Isles a war zone; all enemy vessels, armed or unarmed, were at risk. Germany had only a handful of U-boats, but the submarines were a new and frightening weapon. On behalf of the United States, President Woodrow Wilson protested the German action, and on February 10, he warned Germany of its “strict accountability” for any American losses resulting from U-boat attacks.
Off Ireland, the passengers lounged on the deck of the Lusitania . As if it were peacetime, the ship sailed
The Sinking of the Lusitania On the morning of May 1, 1915, the German government took out the following important advertisement in the New York World as a warning to Americans and other voyagers setting sail for England:
NOTICE—
Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accor- dance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruc- tion in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
At 12:30 that afternoon, the British steamship Lusitania set sail from New York to Liverpool. Secretly, it carried a load of ammunition as well as passengers.
The steamer was two hours late in leaving, but it held several speed records and could easily make up the time. The passenger list of 1,257 was the largest
A NEW WORLD POWER PG. 564 What were the main events that showed the United States was becoming a world power?
FOREIGN POLICY UNDER WILSON PG. 566 What did Woodrow Wilson mean by “moral diplomacy”?
TOWARD WAR PG. 568 What were the reasons behind and dangers of Wilson’s neutrality policy?
OVER THERE PG. 572 How did the United States’ entry affect the course of World War I?
OVER HERE PG. 577 What programs and changes did World War I bring at home?
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES PG. 582 What mistakes did Wilson make in negotiating the Treaty of Versailles?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Measuring the Mind
The Nation at War 24
Chapter 24 The Nation at War Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
With the sinking of the Lusitania , the American people learned fi rsthand of the horrors of total war. President Wilson’s decision to protest the incident through diplomacy kept the United States out of the war—but only temporarily.
564 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
Wilson also hated war, but he found himself caught up in a worldwide crisis that demanded the best in American will and diplomacy. In the end, diplomacy failed, and in April 1917, the United States entered a war that changed the nation’s history. Building on several major trends in American foreign policy since the 1890s, the years around World War I fi rmly established the United States as a world power, confi rmed the country’s domi- nance in Latin America, and ended with a war with Germany and her allies that had far-reaching results, including establishing the United States as one of the world’s foremost economic powers.
A New World Power
What were the main events that showed the United States was becoming a world power?
As they had in the late nineteenth century, Americans after 1900 continued to pay relatively little attention to foreign aff airs. Newspapers and magazines ran stories every day about events abroad, but people paid closer attention to what was going on at home. Walter Lippmann, one of the twentieth century’s most outstanding political commentators, once said, “I cannot remem- ber taking any interest whatever in foreign aff airs until aft er the outbreak of the First World War.”
For Americans at the time, foreign policy was something to be left to the president in offi ce, an attitude the presidents themselves favored. Foreign aff airs became an arena in which they could exert a free hand largely unchallenged by Congress or the courts, and Roosevelt, Taft , and Wilson all took advantage of the opportunity to do so.
The foreign policy they pursued from 1901 to 1920 was aggressive and nationalistic. During these years, the United States intervened in Europe, the Far East, and Latin America. It domi- nated the Caribbean.
In 1898, the United States left the peace table possessing the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Holding distant possessions required a colonial policy; it also required a change in foreign policy, refl ecting an outward approach. From the Caribbean to the Pacifi c, policy makers paid attention to issues and countries they had earlier ignored. Like other nations in these years, the United States built a large navy, protected its colonial empire, and became increasingly involved in international aff airs.
The nation also became more and more involved in eco- nomic ventures abroad. Turning out goods from textiles to steel, mass production industries sold products overseas, and fi nan- ciers invested in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. During the years between the Spanish-American War and World War I, investments abroad rose from $445 million to $2.5 billion. While investments and trade never wholly dictated American foreign pol- icy, they fostered greater involvement in foreign lands.
“I Took the Canal Zone” Convinced the United States should take a more active interna- tional role, Th eodore Roosevelt spent his presidency preparing the nation for world power. Working with Secretary of War Elihu Root, he modernized the army, using lessons learned from the war with Spain. Roosevelt and Root established the Army War College,
straight ahead, with no zigzag maneuvers to throw off pursuit. But the submarine U-20 was there, and its commander, seeing a large ship, fired a single torpedo. Seconds after it hit, a boiler exploded and blew a hole in the Lusitania’s side. The ship listed immediately, hinder- ing the launching of lifeboats, and in eighteen minutes it sank. Nearly 1,200 people died, including 128 Americans. As the ship’s bow lifted and went under, the U-20 com- mander for the first time read the name: Lusitania .
The sinking, the worst since the Titanic went down with 1,500 people in 1912, horrified Americans. Theodore Roosevelt called it “an act of piracy” and demanded war. Most Americans, however, wanted to stay out of war; like Wilson, they hoped negotiations could solve the problem. “There is such a thing,” Wilson said a few days after the sinking, “as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force.”
In a series of diplomatic notes, Wilson demanded a change in German policy. The first Lusitania note (May 13, 1915) called on Germany to abandon unrestricted submarine warfare, disavow the sinking, and compensate for lost American lives. Germany sent an evasive reply, and Wilson drafted a second Lusitania note (June 9) insisting on specific pledges. Fearful the demand would lead to war, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned rather than sign the note. Wilson sent it anyway and followed with a third note (July 21)—almost an ultimatum—warning Germany that the United States would view similar sinkings as “deliberately unfriendly.”
Unbeknownst to Wilson, Germany had already ordered U-boat commanders not to sink passenger liners without warning. In August 1915, a U-boat mistakenly torpedoed the British liner Arabic , killing two Americans. Wilson pro- tested, and Germany, eager to keep the United States out of the war, backed down. The Arabic pledge (September 1) promised that U-boats would stop and warn liners, unless they tried to resist or escape. Germany also apologized for American deaths on the Arabic , and for the rest of 1915, U-boats hunted freighters, not passenger liners.
A lthough Wilson’s diplomacy had achieved his immediate goal, the Lusitania and Arabic crises contained the elements that led to war. Trade and travel tied the world together, and Americans no longer hid behind safe ocean barriers. New weapons, such as the submarine, strained old rules of interna- tional law. But while Americans sift ed the confl icting claims of Great Britain and Germany, they hoped for peace. A generation of progressives, inspired with confi dence in human progress, did not easily accept war.
A New World Power 565
The Hay-Herrán Convention (1903) gave the United States a 99-year lease, with option for renewal, on a canal zone six miles in width. In exchange, the United States agreed to pay Colombia a one-time fee of $10 million and an annual rental of $250,000.
To Roosevelt’s dismay, the Colombian Senate rejected the treaty, in part because it infringed on Colombian sovereignty. Th e Colombians also wanted more money. Calling them “jack rabbits” and “contemptible little creatures,” Roosevelt considered seizing Panama, then hinted he would welcome a Panamanian revolt from Colombia. In November 1903, the Panamanians took the hint, and Roosevelt moved quickly to support them. Sending the cruiser Nashville to prevent Colombian troops from putting down the revolt, he promptly recognized the new Republic of Panama.
Two weeks later, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with Panama granted the United States control of a canal zone ten miles wide across the isthmus of Panama. In return, the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and agreed to pay the same fees off ered Colombia. Using giant steam shovels and thousands of laborers from Jamaica, engineers cut their way across the isthmus. On August 15, 1914, the fi rst ocean steamer sailed through the completed canal, which had cost $375 million to build.
Roosevelt’s actions angered many Latin Americans. Trying to soothe feelings, Wilson agreed in 1914 to pay Colombia $25 million in cash, give it preferential treatment in using the canal, and express “sincere regret” over American actions. Roosevelt was furious, and his friends in the Senate blocked the agreement. Colombian–American relations remained strained until 1921, when the two countries signed a treaty that included Wilson’s fi rst two provisions but omitted the apology.
For his part, Roosevelt took great pride in the canal, calling it “by far the most important action in foreign aff airs.” Defending his methods, he said in 1911, “If I had followed traditional conserva- tive methods, I would have submitted a dignifi ed state paper of two hundred pages to Congress and the debate on it would have been going on yet; but I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on the Canal does also.”
The Roosevelt Corollary With interests in Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the canal, the United States developed a Caribbean policy to ensure its dominance in the region. It established protectorates over some countries and subsidized others to keep them dependent. When necessary, the United States purchased islands to keep them out of the hands of other powers, as in the case of the Danish West Indies (now the Virgin Islands), bought in 1917 to prevent the Germans from acquiring them.
From 1903 to 1920, the United States intervened oft en in Latin America to protect the canal, promote regional stability, and exclude foreign infl uence. One problem worrying American policy makers was the scale of Latin American debts to European powers. Many countries in the Western Hemisphere owed money to European governments and banks, and oft en these nations were poor, prone to revolution, and unable to pay. Th e situation invited European intervention. In 1902, Venezuela defaulted on debts; England, Germany, and Italy sent Venezuela an ultimatum and blockaded its ports. American pressure forced a settlement of the issue, but the general problem remained.
imposed stiff tests for the promotion of officers, and in 1903 created a general staff to oversee military planning and mobiliza- tion. Determined to end dependence on the British fl eet, Roosevelt doubled the strength of the navy during his term in offi ce.
Stretching his authority to the limits, Roosevelt took steps to consolidate the country’s new position in the Caribbean and Central America. European powers, which had long resisted American initiatives there, now accepted American supremacy. Preoccupied with problems in Europe and Africa, Great Britain agreed to U.S. plans for an Isthmian canal in Central America and withdrew much of its military force from the area.
Roosevelt wanted a canal to link the Atlantic and Pacifi c oceans across the isthmus connecting North and South America. When the war with Spain started in 1898, the battleship Oregon took seventy-one days to sail from San Francisco around Cape Horn to its battle station in the Atlantic; years later, naval experts still shuddered at the memory. Secretary of State John Hay negotiated with Britain the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901 that permitted the United States to construct and control an Isthmian canal, providing it would be free and open to ships of all nations.
Delighted, Roosevelt began selecting the route. One route, fi ft y miles long, wandered through the rough, swampy terrain of the Panama region of Colombia. A French company had recently tried and failed to dig a canal there. To the northwest, another route ran through mountainous Nicaragua. Although two hundred miles in length, it followed natural water ways, a factor that would make construction easier.
An Isthmian Canal Commission investigated both routes in 1899 and recommended the shorter route through Panama. Roosevelt backed the idea, and he authorized Hay to negotiate an agreement with the Colombian chargé d’aff aires, Th omas Herrán.
Gatun Lake
PACIFIC OCEAN
Caribbean Sea
Ch agr
es R .
Panama Canal
PACIFIC OCEAN
Caribbean Sea
Panamá
Balboa
Colón
Cristobal
PANAMA
PANAMA
Pedro Miguel Locks
Miraflores Locks
Gatun Locks
Panama Canal Zone
NICARAGUA
COSTA RICA
PANAMA
COLOMBIA
Panama Canal Zone
0 5 kilometers
0 5 miles
Panama Canal
Locks
Railroad
THE PANAMA CANAL ZONE Construction of the canal began in 1904, and despite landslides, steamy weather, and yellow fever, work was completed in 1914.
566 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
In later years, tensions again grew in the Far East. Anger mounted in Japan in 1913 when the California legislature prohib- ited Japanese residents from owning property in the state. At the start of World War I, Japan seized some German colonies, and in 1915 it issued the Twenty-One Demands insisting on authority over China. Coveting an Asian empire, Japan eyed American posses- sions in the Pacifi c.
Taft and Dollar Diplomacy In foreign as well as domestic aff airs, President Taft tried to continue Roosevelt’s policies. For secretary of state he chose Philander C. Knox, Roosevelt’s attorney general, and together they pursued a policy of “ dollar diplomacy ” to promote American fi nancial and business interests abroad. Th e policy had profi t-seeking motives, but it also aimed to substitute economic ties for military alliances with the idea of increasing American infl uence and bringing lasting peace.
Intent, like Roosevelt, on supremacy in the Caribbean, Taft worked to replace European loans with American ones, thereby reducing the danger of outside meddling. In 1909, he asked American bankers to assume the Honduran debt in order to fend off English bondholders. A year later, he persuaded them to take over the assets of the National Bank of Haiti, and in 1911 he helped Nicaragua secure a large loan in return for American control of Nicaragua’s National Bank. When Nicaraguans revolted against the agreement, Taft sent marines to put them down. A marine detach- ment was stationed in the country intermittently until the 1930s.
In the Far East, Knox worked closely with Willard Straight, an agent of American bankers, who argued that dollar diplomacy was the fi nancial arm of the Open Door. Straight had close ties to Edward H. Harriman, the railroad magnate, who wanted to build railroads in Manchuria in northern China. Roosevelt had tacitly promised Japan he would keep American investors out of the area, and Knox’s plan reversed the policy. Trying to organize an interna- tional syndicate to loan China money to purchase the Manchurian railroads, Knox approached England, Japan, and Russia. In January 1910, all three turned him down.
Th e outcome was a blow to American policy and prestige in Asia. Russia and Japan found reasons to cooperate with each other and staked out spheres of infl uence in violation of the Open Door. Japan resented Taft ’s initiatives in Manchuria, and China’s distrust of the United States deepened. Instead of cultivating friendship, as Roosevelt had envisioned, Taft had started an intense rivalry with Japan for commercial advantage in China.
Foreign Policy Under Wilson
What did Woodrow Wilson mean by “moral diplomacy”?
When he took offi ce in 1913, Woodrow Wilson knew little about foreign policy. As a Princeton professor, he had studied Congress and the presidency, but his books made only passing reference to foreign issues, and during the 1912 campaign he mentioned foreign policy only when it aff ected domestic concerns. “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefl y with
Roosevelt was concerned about it, and in 1904, when the Dominican Republic defaulted on its debts, he was ready with a major announcement. Known as the Roosevelt Corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, the policy warned Latin American nations to keep their aff airs in order or face American intervention.
Applying the new policy immediately, Roosevelt in 1905 took charge of the Dominican Republic’s revenue system. American offi cials collected customs and saw to the payment of debt. Within two years, Roosevelt also established protectorates in Cuba and Panama. In 1912, the U.S. Senate added the Lodge Corollary, which warned foreign corporations not to purchase harbors and other sites of military signifi cance in Latin America. Continued by Taft , Wilson, and other presidents, the Roosevelt Corollary guided American policy in Latin America until the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy replaced it.
Ventures in the Far East The Open Door policy toward China and possession of the Philippine Islands shaped American actions in the Far East. Congress refused to arm the Philippines, and the islands were vulnerable to the growing power of Japan. Roosevelt wanted to balance Russian and Japanese power, and he was not unhappy at fi rst when war broke out between them in 1904. As Japan won victory aft er victory, however, Roosevelt grew worried. Acting on a request from Japan, he off ered to mediate the confl ict, and both Russia and Japan accepted: Russia because it was losing, and Japan because it was fi nancially drained.
In August 1905, Roosevelt convened a peace conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Th e conference ended the war, but Japan emerged as the dominant force in the Far East. Adjusting policy, Roosevelt sent Secretary of War Taft to Tokyo to negotiate the Taft-Katsura Agreement (1905), which recognized Japan’s dominance over Korea in return for its promise not to invade the Philippines. Giving Japan a free hand in Korea violated the Open Door policy, but Roosevelt argued that he had little choice.
Relations between Japan and the United States were again strained in 1906 when the San Francisco school board ordered the segregation of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean children into a separate Oriental school. A year later, the California legislature considered a bill limiting the immigration of Japanese laborers into the state. As resentment mounted in Japan, Roosevelt intervened to persuade the school board to rescind its order, while at the same time he obtained from Japan the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” (1907) promising to stop the fl ow of Japanese agricultural laborers into the United States.
In case Japan viewed his policy as a sign of weakness, Roosevelt sent sixteen battleships of the new American fl eet around the world, including a stop in Tokyo in October 1908. Critics at home pre- dicted dire consequences, and European naval experts felt certain Japan would attack the fl eet. Instead, the Japanese welcomed it, even posting ads to sell the sailors Mitsukoshi washing powder to “rid yourselves of the seven blemishes on the way home.” For the moment, Japanese-American relations improved, and in 1908 the two nations, in an exchange of diplomatic notes, reached the com- prehensive Root-Takahira Agreement in which they promised to maintain the status quo in the Pacifi c, uphold the Open Door, and support Chinese independence.
Foreign Policy Under Wilson 567
investigation ended, usually within one year. Th e idea drew on the era’s confi dence in commissions and the sense that human reason, given time for emotions to fade, could settle problems without war. Bryan negotiated cooling-off treaties with thirty nations, including Great Britain, France, and Italy. Germany refused to sign one. Based on a generous idea, the treaties were naive, and they did not work.
Wilson and Bryan promised a dramatic new approach in Latin America, concerned not with the “pursuit of material interest” but with “human rights” and “national integrity.” Signaling the change, in 1913 they negotiated the treaty with Colombia apologizing for Roosevelt’s Panamanian policy. Yet in the end, Wilson, distracted by other problems and impatient with the results of his idealistic approach, continued the Roosevelt–Taft policies. He defended the Monroe Doctrine, gave unspoken support to the Roosevelt Corollary, and intervened in Latin America more than had either Roosevelt or Taft .
In 1914, Wilson negotiated a treaty with Nicaragua to grant the United States exclusive rights to build a canal and lease sites for naval bases. Th is treaty made Nicaragua an American satel- lite. In 1915, he sent marines into Haiti to quell a revolution; they stayed until 1934. In 1916, he occupied the Dominican Republic, establishing a protectorate that lasted until 1924. By 1917, American troops “protected” Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba—four nations that were U.S. dependencies in all but name.
foreign aff airs,” he said to a friend before becoming president. And so it was. During his two terms, Wilson faced crisis aft er crisis in foreign aff airs, including the outbreak of World War I.
Th e idealistic Wilson believed in a principled, ethical world in which militarism, colonialism, and war were brought under control. He emphasized moral purposes over material interests and said during one crisis, “Th e force of America is the force of moral principle.” Rejecting the policy of dollar diplomacy, Wilson initially chose a course of moral diplomacy , designed to bring right to the world, preserve peace, and extend to other peoples the blessings of democracy.
Conducting Moral Diplomacy William Jennings Bryan, whom Wilson appointed as secre- tary of state, was also an amateur in foreign relations. Trusting in the common people, Bryan was skeptical of experts in the State Department. To key posts abroad he appointed “ deserving Democrats,” believing they could do the job as well as career diplomats. Bryan was a fervent pacifist, and like Wilson, he believed in the American duty to “help” less favored nations.
In 1913 and 1914, he embarked on an idealistic campaign to negotiate treaties of arbitration throughout the world. Known as “cooling-off ” treaties, they provided for submitting all inter- national disputes to permanent commissions of investigation. Neither party could declare war or increase armaments until the
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11. U.S. naval base leased, 1903
12. U.S. occupation, 1915–1934
13. U.S. occupation, 1916–1924
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1. Villa’s raid, March 9, 1916
2. Pershing’s expedition, 1916–1917
3. Skirmish with Carranza’s troops, April 12, 1916
4. American sailors arrested, April 1914
5. Seized by U.S. Navy, April 1914
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7. U.S. occupation, 1912–1925, 1927–1933
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ACTIVITIES OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE CARIBBEAN, 1898–1930 During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the United States policed the Caribbean, claiming the right to take action when it judged Latin American countries were doing a bad job of running their affairs.
568 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
and other lines. With little forethought, he interfered in the aff airs of another country, and in doing so he revealed the themes— moralism, combined with pragmatic self-interest and a desire for peace—that also shaped his policies in Europe.
Toward War
What were the reasons behind and dangers of Wilson’s neutrality policy?
In May 1914, Colonel Edward M. House, Wilson’s close friend and adviser, sailed to Europe on a fact-fi nding mission. Tensions there were rising. “Th e situation is extraordinary,” he reported to Wilson. “It is jingoism [extreme nationalism] run stark mad. . . . Th ere is too much hatred, too many jealousies.”
Large armies dominated the European continent. A web of alliances entangled nations, maximizing the risk that a local confl ict could produce a wider war. In Germany, the ambitious Kaiser Wilhelm II coveted a world empire to match those of Britain and France. Germany had military treaties with Turkey and Austria-Hungary, a sprawling central European country of many
Troubles Across the Border Wilson’s moral diplomacy encountered one of its greatest chal- lenges across the border in Mexico. Porfi rio Dáaz, president of Mexico for thirty-seven years, was overthrown in 1911. Dáaz had encouraged foreign investments in Mexican mines, railroads, oil, and land; by 1913, Americans had invested more than $1 billion. But most Mexicans remained poor and uneducated, and Dáaz’s overthrow led to a decade of violence that tested Wilson’s policies and brought the United States close to war with Mexico.
A liberal reformer, Francisco I. Madero, followed Dáaz as president in 1911. But Madero could not keep order in the troubled country, and opponents of his reforms undermined him. With sup- port from wealthy landowners, the army, and the Catholic Church, General Victoriano Huerta ousted Madero in 1913, threw him in jail, and arranged his murder. Most European nations immediately recognized Huerta, but Wilson, calling him a “butcher,” refused to do so. Instead, he announced a new policy toward revolution- ary regimes in Latin America. To win American recognition, they must not only exercise power but refl ect “a just government based upon law, not upon arbitrary or irregular force.”
On that basis, Wilson withheld recognition from Huerta and maneuvered to oust him. Early in 1914, he stationed naval units off Mexico’s ports to cut off arms shipments to the Huerta regime. Th e action produced trouble. On April 9, 1914, several American sailors, who had gone ashore in Tampico to purchase supplies, were arrested. Th ey were promptly released, but the American admiral demanded an apology and a 21-gun salute to the American fl ag. Huerta agreed—if the Americans also saluted the Mexican fl ag.
Wilson asked Congress for authority to use military force if needed; then, just as Congress acted, he learned that a German ship was landing arms at Veracruz on Mexico’s eastern coast. With Wilson’s approval, American warships shelled the harbor, and marines went ashore. Against heavy resistance, they took the city. Outraged, Mexicans of all factions denounced the invasion, and for a time the two countries hovered on the edge of war.
Retreating hastily, Wilson explained that he desired only to help Mexico. Argentina, Brazil, and Chile came to his aid with an off er to mediate the dispute, and tensions eased. In July 1914, weakened by an armed rebellion, Huerta resigned. Wilson recognized the new government, headed by Venustiano Carranza, an associate of Madero. Early in 1916, Francisco (“Pancho”) Villa, one of Carranza’s generals, revolted. Hoping to goad the United States into an action that would help him seize power, he raided border towns, injuring American civilians. In January, he removed seventeen Americans from a train in Mexico and murdered them. Two months later he invaded Columbus, New Mexico, killing sixteen Americans and burning the town.
Stationing militia along the border, Wilson ordered General John J. Pershing on a punitive expedition to seize Villa in Mexico. Pershing led six thousand troops deep into Mexican territory. At fi rst, Carranza agreed to the drive, but as the Americans pushed farther and farther into his country, he changed his mind. As the wily Villa eluded Pershing, Carranza protested bitterly, and Wilson, worried about events in Europe, ordered Pershing home.
Wilson’s policy had laudable goals; he wanted to help the Mexicans achieve political and agrarian reform. But his motives and methods were condescending. Wilson tried to impose grad- ual progressive reform on a society sharply divided along class
Watch the Video
Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914) was born in Graz, Austria. As the heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, his assassination on June 28, 1914 sparked the First World War.
The Outbreak of World War I
Toward War 569
At the deepest level, a majority in the country, bound by common language and institutions, sympathized with the Allies and blamed Germany for the war. Like Wilson, many Americans admired English literature, customs, and law; they remembered Lafayette and the times when France had helped the United States in its early years. Germany, on the other hand, seemed arrogant and militaristic. When the war began, it invaded Belgium to strike at France and violated a treaty that the German chancellor called “just a scrap of paper.” Many Americans resented the violation, and they liked it even less when German troops executed Belgian civilians who resisted.
Both sides sought to sway American opinion, and fi erce pro- paganda campaigns flourished. The German Literary Defense Committee distributed more than a million pamphlets during the fi rst year of the war. German propaganda tended to emphasize strength and will; Allied propaganda called on historical ties and took advantage of German atrocities, both real and alleged. In the end, the propaganda probably made little diff erence. Ties of heritage and the course of the war, not propaganda, decided the American position. At the outset, no matter which side they cheered for, Americans of all persuasions preferred simply to remain at peace.
Freedom of the Seas Th e demands of trade tested American neutrality and confronted Wilson with difficult choices. Under international law, neutral countries were permitted to trade in nonmilitary goods with all belligerent countries. But Great Britain controlled the seas, and it intended to cut off shipments of war materials to the Central Powers.
As soon as war broke out, Britain blockaded German ports and limited the goods Americans could sell to Germany. American ships had to carry cargoes to neutral ports from which, aft er examination, they could be carried to Germany. As time passed, Britain stepped up the economic sanctions by forbidding the shipment to Germany of all foodstuff s and most raw materials, seizing and censoring mail, and “blacklisting” American fi rms that dealt directly with the Central Powers. British ships oft en stopped American ships and confi scated cargoes.
Again and again, Wilson protested against such infringe- ments on neutral rights. Sometimes Britain complied, sometimes not, and Wilson oft en grew angry. But needing American sup- port and supplies, Britain pursued a careful strategy to disrupt German–American trade without disrupting Anglo–American relations. Aft er forbidding cotton shipments to Germany in 1915, it agreed to buy enough cotton to make up for the losses. When necessary, it also promised to reimburse American busi- nesses aft er the war’s end.
Other than the German U-boats, there were no constraints on trade with the Allies, and a fl ood of Allied war orders fueled the American economy. England and France bought huge amounts of arms, grain, cotton, and clothing. To fi nance the purchases, the Allies turned to American bankers for loans. By 1917, loans to Allied governments exceeded $2 billion; loans to Germany came to only $27 million.
In a development that infl uenced Wilson’s policy, the war pro- duced the greatest economic boom in the nation’s history. Loans and trade drew the United States ever closer to the Allied cause. And even though Wilson oft en protested English maritime policy, the
nationalities. Linked in another alliance, England, France, and Russia agreed to aid each other in case of attack.
On June 28, 1914, a Bosnian assassin linked to Serbia mur- dered Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Within weeks, Germany, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers) were at war with England, France, and Russia (the Allied Powers). Americans were shocked at the events. “I had a feeling that the end of things had come,” one of Wilson’s cabinet members said. “I stopped in my tracks, dazed and horror- stricken.” Wilson immediately proclaimed neutrality and asked Americans to remain “impartial in thought as well as in action.”
Th e war, he said, was one “with which we have nothing to do, whose causes cannot touch us.” In private, Wilson was stunned. A man who loved peace, he had long admired the British parlia- mentary system, and he respected the leaders of the British Liberal party, who supported social programs akin to his own. “Everything I love most in the world,” he said, “is at stake.”
The Neutrality Policy In general, Americans accepted neutrality. Th ey saw no need to enter the confl ict, especially aft er the Allies in September 1914 halted the fi rst German drive toward Paris. America resisted involvement in other countries’ problems, with the notable exception of Latin America, and had a tradition of freedom from foreign entanglements.
Many of the nation’s large number of progressives saw addi- tional reasons to resist. War, they thought, violated the very spirit of progressive reform. Why demand safer factories in which people could work and then kill them by the millions in war? To many progressives, moreover, England represented international fi nance, an institution they detested. Germany, on the other hand, had pioneered some of their favorite social reforms.
Furthermore, progressives and others tended to put the blame for war on the greed of “munition manufacturers, stockbrokers, and bond dealers” eager for wartime profi ts. “Do you want to know the cause of the war?” Henry Ford, who was no progressive, asked. “It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars.” Above all, progres- sives were sure that war would end reform. It consumed money and attention; it infl amed emotions.
As a result, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Frederic C. Howe, Lillian Wald, and other progressives fought to keep the United States out of war. In late 1915, they formed the American Union Against Militarism, to throw, they said, “a monkey wrench into the machinery” of war. Th roughout 1915 and 1916, La Follette’s Magazine , the voice of the progressive leader, railed against the Morgans, Rockefellers, Du Ponts, and “the thirty-eight corpora- tions most benefi ted by war orders.”
Th e war’s outbreak also tugged at the emotions of millions of immigrant Americans. Th ose who came from the British Isles tended to support the Allies; those from Ireland tended to support Germany, hoping Britain’s wartime troubles might free their home- land from British domination. Th e large population of German Americans oft en sympathized with the Central Powers. But many people thought that, in a nation of immigrants, a policy of neutral- ity would be wise from a domestic point of view as well as from the viewpoint of foreign policy.
570 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
sent an ultimatum to Germany, stating that unless the Germans immediately called off attacks on cargo and passenger ships, the United States would sever relations.
The kaiser, convinced he did not yet have enough subma- rines to risk war, yielded. In the Sussex pledge of May 4, 1916, he agreed to Wilson’s demands and promised to shoot on sight only ships of the enemy’s navy. But he attached the condition that the United States compel the Allies to end their blockade and comply with international law. Wilson accepted the pledge but turned down the condition.
Th e Sussex pledge marked the beginning of a short period of friendly relations between Germany and the United States. Th e agreement applied not only to passenger liners but to all merchant ships, belligerent or not. Th ere was one problem: Wilson had taken such a strong position that if Germany renewed submarine warfare on merchant shipping, war was likely. Most Americans, however, viewed the agreement as a diplomatic stroke for peace by Wilson, and the issues of peace and preparedness dominated the presiden- tial election of 1916.
“He Kept Us Out of War” Th e “preparedness” issue pitted antiwar groups against those who wanted to prepare for war. Bellicose as always, Teddy Roosevelt led the preparedness campaign. He called Wilson “yellow” for not pressing Germany harder and scoff ed at the popular song “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” which he
protests involved American goods and money, whereas Germany’s submarine policy threatened American lives.
The U-Boat Threat A relatively new weapon, the Unterseeboot , or submarine, strained the guidelines of international law. Traditional law required a sub- marine to surface, warn the target to stop, send a boarding party to check papers and cargo, then allow time for passengers and crew to board lifeboats before sinking the vessel. Flimsy and slow, submarines could ill aff ord to surface while the prey radioed for help. If they did surface, they might be rammed or blown up by deck guns.
When Germany announced the submarine campaign in February 1915, Wilson protested sharply, calling the sinking of merchant ships without checking cargo “a wanton act.” Th e Germans promised not to sink American ships—an agreement that lasted until 1917—and thereaft er the issue became the right of Americans to sail on the ships of belligerent nations. In March, an American citizen aboard the British liner Falaba perished when the ship was torpedoed off the Irish coast. Bryan urged Wilson to forbid Americans to travel in the war zones, but the president, determined to stand by the principles of international law, refused.
Wilson reacted more harshly in May and August of 1915 when U-boats sank the Lusitania and the Arabic . He demanded that the Germans protect passenger vessels and pay for American losses. At odds with Wilson’s understand- ing of neutrality, Bryan resigned as secretary of state and was replaced by Robert Lansing, a lawyer and counselor in the State Department. Lansing brought a very different spirit to the job. He favored the Allies and believed that democracy was threatened in a world dominated by Germany. He urged strong stands against German viola- tions of American neutrality.
I n F e b r u a r y 1 9 1 6 , Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare against all armed ships. Lansing pro- tested and told Germany it would be held strictly account- able for American losses. A month later, a U-boat tor- pedoed the unarmed French channel steamer Sussex with- out warning, injuring sev- eral Americans. Arguing that the sinking violated the Arabic pledge, Lansing urged Wilson to break relations with Germany. Wilson rejected the advice, but on April 18 he
Read the Document Adolf K. G. E. von Spiegel, U-boat 202 (1919)
Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel commanded a German U-boat during World War I. He published his memoirs in 1919.
Toward War 571
and progressive vote. Women—who were then allowed to vote in presidential elections in twelve states—also voted heavily for Wilson.
The Final Months of Peace Just before election day, Great Britain further limited neutral trade, and there were reports from Germany of a renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare. Fresh from his victory, Wilson redoubled his eff orts for peace. Aware that time was running out, he hoped to start negotiations to end the bloodshed and create a peaceful postwar world.
In December 1916, he sent messages to both sides asking them to state their war aims. Should they do so, he pledged the “whole force” of the United States to end the war. The Allies refused, although they promised privately to negotiate if the German terms were reasonable. Th e Germans replied evasively and in January 1917 revealed their real objectives. Close to forcing Russia out of the war, Germany sensed victory and wanted territory in eastern Europe, Africa, Belgium, and France.
On January 22, in an eloquent speech before the Senate, Wilson called for a “peace without victory.” Outlining his own ambitious aims, he urged respect for all nations, freedom of the seas, arms limitations, and a League of Nations to keep the peace. “Only a peace between equals can last, only a peace the very prin- ciple of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefi t.” Th e speech made a great impression on many Europeans, but it was too late. Th e Germans had decided a few weeks before
compared to singing “I Didn’t Raise My Girl to Be a Mother.” Defending the military’s state of readiness, Wilson refused to be stampeded just because “some amongst us are nervous and excited.” In fact, when government revenue dropped in 1915, he cut military appropriations.
Wilson’s position was attacked from both sides as prepared- ness advocates charged cowardice, while pacifi sts denounced any attempt at military readiness. Th e diffi culty of his situation, plus the growing U-boat crisis, soon changed Wilson’s mind. In mid-1915, he asked the War Department to increase mili- tary planning, and he quietly notifi ed congressional leaders of a switch in policy. Later that year, Wilson approved large increases in the army and navy, a move that upset many peace-minded progressives. In January 1916, he toured the country to pro- mote preparedness, and in June, with an American fl ag draped over his shoulder, he marched in a giant preparedness parade in Washington.
For their standard-bearer in the presidential election of 1916, the Republicans nominated Charles Evans Hughes, a moderate justice of the Supreme Court. Hughes seemed to have all the qualifi cations for victory. A former reform governor of New York, he could lure back the Roosevelt progressives while at the same time appealing to the Republican conservatives. To woo the Roosevelt wing, Hughes called for a tougher line against Germany, thus allowing the Democrats to label him the “war” candidate. Even so, Roosevelt and others considered Hughes a “bearded iceberg,” a dull campaigner who wavered on important issues.
The Democrats renominated Wilson in a convention marked by spontaneous demonstrations for peace. Determined to outdo Republican patriotism, Wilson himself had ordered the convention’s theme to be “Americanism.” Th e delegates were to sing “America” and “Th e Star-Spangled Banner” and to cheer any mention of America and the fl ag. Th ey did it all dutifully but then broke into spontaneous applause at the mention of Wilson’s careful diplomatic moves. As the keynote speaker reviewed them, the delegates shouted, “What did we do? What did we do?” Th e speaker shouted back, “We didn’t go to war! We didn’t go to war!”
Picking up the theme, perhaps with reservations, Wilson said in October, “I am not expecting this country to get into war.” Th e campaign slogan “He kept us out of war” was repeated again and again, and just before the election, the Democrats took full-page ads in leading newspapers:
You Are Working—Not Fighting! Alive and Happy—Not Cannon Fodder! Wilson and Peace with Honor? or Hughes with Roosevelt and War?
On election night, Hughes had swept most of the East, and Wilson retired at 10 p.m. thinking he had lost. During the night, the results came in from California, New Mexico, and North Dakota; all supported Wilson—California by a mere 3773 votes. Wilson won with 9.1 million votes against 8.5 million for Hughes. Holding the Democratic South, he carried key states in the Midwest and West and took large portions of the labor
President Wilson’s War Message to Congress (1917)
Read the Document
Wilson’s re-election in 1916 owed a great deal to the campaign slogan, “He kept us out of war.” But the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany in 1917 signifi cantly changed the international situation. Several U.S. merchant ships were sunk in March by German U-boats. That April, Wilson called Congress into extraordinary session to ask for a declaration of war against Germany.
572 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
merchant ships armed on his own authority. Th ree days later, he announced the arming, and on March 13, the navy instructed all vessels to fi re on submarines. Between March 12 and March 21, U-boats sank fi ve American ships, and Wilson decided to wait no longer.
He called Congress into special session and at 8:30 in the evening on April 2, 1917, asked for a declaration of war. “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fi ght for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democ- racy, . . . for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.”
Congressmen broke into applause and crowded the aisles to congratulate Wilson. “My message today was a message of death for our young men,” he said aft erward. “How strange it seems to applaud that.”
Pacifists in Congress continued to hold out, and for four days they managed to postpone action. Finally, on April 6, the declaration of war passed, with fi ft y members of the House and six senators voting against it. Even then, the country was divided over entry into the war.
Over There
How did the United States’ entry affect the course of World War I?
With a burst of patriotism, the United States entered a war its new allies were in danger of losing. Th at same month, the Germans sank 881,000 tons of Allied shipping, the highest amount for any one month during the war. Th ere were mutinies in the French army; a costly British drive in Flanders stalled. In November, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, and, led by V. I. Lenin, they soon signed a separate peace treaty with Germany, freeing German troops to fi ght in the West. German and Austrian forces routed the Italian army on the southern fl ank, and the Allies braced for a spring 1918 off ensive.
Mobilization Th e United States was not prepared for war. Some Americans hoped the declaration of war itself might daunt the Germans; there were those who thought that naval escorts of Allied ship- ping would be enough. Others hoped money and arms supplied to the Allies would be suffi cient to produce victory without sending troops.
Bypassing older generals, Wilson named John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing, leader of the Mexican campaign, to head the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Pershing inherited an army unready for war. In April 1917, it had 200,000 offi cers and men, equipped with 300,000 old rifl es, 1500 machine guns, 55 out-of-date air- planes, and 2 fi eld radio sets. Its most recent battle experience had been chasing Pancho Villa around northern Mexico. It had not caught him.
American Entry into World War I
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In 1914, Europe explodes into war, and Woodrow Wilson has to make a decision about what America is going to do. And his decision is to ask the American public to remain neutral in word as well as deed.
to unleash the submarines and gamble on a quick end to the war. Even as Wilson spoke, U-boats were in the Atlantic west of Ireland, preparing to attack.
On January 31, the German ambassador in Washington informed Lansing that beginning February 1, U-boats would sink on sight all ships—passenger or merchant, neutral or belligerent, armed or unarmed—in the waters around England and France. Staking everything on a last eff ort, the Germans cal- culated that if they could sink 600,000 tons of shipping a month, they could defeat England in six months. As he had pledged in 1916, Wilson broke off relations with Germany, although he still hoped for peace.
On February 25, the British government privately gave Wilson a telegram intercepted from Arthur Zimmermann, the German foreign minister, to the German ambassador in Mexico. A day later, Wilson asked Congress for authority to arm merchant ships to deter U-boat attacks. When La Follette and a handful of others threatened to fi libuster, Wilson divulged the contents of the Zimmermann telegram. It proposed an alliance with Mexico in case of war with the United States, off ering fi nancial support and recovery of Mexico’s “lost territory” in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona.
Spurred by a wave of public indignation toward the Germans, the House passed Wilson’s measure, but La Follette and others still blocked action in the Senate. On March 9, 1917, Wilson ordered
Over There 573
American Declaration of War (April 1917)
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EUROPEAN ALLIANCES AND BATTLEFRONTS, 1914–1917 Allied forces suffered early defeats on the eastern front (Tannenberg) and in the Dardanelles (Gallipoli). In 1917, the Allies were routed on the southern flank (Caporetto); the western front then became the critical theater of the war.
“Over There” Listen to the Audio File
574
Measuring the Mind Feature Essay
“average,” or “inferior.” From the “superior” category, they selected men for offi cer training, a helpful winnow- ing process in an army that expanded quickly from nine thousand offi cers to two hundred thousand. They then distributed the remaining “superior,” “average,” and “inferior” men among each military unit. In all, the examiners tested 1.7 million men—by far the larg- est testing program in human history to that time. To some degree, the tests served their purpose, but they also seemed to raise questions about the education and mental ability of many American men.
For one thing, there was the extent of illiteracy—nearly one-quarter of the draft-age men in 1918 could neither read nor write. (One-third, inciden- tally, were physically unfi t for service.) There was also the limited schooling
it and thus distinguish between the child’s “mental age” and chronological age. In 1912, William Stein, a German psychologist, introduced the “intelli- gence quotient,” found by dividing a person’s mental age by the chronologi- cal age. In 1916, Lewis M. Terman of Stanford University improved Binet’s test, and the term IQ became part of the American vocabulary.
Employers and educators, how- ever, remained skeptical of measuring intelligence. Thus, when the United States entered World War I, psycholo- gists at once saw the opportunity to overcome the doubts and prove their theories. Huge numbers of men needed to be recruited, classifi ed, and assigned to units quickly. Why not use the new mental tests? APA leaders formed twelve committees, including one on the Psychological Examination of Recruits, to explore the military uses of psychology.
Preferring to issue promotions on the basis of seniority, the army resisted the “mental meddlers,” but the APA persuaded the War Department to use the tests. In early 1918, psychological examiners were posted at all training camps to administer the Alpha Test to literates and the Beta Test (with instruc- tions given in pantomime) to illiterates and recruits who did not understand English. At the start of each Alpha Test, the examiners put the men at ease by explaining that the army was “not look- ing for crazy people. The aim is to help fi nd out what we are best fi tted to do.” On the Beta Test, which was made up largely of pictures, the examiners were reminded that Beta men “sometimes sulk and refuse to work.”
On the basis of the tests, the exam- iners classifi ed recruits as “superior,”
From 1870 to 1920, scientists and physicians explored new ideas about the mind. In Europe, the Viennese psychia- trist Sigmund Freud studied the unconscious, which, he thought, shaped human behavior. Russia’s Ivan Pavlov tested the conditioned refl ex in mental activity (Pavlov’s dogs), and in the United States William James, the psychologist and philosopher, examined emo- tions and linked psychology to everyday problems.
As one way of understanding the mind, psychologists studied the mental processes of a great many minds, a task to which the relatively new science of statistics lent a hand. Testing large samples of subjects, they developed the concept of the “nor- mal” and “average,” helpful boundar- ies used to determine an individual’s place in the population. In 1890, the psychologist James McKeen Cattell tested one hundred fi rst-year students at the University of Pennsylvania for vision and hearing, sensitivity to pain, reaction time, and memory. He called these examinations by a new name— mental tests—and the idea spread. In 1895, the American Psychological Association (APA) set up a special committee to promote the nationwide collection of mental statistics.
Work was under way on both sides of the ocean, and in 1905 Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, two French psy- chologists, devised a metric intelli- gence scale. Seizing on the idea that intelligence increases with age until maturity, they tested children to fi nd an average level of performance for different ages. Once they had deter- mined the average, they could com- pare any child’s test performance to
Complete the Assignment Measuring the Mind on myhistorylab
Questions from one portion of the U.S. Army Intelligence Alpha Test.
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War II, SAT tests were widely used. In 1947, the CEEB became part of a new Educational Testing Service that spurred an educational revolution by making “intelligence” instead of social or economic standing the main crite- rion of college admissions.
Before long, intelligence testing— the measuring of minds—touched every aspect of American life. Shaping lives and careers, it pushed some peo- ple forward and held others back, in the military, industry, the civil service, and higher education. “Intelligence tests . . . ,” an expert said in 1971, “have more and more become soci- ety’s instrument for the selection of human resources.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What arguments did advocates and opponents of intelligence testing use to support and attack these tests?
2. Why were the intelligence tests the army administered during World War I so problematic?
3. What were the positive and negative results of intelligence tests?
The APA examiners claimed they measured “native intelligence,” but questions about Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” or the paintings of Rosa Bonheur, a French artist of the mid-nineteenth century, required answers that native intelligence alone could not supply. When blacks and whites scored comparably on the early Beta Test, the examiners decided that something must be wrong with the test, so they changed the questions until the scores showed the expected racial differences. Most of those tak- ing the Beta Test had never taken a written test before; many had probably never held a pencil.
Still skeptical, the army discon- tinued the tests the moment the war ended, but what the army rejected, the nation adopted. Businesses, government, and above all, educational institutions found more and more uses for intelligence testing. In 1926, the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) administered the fi rst Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), designed to test “intelligence” and predict performance in college. In 1935, it established scor- ing ranges from 200 to 800, with the average score set at 500. During World
of the recruits, most of whom had left school between the fi fth and seventh grades. More alarming, according to the test results, 47 percent of the white draftees and 89 percent of the black draftees had a “mental age” of twelve years or under, which classi- fi ed them as “feebleminded.” Did that mean half or more of the American population was feebleminded?
The tests also turned up racial and national distinctions—or so some of the examiners concluded. Men of “native” backgrounds and “old” immi- grant stock (from northern Europe and the British Isles) tended to score well and fell in the “superior” category; “new” immigrants (from central and southern Europe) tended to score less well and were ranked as “inferior.” Among Russian, Polish, and Italian draftees, more than half were classi- fi ed as “inferior.” Such results came as no surprise to those who had long doubted the intelligence of the “new” immigrants, nor did the fact that 80 percent of the African American men taking the Alpha Test scored in the “inferior” range.
Some observers, however, won- dered what the tests really measured.
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Although some in Congress preferred a voluntary army of the kind that had fought in the Spanish-American War, Wilson turned to conscription, which he believed was both effi cient and demo- cratic. In May 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act , providing for the registration of all men between the ages of 21 and 30 (later changed to 18 and 45). Early in June, 9.5 million men reg- istered for the draft . By the end of the war, the act had registered 24.2 million men, about 2.8 million of whom were inducted into the army. Defending the draft , Wilson said it was not really a draft at all, but a “selection from a nation which has volunteered in mass.” Newly devised intelligence tests became part of the selection pro- cess. (See the Feature Essay, “Measuring the Mind ,” pp. 574 – 575 .)
Th e draft included black men as well as white, and four African American regiments were among the fi rst sent into action. Despite their contributions, however, no black soldiers were allowed to march in the victory celebrations that eventually took place in Paris. Nor were they included in a French mural of the diff erent races in the war, even though black servicemen from English and French colonies were represented.
War in the Trenches World War I may have been the most terrible war of all time, more terrible even than World War II and its vast devastation. After the early offensives, the European armies dug themselves into trenches only hundreds of yards apart in places. Artillery, poison gas, hand grenades, and a new weapon—rapid-fi re machine guns—kept them pinned down.
Even in moments of respite, the mud, rats, cold, fear, and disease took a heavy toll. Deafening bom- bardments shook the earth, and there was a high incidence of shell shock. From time to time, troops went “over the top” of the trenches in an eff ort to break through the enemy’s lines, but the costs were enormous. Th e German off ensive at Verdun in 1916 killed six hun- dred thousand men; the British lost twenty thousand on the fi rst day of an off ensive on the Somme.
The first American soldiers reached France in June 1917. By March of the following year, three hundred thousand Americans were there, and by war’s end, two mil- lion men had crossed the Atlantic. No troop ships were sunk, a credit to the British and American navies. In the summer of 1917, Admiral William S. Sims, a bril- liant American strategist, pushed through a convoy plan that used Allied destroyers to escort mer-
chant vessels across the ocean. At fi rst resisted by English captains who liked to sail alone, the plan soon cut shipping losses in half.
As expected, on March 21, 1918, the Germans launched a mas- sive assault in western Europe. Troops from the Russian front added to the force, and by May they had driven Allied forces back to the Marne River, just fi ft y miles from Paris. Th ere, the Americans saw their fi rst action. Th e American forces blocked the Germans at the town of Château-Th ierry and four weeks later forced them out of Belleau Wood, a crucial stronghold. On July 15, the Germans threw every- thing into a last drive for Paris, but they were halted at the Marne, and in three days of battle they were fi nished. “On the 18th,” the German chancellor said, “even the most optimistic among us knew that all was lost. Th e history of the world was played out in three days.”
With the German drive stalled, the Allies counterattacked along the entire front. On September 12, 1918, a half million Americans and a smaller contingent of French drove the Germans from the St. Mihiel salient, twelve miles south of Verdun. Two weeks later, 896,000 American soldiers attacked between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. Focusing their eff orts on a main
Second Battle of the Marne July 18–Aug. 6, 1918
Belleau Wood June 6–25, 1918
St.-Mihiel Sept. 12–16, 1918
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Château-Thierry May 31–June 4, 1918
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Armistice Line Nov. 11, 1918Stabilized Front
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THE WESTERN FRONT: U.S. PARTICIPATION, 1918 The turning point of the war came in July, when the German advance was halted at the Marne. The “Yanks,” now a fighting force, were thrown into the breach. They played a dramatic role in stemming the tide and mounting the counteroffensives that ended the war.
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distribution. An idealist who knew how to sway public opinion, he also recognized the need to enlist American emotions. To him, the war for people’s minds, the “conquest of their convictions,” was as vital as events on the battlefi eld.
The Conquest of Convictions A week aft er war was declared, Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and asked George Creel, an out- spoken progressive journalist, to head it. Creel hired progres- sives such as Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker and recruited thousands of people in the arts, advertising, and fi lm industries to publicize the war. He worked out a system of voluntary cen- sorship with the press, plastered walls with colorful posters, and issued more than seventy-fi ve million pamphlets.
Creel also enlisted seventy-fi ve thousand “four-minute men” to give quick speeches at public gatherings and places of entertain- ment on “Why We Are Fighting” and “Th e Meaning of America.” At fi rst, they were instructed to emphasize facts and stay away from emotions, particularly hatred, but by the beginning of 1918, the instructions shift ed; the Germans were to be depicted as blood- thirsty Huns bent on world conquest. Exploiting a new medium,
railroad supply line for the German army in the West, American troops broke through in early November, cut the line, and drove the Germans back along the whole front.
Th e German high command knew that the war was lost. On October 6, 1918, Germany appealed to Wilson for an armistice, and by the end of the month, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary were out of the war. At 4 a.m. on November 11, Germany signed the armistice. Th e AEF lost 48,909 dead and 230,000 wounded; losses to disease brought the total of dead to more than 112,000.
Th e American contribution, although small in comparison to the enormous costs to European nations, was vital. Fresh, enthusi- astic American troops raised Allied morale; they helped turn the tide at a crucial point in the war.
Over Here
What programs and changes did World War I bring at home?
Victory at the front depended on economic and emotional mobilization at home. Consolidating federal authority, Wilson moved quickly in 1917 and 1918 to organize war production and
Anti-German sentiment spread in America during World War I, escalating dramatically after the United States entered the war in April 1917. A wave of verbal and physical attacks on German Americans was accompanied by a campaign to repress German culture. In this photograph from 1917, a group of children stand in front of an anti-German sign posted in the Edison Park community of Chicago, Illinois. As the sign suggests, some Americans questioned the loyalty of their German American neighbors.
Read the Document Espionage Act (1917)
578 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1921, ill and facing imprison- ment, “Big Bill” Haywood, one of the IWW’s best known members, fl ed to the Soviet Union, where he died a few years later.
Wilson’s postmaster general banned from the mails more than a dozen socialist publications, including the Appeal to Reason , which went to more than half a million people weekly. In 1918, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist party leader, delivered a speech denouncing cap- italism and the war. He was convicted for violation of the Espionage Act and spent the war in a penitentiary in Atlanta. Nominated as the Socialist party candidate in the presidential election of 1920, Debs—prisoner 9653—won nearly a million votes, but the Socialist movement never fully recovered from the repression of the war.
In fostering hostility toward anything that smacked of dis- sent, the war also gave rise to the great “Red Scare” that began in 1919. Pleased at fi rst with the Russian revolution, Americans in general turned quickly against it, especially aft er Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control late in 1917. Th e Americans feared Lenin’s anticapitalist program, and they denounced his deci- sion in early 1918 to make peace with Germany because it freed German troops to fi ght in France.
Once again, Wilson himself played a prominent role in the development of anti-Bolshevik sentiment. In the summer of 1918, he sent fi ft een thousand American troops into the Soviet Union, where they joined other Allied soldiers. Ostensibly, the troops were there to protect Allied supplies from the Germans and to rescue a large number of Czechs who wanted to return home to fi ght Germany. But the underlying reason for their pres- ence was that Wilson and others hoped to bring down the fl edg- ling Bolshevik government, fearful it would spread revolution around the world.
Besides sending troops, Wilson joined in an economic block- ade of Russia, sent weapons to anti-Bolshevik insurgents, and refused to recognize Lenin’s government. He also blocked Russian participation in the peace conference that ended the war. American troops remained in Russia until April 1920, and on the whole, American willingness to interfere soured Russian–American rela- tions for decades to come.
A Bureaucratic War Quick, eff ective action was needed to win the war. To meet the need, Wilson and Congress set up an array of new federal agen- cies, nearly fi ve thousand in all. Staff ed largely by businessmen, the agencies drew on funds and powers of a hitherto unknown scope. At night, the secretary of the treasury sat in bed, a yellow pad on his knees, adding up the money needed to fi nance the war. “Th e noughts attached to the many millions were so bois- terous and prolifi c,” he later said, “that, at times, they would run clear over the edge of the paper.”
By the time the war was over, the “noughts” had boisterously added up to $32 billion in direct war expense—in an era when the entire federal budget rarely exceeded $1 billion. To raise the money, the administration sold about $23 billion in “Liberty Bonds,” and, using the new Sixteenth Amendment, boosted taxes on corpora- tions and personal incomes. Th e taxes brought in another $10 bil- lion to help pay for the war.
At first, Wilson tried to organize the wartime economy along decentralized lines, almost in the fashion of his early New
the CPI promoted fi lms such as Th e Prussian Cur and Th e Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin .
Helped along by the propaganda campaign, anti-German sentiment spread rapidly. Many schools stopped off ering instruc- tion in the German language—California’s state education board called it a language “of autocracy, brutality, and hatred.” Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage”; saloonkeepers removed pretzels from the bar. Orchestral works by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms vanished from some symphonic programs, and the New York Philharmonic agreed not to perform the music of living German composers. Government agents harassed Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony, imprisoned him for more than a year, and then, aft er the war ended, deported him. German Americans and antiwar fi gures were badgered, beaten, and in some cases killed.
Vigilantism, sparked oft en by superpatriotism of a ruthless sort, fl ourished. Frequently, it focused on radical antiwar fi gures such as Frank Little, an offi cial of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Butte, Montana, who was taken from his boardinghouse in August 1917, tied to the rear of an automobile, and dragged through the streets until his kneecaps were scraped off . Little was then hanged from a railroad trestle. In April 1918, a Missouri mob seized Robert Prager, a young man whose sole crime was being born in Germany. Th ey bound him with an American fl ag, paraded him through town, and then lynched him. A jury acquitted the mob’s members—who wore red, white, and blue ribbons to court—as one juror shouted, “Well, I guess nobody can say we aren’t loyal now.”
Rather than curbing the repression, Wilson encouraged it. “Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way,” he told peace advocates soon aft er the war began. At his request, Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917, which imposed sentences of up to twenty years in prison for persons found guilty of aiding the enemy, obstructing recruitment of sol- diers, or encouraging disloyalty. It allowed the postmaster general to remove from the mails materials that incited treason or insur- rection. Th e Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of 1917 authorized the government to censor the foreign language press.
In 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act , imposing harsh penalties on anyone using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government, fl ag, or armed forces uniforms. In all, more than fi ft een hundred persons were arrested under the new laws. People indicted or imprisoned included a Californian who laughed at rookies drilling at an army camp, a woman who greeted a Red Cross solicitor in a “hostile” way, and an editor who printed this sentence: “We must make the world safe for democ- racy even if we have to ‘bean’ the Goddess of Liberty to do it.”
Th e sedition laws clearly went beyond any clear or present danger. Th ere were, to be sure, German spies in the country, Germans who wanted to encourage strikes in American arms factories. Moreover, the U.S. government and other national leaders were painfully aware of how divided Americans had been about entering the war. Th ey set out to promote unity—by force, if necessary—in order to convince Germany that the nation was united behind the war.
But none of these matters warranted a nationwide program of repression. Conservatives took advantage of wartime feelings to try to stamp out American socialists, who in fact were vulnerable because, unlike their European counterparts, they continued to oppose the war even aft er their country had entered it. Using the sedition laws, conservatives harried the Socialist party and another favorite target,
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the number of stops on elevators. Working closely with business, Baruch for a time acted as the dictator of the American economy.
Herbert Hoover, the hero of a campaign to feed starving Belgians, headed a new Food Administration , and he set out with custom- ary energy to supply food to the armies overseas. Appealing to the “spirit of self-sacrifice,” Hoover convinced people to save food by observing “meat- less” and “wheatless” days. He fixed prices to boost production, bought and distributed wheat, and encouraged people to plant “victory gardens” behind homes, churches, and schools. He sent a half million campaigners door to door to get housewives to sign cards pledging their cooperation. One householder— Wilson—set an example by grazing sheep on the White House lawn.
At another new agency, the Fuel Administration, Harry A. Garfi eld, the president of Williams College, introduced daylight saving time, rationed coal and oil, and imposed gasless days when motorists could not drive. To save coal, he shut down nonessential facto- ries one day a week, and in January 1918, he closed all factories east of the Mississippi for four days to divert coal to munitions ships stranded in New York harbor. A fourth agency, the Railroad Administration, dictated rail traffi c over nearly four hundred thousand miles of track—standardizing rates, limiting passenger travel, and speeding arms shipments. Th e War Shipping Board coordinated shipping, the Emergency Fleet Corporation supervised shipbuilding, and the War Trade Board oversaw foreign trade.
As never before, the government intervened in American life. When strikes threatened the telephone and telegraph companies, the government simply seized and ran them. Businessmen, paid a nominal dollar a year, fl ocked to Washington to run the new agencies, and the partnership between government and business grew closer. As government expanded, business expanded as well, responding to wartime contracts. Industries such as steel, aluminum, and cig- arettes boomed, and corporate profi ts increased three- fold between 1914 and 1919.
Labor in the War Th e war also brought organized labor into the partnership with government, although the results were more limited than in the business-government alliance. Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, served on Wilson’s Council of National Defense, an advi- sory group formed to unify business, labor, and government. Gompers hoped to trade labor peace for labor advances, and he formed a War Committee on Labor to enlist workers’ support for the war. With the blessing of the Wilson administration, mem- bership in the AFL and other unions grew from about 2.7 million in 1916 to more than 4 million in 1919.
Hoping to encourage production and avoid strikes, Wilson adopted many of the objectives of the social-justice reformers.
Freedom thinking. But that proved unworkable, and he moved instead to a series of highly centralized planning boards, each with broad authority over a specifi c area of the economy. Th ere were boards to control virtually every aspect of transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing. Th ough only a few of them were as eff ective as Wilson had hoped, they did coordinate the war eff ort to some degree.
Th e War Industries Board (WIB) , one of the most power- ful of the new agencies, oversaw the production of all American factories. Headed by millionaire Bernard M. Baruch, a Wall Street broker and speculator, it determined priorities, allocated raw materials, and fi xed prices. It told manufacturers what they could and could not make. Th e WIB set the output of steel and regulated
View the Closer Look Mobilizing the Home Front
Many Americans identifi ed with the Allies. British propaganda bolstered those sympathies with exaggerated stories of German atrocities.
580 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
their expectations; some became more militant, and confl ict grew between them and male co-workers. To set standards for female employment, a Women’s Bureau was established in the Department of Labor, but the government’s infl uence varied. In the federally run railroad industry, women oft en made wages equal to those of men; in the federally run telephone industry, they did not.
Looking for more people to fi ll wartime jobs, corporations found another major source among southern blacks. Beginning in 1916, northern labor agents traveled across the South, promising jobs, high wages, and free transportation. Soon the word spread, and the movement northward became a fl ood. Between 1916 and 1918, more than 450,000 African Americans left the Old South for the booming industrial cities of St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. In the decade before 1920, Detroit’s black population grew by more than 600 percent, Cleveland’s by more than 300 percent, and Chicago’s by 150 percent.
Most of the newcomers were young, unmarried, and skilled or semiskilled. Th e men found jobs in factories, railroad yards, steel mills, packinghouses, and coal mines; black women worked in textile factories, department stores, and restaurants. In their new homes, African Americans found greater racial freedom but also diff erent living conditions. If the South was oft en hostile, the North could be impersonal and lonely. Accustomed to the pace of the farm—ruled by the seasons and the sun—those blacks who were able to enter the industrial sector now worked for hourly wages in
He supported an eight-hour day in war-related industries and improved wages and working conditions. In May 1918, he named Felix Frankfurter, a brilliant young law professor, to head a new War Labor Board (WLB). Th e agency standardized wages and hours, and at Wilson’s direction, it protected the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively. Although it did not forbid strikes, it used various tactics to discourage them. It enforced deci- sions in well-publicized cases; when the Smith and Wesson arms factory in Massachusetts and the Western Union telegraph com- pany disobeyed the WLB’s union rules, the agency took them over.
Th e WLB also ordered that women be paid equal wages for equal work in war industries. In 1914, the fl ow of European immi- grants suddenly stopped because of the war, and in 1917, the draft began to take large numbers of American men. Th e result was a labor shortage, fi lled by women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans. One million women worked in war industries. Some of them took jobs previously held by men, but for the most part, they moved from one set of “women’s jobs” into another. From the beginning of the war to the end, the number of women in the work- force held steady at about eight million, and unlike the experience in World War II, large numbers of housewives did not leave the home for machine shops and arms plants.
Still, there were some new opportunities and in some cases higher pay. In food, airplane, and electrical plants, women made up one-fi ft h or more of the workforce. As their wages increased, so did
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AFRICAN AMERICAN MIGRATION NORTHWARD, 1910–1920 The massive migration of African Americans from the South to the North during World War I changed the dynamics of race relations in the United States.
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For we have been with thee in No Man’s Land, Th rough lake of fi re and down to Hell itself; And now we ask of thee our liberty, Our freedom in the land of Stars and Stripes.
“Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” composed in 1900, became known as the “Negro National Anthem.” Parents bought black dolls for their children, and W. E. B. Du Bois spoke of a “New Negro,” proud and more militant: “We return. We return from fi ghting. We return fi ghting.”
Eager for cheap labor, farmers and ranchers in the Southwest persuaded the federal government to relax immigration restric- tions, and between 1917 and 1920, more than 100,000 Mexicans migrated into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Th e Mexican American population grew from 385,000 in 1910 to 740,000 in 1920. Tens of thousands of Mexican Americans moved to Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, and other northern cities to take wartime jobs. Oft en scorned and insecure, they created urban barrios similar to the Chinatowns and Little Italys around them.
Like most wars, World War I aff ected patterns at home as much as abroad. Business profi ts grew, factories expanded, and industries
mass production industries, where time clocks and line supervi- sors dictated the daily routine.
Racial tensions increased, resulting in part from grow- ing competition for housing and jobs. In mid-1917, a race war in East St. Louis, Illinois, killed nine whites and about forty blacks. In July 1919, the month President Wilson returned from the peace conference in Paris, a race riot in Washington, D.C., killed six people. Riots in Chicago that month killed thirty- eight—fi ft een whites and twenty-three blacks—and there were later outbreaks in New York City and Omaha. Lynch mobs killed forty-eight blacks in 1917, sixty-three in 1918, and seventy-eight in 1919. Ten of the victims in 1919 were war veterans, several still in uniform.
Blacks were more and more inclined to fi ght back. Two hun- dred thousand blacks served in France—forty-two thousand as combat troops. Returning home, they expected better treat- ment. “I’m glad I went,” a black veteran said. “I done my part, and I’m going to fi ght right here till Uncle Sam does his.” Roscoe Jameson, Claude McKay, and other black poets wrote biting poetry, some of it—such as Fenton Johnson’s “Th e New Day”— drawn from the war experience:
Watch the Video The Great Migration
The Great Migration, over a series of decades, witnessed the relocation of approximately 1.5 million African Americans from their southern homes to northern metropolises. It took a long time for that many people to move. But it was the sin- gle most dramatic, most powerful example or evidence of an African American agency in the twentieth century because this was not an organized movement.
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divide up Germany’s colonies. To try to place the war on a higher plane, he appeared before Congress on January 8, 1918, and out- lined terms for a far-reaching, nonpunitive settlement. Wilson’s Fourteen Points were generous and farsighted, but they failed to satisfy wartime emotions that sought vindication.
England and France distrusted Wilsonian idealism as the basis for peace. Th ey wanted Germany disarmed and crippled; they wanted its colonies; and they were skeptical of the principle of self- determination. As the end of the war neared, the Allies, who had in fact made secret commitments with one another, balked at making the Fourteen Points the basis of peace. When Wilson threatened to negotiate a separate treaty with Germany, however, they accepted.
Wilson had won an important victory, but difficulties lay ahead. As Georges Clemenceau, the 78-year-old French premier, said, “God gave us the Ten Commandments, and we broke them. Wilson gives us the Fourteen Points. We shall see.”
A Peace at Paris Unfortunately, Wilson made a grave error just before the peace conference began. He appealed to voters to elect a Democratic Congress in the November 1918 elections, saying that any other result would be “interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation
turned out huge amounts of war goods. Government authority swelled, and people came to expect diff erent things of their govern- ment. Labor made some gains, as did women and blacks. Society assimilated some of the shift s, but social and economic tensions grew, and when the war ended, they spilled over in the strikes and violence of the Red Scare that followed.
The United States emerged from the war the strongest economic power in the world. In 1914, it was a debtor nation, and American citizens owed foreign investors about $3 billion. Five years later, the United States had become a creditor nation. Foreign governments owed more than $10 billion, and foreign citizens owed American investors nearly $3 billion. Th e war marked a shift in economic power rarely equaled in history.
The Treaty of Versailles
What mistakes did Wilson make in negotiating the Treaty of Versailles?
Long before the fi ghting ended, Wilson began to formulate plans for the peace. Like many others, he was disconcerted when the new Bolshevik government in Russia began revealing the terms of secret agreements among Britain, France, and czarist Russia to
Read the Document President Wilson’s Fourteen Points
On January 8, 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, speaking before a joint session of Congress, put forth his Fourteen Points proposal for ending the war. In this speech, he established the basis of a peace treaty and the foundation of a League of Nations.
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of my leadership.” Many Republicans were furious, especially those who had supported the Fourteen Points; Wilson’s problems deepened when the Democrats went on to lose both the House and Senate.
Wilson’s opponents immediately announced that voters had rejected his policies, as he had suggested they could. In fact, the Democratic losses stemmed largely from domestic problems, such as the price of wheat and cotton. But they hurt Wilson, who had alienated some important Republican party leaders. Soon, he would be negotiating with European leaders buoyed by rousing victories at their own polls.
Two weeks after the elections, Wilson announced he would attend the peace conference. Th is was a dramatic break from tradition, and his personal involvement drew attacks from Republicans. Th ey renewed criticism when he named the rest of the delegation: Secretary of State Lansing; Colonel House; General Tasker H. Bliss, a military expert; and Henry White, a career diplomat. Wilson named no mem- ber of the Senate, and the only Republican in the group was White.
In selecting the delegation, Wilson passed over Henry Cabot Lodge, the powerful Republican senator from Massachusetts who opposed the Fourteen Points and who would soon head the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also decided not to appoint Elihu Root or ex-President Taft , both of them enthusiastic internation- alists. Never good at accepting criticism or delegating authority, Wilson wanted a delegation he could control—an advantage at the peace table but not in any battle over the treaty at home.
Upon his arrival, Wilson received a tumultuous welcome in England, France, and Italy. Never before had such crowds acclaimed a democratic political fi gure. In Paris, two million people lined the Champs-Elysées, threw fl owers at him, and shouted, “Wilson le Juste [the just]” as his carriage drove by. Overwhelmed, Wilson was sure that the people of Europe shared his goals and would force their leaders to accept his peace. He was wrong. Like their leaders,
WOODROW WILSON’S FOURTEEN POINTS, 1918: SUCCESS AND FAILURE IN IMPLEMENTATION
1. Open covenants of peace openly arrived at Not fulfi lled
2. Absolute freedom of navigation on the seas in peace and war Not fulfi lled
3. Removal of all economic barriers to the equality of trade among nations Not fulfi lled
4. Reduction of armaments to the level needed only for domestic safety Not fulfi lled
5. Impartial adjustments of colonial claims Not fulfi lled
6. Evacuation of all Russian territory; Russia to be welcomed into the society of free nations
Not fulfi lled
7. Evacuation and restoration of Belgium Fulfi lled 8. Evacuation and restoration of all French lands; return of Alsace-Lorraine to France Fulfi lled 9. Readjustment of Italy’s frontiers along lines of Italian nationality Compromised
10. Self-determination for the former subjects of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Compromised
11. Evacuation of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro; free access to the sea for Serbia Compromised
12. Self-determination for the former subjects of the Ottoman Empire; secure sovereignty for Turkish portion
Compromised
13. Establishment of an independent Poland, with free and secure access to the sea Fulfi lled 14. Establishment of a League of Nations affording mutual guarantees of independence and
territorial integrity Not fulfi lled
Sources: Data from G. M. Gathorne-Hardy, The Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles (Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs, no. 6, 1939), pp. 8–34; Thomas G. Paterson et al., American Foreign Policy: A History Since 1900 , 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 282–293.
many people on the Allied side hated Germany and wanted victory unmistakably refl ected in the peace.
Opening in January 1919, the Peace Conference at Paris continued until May. Although twenty-seven nations were represented, the “Big Four” dominated it: Wilson; Clemenceau of France, tired and stub- born, determined to end the German threat forever; David Lloyd George, the craft y British prime minister who had pledged to squeeze Germany “until the pips squeak”; and the Italian prime minister, Vittorio Orlando. A clever negotiator, Wilson traded various “small” concessions for his major goals—national self- determination, a reduc- tion in tensions, and a League of Nations to enforce the peace.
Wilson had to surrender some important principles. Departing from the Fourteen Points by violating the principle of self-determi- nation, the treaty created two new independent nations—Poland and Czechoslovakia—with large German-speaking populations. It divided up the German colonies in Asia and Africa. Instead of a peace without victory, it made Germany accept responsibility for the war and demanded enormous reparations—which eventually totaled $33 billion. It made no mention of disarmament, free trade, or freedom of the seas. Instead of an open covenant openly arrived at, the treaty was draft ed behind closed doors.
But Wilson deflected some of the most extreme Allied demands, and he won his coveted Point 14, a League of Nations, designed “to achieve international peace and security.” Th e League included a general assembly; a smaller council composed of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and four nations to be elected by the assembly; and a court of international justice. League members pledged to submit to arbitration every dispute threatening peace and to enjoin military and economic sanctions against nations resorting to war. Article X, for Wilson the heart of the League, obliged members to look out for one another’s indepen- dence and territorial integrity.
584 CHAPTER 24 THE NATION AT WAR
Frank B. Kellogg of Minnesota led a group of twelve “mild reser- vationists” who accepted the treaty but wanted to insert several res- ervations that would not greatly weaken it. Finally, there were the Lodge-led “strong reservationists,” twenty-three of them in all, who wanted major changes that the Allies would have to approve.
With only four Democratic senators opposed to the treaty, the Democrats and Republicans willing to compromise had enough votes to ratify it, once a few reservations were inserted. Bidding for time to allow public opposition to grow, Lodge scheduled lengthy hearings and spent two weeks reading the 268-page treaty aloud. Democratic leaders urged Wilson to appeal to the Republican “mild reservationists,” but he refused: “Anyone who opposes me in that I’ll crush!”
Fed up with Lodge’s tactics, Wilson set out in early September to take the case directly to the people. Crossing the Midwest, his speeches aroused little emotion, but on the Pacifi c Coast he won ovations, which heartened him. On his way back to Washington, he stopped in Pueblo, Colorado, where he delivered one of the most eloquent speeches of his career. People wept as he talked of Americans who died in battle and the hope that they would never fi ght again in foreign lands. Th at night Wilson felt ill, returned to Washington, and on October 2, Mrs. Wilson found him lying unconscious on the fl oor of the White House, the victim of a stroke that paralyzed his left side.
Aft er the stroke, Wilson could not work more than an hour or two at a time. No one was allowed to see him except family members, his secretary, and his physician. For more than seven months, he did not meet with the cabinet. Secretary of State Lansing convened cabinet meetings, but when Wilson learned of them, he ordered Lansing to stop and then cruelly forced Lansing to resign. Focusing his remaining energy on the fi ght over the treaty, Wilson lost touch with other issues, and critics charged that his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, ran the government.
On November 6, 1919, while Wilson convalesced, Lodge fi nally reported the treaty out of committee, along with “Fourteen Reservations,” one for each of Wilson’s points. Th e most important reservation stipulated that implementation of Article X, Wilson’s key article, required the action of Congress before any American intervention abroad.
Th e next day, the president’s fl oor leader in the Senate told him that the Democrats could not pass the treaty without res- ervations. “Is it possible?” Wilson asked sadly. “It might be wise to compromise,” the senator said. “Let Lodge compro- mise!” Wilson replied. When Mrs. Wilson urged her husband to accept the Lodge reservations, he said, “Better a thousand times to go down fi ghting than to dip your colors to dishonor- able compromise.”
On November 19, the treaty—with the Lodge reservations— failed, 39 to 55. Following Wilson’s instructions, the Democrats voted against it. A motion to approve without the reservations lost 38 to 53, with only one Republican voting in favor. Th e defeat brought pleas for compromise, but neither Wilson nor Lodge would back down. When the treaty with reservations again came up for vote on March 19, 1920, Wilson ordered the Democrats to hold fi rm against it. Although twenty-one of them defi ed him, enough obeyed his orders to defeat it, 49 to 35, seven votes short of the nec- essary two-thirds majority.
The draft treaty in hand, Wilson returned home in February 1919 to discuss it with Congress and the people. Most Americans, the polls showed, favored the League; thirty-three governors endorsed it. But over dinner with the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees, Wilson learned of the strength of congressional opposition to it. On March 3, Senator Lodge produced a “round robin” signed by thirty-seven senators declaring they would not vote for the treaty without amend- ment. Should the numbers hold, Lodge had enough votes to defeat it.
Returning to Paris, Wilson attacked his critics, while he worked privately for changes to improve the chances of Senate approval. In return for major concessions, the Allies amended the League draft treaty, agreeing that domestic aff airs remained out- side League jurisdiction (exempting the Monroe Doctrine) and allowing nations to withdraw aft er two years’ notice. On June 28, 1919, they signed the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and Wilson started home for his most diffi cult fi ght.
Rejection in the Senate There were ninety-six senators in 1919, forty-nine of them Republicans. Fourteen Republicans, led by William E. Borah of Idaho, were the “irreconcilables” who opposed the League on any grounds. “If the Savior of man,” Borah said, “would revisit the earth and declare for a League of Nations, I would be opposed to it.”
North Sea
Mediterranean Sea
GREAT BRITAIN
ESTONIA
LATVIA
POLANDGERMANY BELG.
NETH.
LUX.
FRANCE
SPAIN ITALY
GREECE
SOVIET UNION
BULGARIA
YUGOSLAVIA
SWITZ.
NORWAY
SWEDEN
FINLAND
LITHUANIA
GER.
AUSTRIA
ALBANIA
ROMANIA
HUNGARY
DENMARK
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Mallorca (Sp.) Sardinia
(It.)
Corsica (Fr.)
Sicily
Crete
Danzig (Free City)
ALGERIA (Fr.) TUNISIA(Fr.)
New and reconstituted nations
EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, 1919 The treaty changed the map of Europe, creating a number of new and reconstituted nations. (Note the boundary changes from the map on p. 573 .)
STUDY RESOURCES 585
almost three years after the last shot was fired, that Congress passed a joint resolution ending the war.
Conclusion: Postwar Disillusionment
Aft er 1919, there was disillusionment. World War I was feared before it started, popular while it lasted, and hated when it ended. To a whole generation that followed, it appeared futile, killing without cause, sacrifi cing without benefi t. Books, plays, and movies—Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), John Dos Passos’s Th ree Soldiers (1921), Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson’s What Price Glory? (1924), among others—showed it as waste, horror, and death.
The war and its aftermath damaged the humanitarian, progressive spirit of the early years of the century. It killed “something precious and perhaps irretrievable in the hearts of thinking men and women.” Progressivism survived well into the 1920s and the New Deal, but it no longer had the old conviction and broad popular support. Bruising fi ghts over the war and the League drained people’s energy and enthusiasm.
Confi ned to bed, Woodrow Wilson died in Washington in 1924, three years aft er Harding, the new president, promised “not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration.” Nonetheless, the “war to end all wars” and the spirit of Woodrow Wilson left an indelible imprint on the country.
To Wilson, walking now with the help of a cane, one chance remained: the presidential election of 1920. For a time, he thought of running for a third term himself, but his party shunted him aside. Th e Democrats nominated Governor James M. Cox of Ohio, along with the young and popular Franklin D. Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the navy, for vice president. Wilson called for “a great and solemn referendum” on the treaty. Th e Democratic platform endorsed the treaty but agreed to accept reservations that clarifi ed the American role in the League.
THE ELECTION OF 1920
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Harding Republican 16,152,200 404
Cox Democrat 9,147,353 127
Debs Socialist 917,799 0
On the Republican side, Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, who had nominated Taft in 1912, won the presiden- tial nomination. Harding waffled on the treaty, but that issue made little difference. Voters wanted a change. Harding won in a landslide, taking 61 percent of the vote and beating Cox by seven million votes. Without a peace treaty, the United States remained technically at war, and it was not until July 1921,
Study Resources yy Take the Study Plan for Chapter 24 The Nation at War on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
1901 Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Great Britain empowers United States to build Isthmian canal
1904 Theodore Roosevelt introduces corollary to Monroe Doctrine
1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement recognizes Japanese power
in Korea
1908 Root-Takahira Agreement vows to maintain status quo in the Pacifi c; Roosevelt sends the fl eet around the world
1911 Revolution begins in Mexico 1913–1914 Bryan negotiates “cooling-off” treaties to
end war
1914 World War I begins; U.S. Marines take Veracruz; Panama Canal completed
1915 Japan issues Twenty-one Demands to China (January); Germany declares water around British Isles a war zone (February); Lusitania torpedoed
(May); Bryan resigns; Robert Lansing becomes secretary of state (June); Arabic pledge restricts submarine warfare (September)
1916 Germany issues Sussex pledge (March); General John J. Pershing leads unsuccessful punitive expedi- tion into Mexico to seize Pancho Villa (April); Wilson wins reelection
1917 Wilson calls for “peace without victory” (January); Germany resumes unrestricted U-boat warfare (February); United States enters World War I (April); Congress passes Selective Service Act (May); First American troops reach France (June); War Industries Board established (July)
1918 Wilson outlines Fourteen Points for peace (January); Germany asks for peace (October); Armistice ends the war (November)
1919 Peace negotiations in Paris (January); Treaty of Versailles defeated in Senate
1920 Warren G. Harding elected president
586 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER REVIEW
Over There
How did the United States’ entry affect World War I?
The United States entered the war at a crucial time for the Allies. American troops helped stop the last German offensive in 1918. Entry into the war gave the United States a stake in the peace treaty. (p. 572 )
Over Here
What programs and changes did World War I bring at home?
American participation in World War I drew on many of the techniques of progressive reformers, including using people with expertise and exploiting bureaucracy. The War
Industries Board oversaw the production of all American factories; the Food Administration Board looked after food for the armies overseas. The government played a larger role in American life than ever before. (p. 577 )
The Treaty of Versailles
What mistakes did Wilson make in negotiating the Treaty of Versailles?
Wilson’s Fourteen Points sought to reduce armaments, lower trade barriers, provide for self determination, and establish a League of Nations to prevent further wars. He
was forced to compromise at Versailles, but the Senate refused to ratify the peace treaty when he would not compromise on issues such as the League of Nations. (p. 582 )
A New World Power
What were the main events that showed the United States was becoming a world power?
After winning the Spanish-American War, American presidents began to exert more influence in the world. Roosevelt took extraordinary steps to build the Panama
Canal. He enlarged the country’s role in the Western Hemisphere and tried to deal with the growing power of Japan. Taft focused on protecting American economic interests abroad. (p. 564 )
Foreign Policy Under Wilson
What did Woodrow Wilson mean by “moral diplomacy”?
Wilson hoped to focus on domestic affairs but was soon involved in crises abroad. He first tried what he called “moral diplomacy,” asking the United States and other coun-
tries to treat each other in a moral manner, especially in Europe and Mexico. In Mexico, he had praiseworthy aims but misjudged the country. (p. 566 )
Toward War
What were the reasons behind and dangers of Wilson’s neutrality policy?
With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, Wilson proclaimed neutrality, which was difficult to maintain. Neutrality, he hoped, would favor neither side and keep
the United States out of war. Progressives knew that war would distract attention from reform. Submarine warfare offered new threats, which Wilson tried to control but could not. On April 6, 1917, the United States joined the war. (p. 568 )
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Gatun Lake
PAC OC
Caribbean Sea
Ch agr
Panama Canal
Caribbean
Pana
Balboa
Colón
Cristobal
PANAMA
PANAMA
Pedro Miguel Locks
Miraflores Locks
Gatun Locks
Panama Canal Zone
NICARAGUA
COSTA RICA
Panama Canal Zone
0 5 kilometers
0 5 miles
Panama Canal
Locks
1
2
3
4
5
6
9
Gulf of Mexico
Proposed canal
Veracruz
Tampico Bahía Ho
MEXICO
UNITED STATES
GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR NICARA
COS RI
HONDURA
BRITISH HONDURA
Columbus, New Mexico
Parral
11. U.S. naval base leased, 1903
12. U.S. occupation, 1915–1934
13. U.S. occupation, 1916–1924
14. Purchased from Denmark, 1917
1. Villa’s raid, March 9, 1916
2. Pershing’s expedition, 1916–1917
3. Skirmish with Carranza’s troops, April 12, 1916
4. American sailors arrested, April 1914
5. Seized by U.S. Navy, April 1914
6. U.S. occupation, 1912–1919, 1924–1925
7. U.S. occupation, 1912–1925, 1927–1933
8. Leased, 1903
9. Leased, 1903–1912
0. U.S. occupation, 1898–1902, 1906–1909, 1912 and 1917
Tannenberg Aug. 26–31, 1914
Gallipoli Apr. 25, 1915– Jan. 9, 1916
Caporetto Oct. 24–25, 1917
Verdun Feb. 21– Dec. 18, 1916WESTERNFRONT
SOUTHERN FLANK
EASTERN FRONT
North Sea
Black Sea
Bal tic
Se a
editerranean Sea
Moscow
Berlin
Brest- Litovsk
ris
Vienna
Rome
Armistice Line Dec. 1917
R U S S I A
ALB.MONTENEGRO
SWITZ.
BELG.
NETH.
DENMARK
LUX.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY RANCE
NORWAY
SWEDEN
OTTOMAN EMPIRE
GERMAN EMPIRE
ITALY
TUNISIA (Fr.)(Fr.)
Sicily
Crete
rca (Sp.)
Cyprus (Br.)
Corsica (Fr.)
Sardinia (It.)
GREECE
BULGARIA
ROMANIA
SERBIA
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty This 1903 treaty with Panama granted the United States control over a canal zone ten miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama. p. 565
Roosevelt Corollary A corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted that the United States would intervene in Latin American affairs if those countries could not keep their affairs in order. p. 566
“Dollar diplomacy” The Taft administration’s policy in the early 1900s to promote U.S. financial and business interests abroad, especially in Latin America. p. 566
“Moral diplomacy” Policy of President Woodrow Wilson that rejected “dollar diplomacy.” Rather than focusing mainly on economic ties with other nations, Wilson sought to practice morality in international relations, pre- serve peace, and extend to other peoples the blessings of democracy. p. 567
Selective Service Act: This 1917 law required all American men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for a military draft. The age limits were later changed to 18 and 45. p. 576
Committee on Public Information (CPI) Created in 1917 by President Wilson and headed by progressive journalist George Creel, this organization rallied support for American involvement in World War I through art, advertising, and film.
Creel worked out a system of voluntary censorship with the press and distributed posters and pamphlets. p. 577
Espionage Act of 1917 This law, passed after the United States entered World War I, imposed sentences of up to 20 years on anyone found guilty of aiding the enemy, obstructing recruitment of soldiers, or encour- aging disloyalty. It allowed the postmaster general to remove from the mail any materials that incited treason or insurrection. p. 578
Sedition Act A World War I law that imposed harsh penalties on anyone using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the U.S. government, flag, or armed forces.” p. 578
War Industries Board (WIB) This government agency oversaw the production of American factories during World War I. p. 579
Food Administration A government agency that encouraged Americans to save food during World War I. p. 579
Fourteen Points In January 1918, President Woodrow Wilson presented these terms for a far-reaching, nonpunitive settlement of World War I and the establishment of a League of Nations. While generous and optimistic, the Points did not satisfy wartime hunger for revenge and were largely rejected by European nations. p. 582
STUDY RESOURCES 587
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What role did the United States’ becoming a world power play in shap- ing the foreign policy of Roosevelt and Wilson?
2. What events and influences led the United States toward entry into World War I?
3. What were the main events of America’s involvement in the war in Europe, and how did these events affect the treaty ending the war?
4. How might Wilson have handled the Versailles treaty negotiations differently?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Toward War Over Here
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 24 on MyHistoryLab
Read the Document
Read the Document
The Outbreak of World War I p. 568
Adolf K.G.E. von Spiegel, U-boat 202 (1919) p. 570
President Wilson’s War Message to Congress (1917) p. 571
Read the Document Espionage Act (1917) p. 577
The Great Migration p. 581
Read the Document President Wilson’s Fourteen Points p. 582
The Treaty of Versailles
Watch the Video
Watch the Video
◾
Watch the Video ◾ American Entry into World War I p. 572
Over There
Complete the Assignment
“Over There” p. 573
Measuring the Mind p. 574 ◾
Listen to the Audio File
◾
Mobilizing the Home Front p. 579
View the Closer Look ◾
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
in operation) and the apparent congestion on the plant floor, but industrial experts recognized that the arrangement led to incredible productivity because “the work moves and the men stand still.” A trained engineer summed it up best when he wrote that a visi- tor to the plant “sees each unit as a carefully designed gear which meshes with other gears and operates in synchronism with them, the whole forming one huge, perfectly-timed, smoothly-operating industrial machine of almost unbelievable efficiency.”
In May 1927, after producing more than fifteen million Model Ts, Ford closed the assembly line at Highland Park. For the next six months, his engineers worked on designing a more compact and efficient assembly line at River Rouge for the Model A, which went into production in November. By then, River Rouge had more than justified Ford’s vision. “Ford had brought together everything at a single site and on a scale no one else had ever attempted,” concluded historian Geoffrey Perrett. “The Rouge plant became to a generation of engineers far more than a factory. It was a monument.”
Mass production, born in Highland Park in 1913 and perfected at River Rouge in the 1920s, became the hall- mark of American industry. Other car makers copied Ford’s methods, and soon his emphasis on the flow of parts moving past stationary workers became the standard in nearly every American factory. The moving assembly line—with its emphasis on uniformity, speed, precision,
Wheels for the Millions The moving assembly line that Henry Ford perfected in 1913 for manufacture of the Model T marked only the first step toward full mass production and the beginning of America’s worldwide industrial supremacy. A year later, Ford began buying large plots of land along the Rouge River southeast of Detroit, Michigan. He already had a vision of a vast industrial tract where machines, moving through a sequence of carefully arranged manufacturing operations, would transform raw materials into finished cars, trucks, and tractors. The key would be control over the flow of goods at each step along the way—from lake steamers and railroad cars bringing in the coal and iron ore, to overhead conveyor belts and huge turning tables carrying the moving parts past the stationary workers on the assembly line. “Everything must move,” Ford commanded, and by the mid-1920s at River Rouge, as the plant became known, it did.
Ford began fulfilling his industrial dream in 1919 when he built a blast furnace and foundry to make engine blocks for both the Model T and his tractors. By 1924, more than forty thousand workers were turning out nearly all the metal parts used in making Ford vehicles. One tractor factory was so efficient that it took just over twenty-eight hours to convert raw ore into a new farm implement.
Visitors from all over the world came to marvel at River Rouge. Some were disturbed by the jumble of machines (by 1926, there were forty-three thousand
THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION PG. 589 What was new about the American economy in the 1920s?
CITY LIFE IN THE JAZZ AGE PG. 592 How did life in the cities change after World War I?
THE RURAL COUNTERATTACK PG. 598 How did conservatives resist the changes of the decade?
POLITICS OF THE 1920S PG. 603 How did the politics of the 1920s refl ect changes in the economy and in American society?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemp- tion and Black Nationalism
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY The Scopes “Monkey” Trial: Contesting Cultural Differences
Transition to Modern America 25
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 25 Transition to Modern America
The development of the efficient and compact automobile assembly line by engineers at the Ford Motor Company in the late 1920s enabled the cost-efficient mass production of automobiles.
and coordination—took away the last vestiges of crafts- manship and turned workers into near robots. It led to amazing efficiency that produced both high profits for man- ufacturers and low prices for buyers. By the mid-1920s, the cost of the Model T had dropped from $950 to $290.
Most important, mass production contributed to a consumer goods revolution. American factories turned out a fl ood of automobiles, electrical appliances, and other items that made life easier and more pleasant for most Americans. Th e result was the cre- ation of a distinctively modern America, one marked by the material abundance that has characterized American society ever since.
But the abundance came at a price. Th e 1920s have been por- trayed as a decade of escape and frivolity, and for many Americans they were just that. But those years also were an era of transition: a time when the old America of individualistic rural values gave way to a new America of conformist urban values. Th e transition was oft en wrenching, and many Americans clung desperately to the old ways. Modernity fi nally won, but not without a struggle.
The Second Industrial Revolution
What was new about the American economy in the 1920s?
The first Industrial Revolution in the late nineteenth century had catapulted the United States into the forefront among the world’s richest and most highly developed nations. With the advent of the new consumer goods industries, the American people by the 1920s enjoyed the highest standard of living of any nation on earth. After a brief postwar depression, 1922 saw the beginning of a great boom that peaked in 1927 and lasted until 1929. In this brief period, American industrial output nearly doubled, and the gross national product rose by 40 percent. Most of this explosive growth took place in industries producing con- sumer goods—automobiles, appliances, furniture, and clothing. Equally important, the national per capita income increased by 30 percent to $681 in 1929. American workers became the highest paid in history. Combined with the expansion of install- ment credit programs that allowed customers to buy now and
590 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
pay later, this income growth allowed a purchasing spree like nothing the nation had ever experienced.
Th e key to the new affl uence lay in technology. Th e moving assembly line pioneered by Ford became a standard feature in nearly all American plants. Electric motors replaced steam engines as the basic source of energy in factories; by 1929, 70 percent of all indus- trial power came from electricity. Effi ciency experts broke down the industrial process into minute parts, using time and motion studies, and then showed managers and workers how to maximize the output of their labor. Production per worker-hour increased an amazing 75 percent over the decade; in 1929, a workforce no larger than that of 1919 was producing almost twice as many goods.
The Automobile Industry Th e nature of the consumer goods revolution can best be seen in the automobile industry, which became the nation’s largest in the 1920s. Rapid growth was its hallmark. In 1920, there were ten mil- lion cars in the nation; by the end of the decade, twenty-six million were on the road. Production jumped from fewer than two million units a year to more than fi ve million by 1929.
Th e automobile boom, at its peak from 1922 to 1927, depended on the apparently insatiable appetite of the American people for cars. But as the decade continued, the market became saturated as more and more of those who could aff ord the new luxury had become car owners. Marketing became as crucial as production. Automobile makers began to rely heavily on advertising and annual model changes, seeking to make customers dissatisfi ed with their old vehicles and eager to order new ones. Despite these eff orts, sales slumped in 1927 when Ford stopped making the Model T, picked up again the next year with the new Model A, but began to slide again in 1929. Th e new industry revealed a basic weakness in the consumer goods economy; once people had bought an item with a long life, they would be out of the market for a few years.
In the affl uent 1920s, few noticed the emerging economic instability. Instead, contemporary observers focused on the stim- ulating eff ect the automobile had on the rest of the economy. Th e mass production of cars required huge quantities of steel; entire new rolling mills had to be built to supply sheet steel for car bodies. Rubber factories boomed with the demand for tires, and paint and glass suppliers had more business than ever before. Th e auto changed the pattern of city life, leading to a suburban explo- sion. Real estate developers, no longer dependent on streetcars and railway lines, could now build houses in ever wider concen- tric circles around the central cities.
The automobile had a profound effect on all aspects of American life in the 1920s. Filling stations appeared on the main streets, replacing the smithies and stables of the past. In Kansas City, Jess D. Nichols built the fi rst shopping center, Country Club Plaza, and thus set an example quickly followed by other subur- ban developers.
Even in smaller communities, the car ruled. In Muncie, Indiana, site of a famous sociological survey in the 1920s, one elder replied when asked what was taking place, “I can tell you what’s happening in just four letters: A-U-T-O!” A nation that had always revered symbols of movement, from the Mayfl ower to the covered wagon, now had a new icon to worship.
Patterns of Economic Growth Automobiles were the most conspicuous of the consumer prod- ucts that fl ourished in the 1920s, but certainly not the only ones. Th e electrical industry grew almost as quickly. Central power sta- tions, where massive steam generators converted coal into elec- tricity, brought current into the homes of city and town dwellers. Two-thirds of all American families enjoyed electricity by the end of the decade, and they spent vast sums on washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and ranges. Th e new appliances eased the burdens of housework and ushered in an age of leisure.
Radio broadcasting and motion picture production also boomed in the 1920s. Th e early success of KDKA in Pittsburgh stimulated the growth of more than eight hundred independent radio stations, and by 1929, NBC had formed the fi rst success- ful radio network. Five nights a week, Amos ’n Andy , a comic serial featuring two “blackface” vaudevillians, held the attention of millions of Americans. Th e fi lm industry thrived in Hollywood, reaching its maturity in the mid-1920s when in every large city there were huge theaters seating as many as four thousand people. With the advent of the “talkies” by 1929, average weekly movie attendance climbed to nearly one hundred million.
Other industries prospered as well. Production of light metals such as aluminum and magnesium grew into a major business. Chemical engineering came of age with the invention of synthetics, ranging from rayon for clothing to cellophane for packaging. Americans found a whole new spectrum of products to buy— cigarette lighters, wristwatches, heat-resistant glass cooking dishes, and rayon stockings, to name just a few.
The corporation continued to be the dominant economic unit in the 1920s. Growing corporations now had hundreds of thousands of stockholders; and one individual or family rarely held more than 5 percent of the stock. Th e enormous profi ts gener- ated by the corporations enabled their managers to fi nance growth and expansion internally, thus freeing companies from their ear- lier dependence on investment bankers like J. P. Morgan. Voicing a belief in social responsibility and enlightened capitalism, the new professional class operated independently, free from out- side restraint. In the fi nal analysis, the corporate managers were accountable only to other managers.
Another wave of mergers accompanied the growth of corpo- rations during the 1920s. From 1920 to 1928, some eight thousand mergers took place as more and more small fi rms proved unable to compete eff ectively with the new giants. By the end of the decade, the two hundred largest nonfi nancial corporations owned almost half of the country’s corporate wealth. Th e automobile industry set the example for other areas. Th e greatest abuses took place in public utilities; promoters such as Samuel Insull built vast paper empires by gaining control of power companies and then draining them of their assets.
Th e most distinctive feature of the new consumer-oriented economy was the emphasis on marketing. Advertising earnings rose from $1.3 billion in 1915 to $3.4 billion in 1926. Skillful practitioners such as Edward Bernays and Bruce Barton sought to control public taste and consumer spending by identifying the good life with the possession of the latest product of American industry, whether it be a car, a refrigerator, or a brand of cigarettes. Chain stores advanced rapidly at the expense of small retail shops.
The Second Industrial Revolution 591
distinguished Americans in diff erent parts of the country were threatened with extinction by the advent of radio and fi lms, which promoted a standard national dialect devoid of any local fl avor.
Economic Weaknesses Th e New Era, as business leaders labeled the decade, was not as prosperous as it fi rst appeared. Th e revolution in consumer goods disguised the decline of many traditional industries in the 1920s. Railroads, overcapitalized and poorly managed, suff ered from
A&P dominated the retail food industry, growing from 400 stores in 1912 to 15,500 by 1932. Woolworth’s “fi ve-and-tens” spread almost as rapidly, while such drugstore chains as Rexall and Liggetts—both owned by one huge holding company—opened outlets in nearly every town and city in the land.
Uniformity and standardization, the characteristics of mass production, now prevailed. The farmer in Kansas bought the same kind of car, the same groceries, and the same pills as the fac- tory worker in Pennsylvania. Sectional diff erences in dress, food, and furniture began to disappear. Even the regional accents that
The Great White Way – Times Square View the Closer Look
Howard Thain’s painting, The Great White Way—Times Square, captures the bright lights and excitement of New York’s entertainment center in the Roaring Twenties.
Source: Collection of The New-York Historical Society, accession number 1963.150.
592 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
nearly six times the rate of increase in workers’ wages. Bank accounts, refl ecting the accumulated savings of the upper-middle and wealthy classes, rose from $41.1 billion to $57.9 billion. Th ese were the people who bought the fi ne new houses in the suburbs and who could aff ord more than one car. Th eir conspicuous consumption helped fuel the prosperity of the 1920s, but their disposable income eventually became greater than their material wants. Th e result was speculation, as those with idle money began to invest heavily in the stock market to reap the gains from industrial growth.
The economic trends of the decade had both positive and negative implications for the future. On one hand, there was the solid growth of new consumer-based industries. Automobiles and appliances were not passing fancies; their production and use became a part of the modern American way of life, creat- ing a high standard of living that roused the envy of the rest of the world. The future pattern of American culture—cars and suburbs, shopping centers and skyscrapers—was determined by the end of the 1920s.
But at the same time, there were ominous signs of danger. Th e unequal distribution of wealth, the growth of consumer debt, the saturation of the market for cars and appliances, and the rampant speculation all contributed to economic instability. Th e boom of the 1920s would end in a great crash; yet the achievements of the decade would survive even that dire experience to shape the future of American life.
City Life in the Jazz Age
How did life in the cities change after World War I?
Th e city replaced the countryside as the focal point of American life in the 1920s. Th e 1920 census revealed that, for the fi rst time, slightly more than half of the population lived in cities (defi ned broadly to include all places of more than 2,500 people). During the decade, the metropolitan areas grew rapidly as both whites and blacks from rural areas came seeking jobs in the new consumer industries. Between 1920 and 1930, cities with populations of 250,000 or more had added some eight million people to their ranks. New York City grew by nearly 25 percent, while Detroit more than doubled its population during the decade.
Th e skyscraper soon became the most visible feature of the city. Faced with infl ated land prices, builders turned upward— developing a distinctively American architectural style in the process. New York led the way with the ornate Woolworth Building in 1913. The sleek 102-story Empire State Building, completed in 1931, was for years the tallest building in the world. Other cities erected their own jagged skylines. By 1929, there were 377 buildings more than 20 stories tall across the nation. Most sig- nifi cantly, the skyscraper came to symbolize the new mass culture. “Th e New York skyscrapers are the most striking manifestation of the triumph of numbers,” wrote one French observer. “One cannot understand or like them without fi rst having tasted and enjoyed the thrill of counting or adding up enormous totals and of living in a gigantic, compact and brilliant world.”
In the metropolis, life was diff erent. Th e old community ties of home, church, and school were absent, but there were important
internal woes and from competition with the growing trucking industry. Th e coal industry was also troubled, with petroleum and natural gas beginning to replace coal as a fuel. Th e use of cotton textiles declined with the development of rayon and other synthetic fi bers. Th e New England mills moved south in search of cheap labor, leaving behind thousands of unemployed workers and virtual ghost towns in the nation’s oldest industrial center.
Hardest hit of all was agriculture. American farmers had expanded production to meet the demands of World War I, when they fed their own nation and most of Europe as well. A sharp cutback of exports in 1919 caused a rapid decline in prices. By 1921, farm exports had fallen by more than $2 billion. Th roughout the 1920s, the farmers’ share of the national income dropped, until by 1929, the per capita farm income was only $273, compared to the national average of $681.
Urban workers were better off than farmers in the 1920s, but they did not share fully in the decade’s affl uence. Th e industrial labor force remained remarkably steady during this period of economic growth; technical innovations meant the same number of work- ers could produce far more than before. Most new jobs appeared in the lower-paying service industry. During the decade, factory wage rates rose only a modest 11 percent; in 1929, nearly half of all American families had an income of less than $1,500. At the same time, however, conditions of life improved. Prices remained stable, even dropping somewhat in the early 1920s, so workers enjoyed a gain in real wages.
Organized labor proved unable to advance the interests of workers in the 1920s. Conservative leadership in the AFL neglected the task of organizing the vast number of unskilled laborers in the mass production industries. Aggressive management weakened the appeal of unions by portraying them as radical organizations aft er a series of strikes in 1919. Many businesses used injunctions and “yellow-dog contracts”—which forbade employees to join unions—to establish open shops and deny workers the benefi ts of collective bargaining. Other employers wooed their workers away from unions using techniques of welfare capitalism—spending money to improve plant conditions and winning employee loyalty with pensions, paid vacations, and company cafeterias. Th e net result was a decline in union membership from a postwar high of fi ve million to less than three million by 1929.
Black workers remained on the bottom, both economi- cally and socially. Nearly half a million African Americans had migrated northward from the rural South during World War I. Some found jobs in northern industries, but many more worked in menial service areas collecting garbage, washing dishes, and sweeping fl oors. Yet even these jobs off ered them a better life than they found on the depressed southern farms where millions of African Americans still lived in poverty, and so the migration continued. Th e black ghettos in northern cities grew rapidly in the 1920s; Chicago’s African American population doubled during the decade while New York’s rose from 152,467 to 327,706 with most African Americans living in Harlem.
Middle- and upper-class Americans were the groups who thrived in the 1920s. Th e rewards of this second Industrial Revolution went to the managers—the engineers, bankers, and executives— who directed the new industrial economy. Corporate profi ts nearly doubled in ten years, and income from dividends rose 65 percent,
City Life in the Jazz Age 593
to compete on equal terms with men on the golf course and in the speakeasy. Young women delighted in shocking their elders—they rouged their cheeks and danced the Charleston. Women smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol in public more freely than before. Th e fl appers assaulted the traditional double standard in sex, demand- ing that equality with men should include sexual fulfi llment before and during marriage. New and more liberal laws led to a sharp rise in the divorce rate; by 1928, there were 166 divorces for every 1,000 marriages, compared to only 81 in 1900.
The sense of woman’s emancipation was heightened by a continuing drop in the birthrate and by the abundance of consumer goods. With fewer children to care for and with washing machines and vacuum cleaners to ease their household labor, it seemed that women of the 1920s would have more leisure time. Yet appearances were deceptive. Advertisers eagerly sought out women as buyers of labor-saving consumer products, but wives exercised purchas- ing power only as delegated by their husbands. In addition, many women were not in the position to put the new devices to use— one-fourth of the homes in Cleveland lacked running water in the 1920s, and three-quarters of the nation’s families did not have wash- ing machines. Th e typical childless woman spent between forty- three and fi ft y hours a week on household duties; for mothers, the average workweek was fi ft y-six hours, far longer than that of their husbands. And despite the talk of the “new woman,” the fl appers fell victim to the sex-role conditioning of their parents. Boys continued to play with guns and grew up to head their families; girls played with dolls and looked forward to careers as wives and mothers. “In the 1920s, as in the 1790s,” concluded historian June Sochen, “mar- riage was the only approved state for women.”
Th e family, however, did change. It became smaller as easier access to eff ective birth control methods enabled couples to limit the number of their off spring. More and more married women took jobs outside the home, bringing in an income and gaining a measure of independence (although their rate of pay was always lower than that for men). Young people, who had once joined the labor force when they entered their teens, now discovered adolescence as a stage of life. A high school education was no longer uncommon, and col- lege attendance increased.
Prolonged adolescence led to new strains on the family in the form of youthful revolt. Freed of the traditional burden of earning a living at an early age, many young people in the 1920s went on a spree. Heavy drinking, casual sexual encounters, and a constant search for excitement became the hallmarks of the upper-class youth immortalized by F. Scott Fitzgerald. “I have been kissed by dozens of men,” one of his characters commented. “I suppose I’ll kiss dozens more.” Th e theme of rebellion against parental authority, which runs through all aspects of the 1920s, was at the heart of the youth movement.
The Roaring Twenties Excitement ran high in the cities as both crime waves and highly publicized sports events fl ourished. Prohibition ushered in such distinctive features of the decade as speakeasies, bootleggers, and bathtub gin. Crime rose sharply as middle- and upper-class Americans willingly broke the law to gain access to alcoholic beverages. City streets became the scene of violent shoot-outs
gains to replace them—new ideas, new creativity, new perspectives. Some city dwellers became lost and lonely without the old institu- tions; others thrived in the urban environment.
Women and the Family Th e urban culture of the 1920s witnessed important changes in the American family. Th is vital institution began to break down under the impact of economic and social change. A new freedom for women and children seemed to be emerging in its wake.
Although World War I accelerated the process of women leav- ing the home for work, the postwar decade witnessed a return to the slower pace of the prewar years. During the 1920s, there was no permanent gain in the number of working women. Two million more women were employed in 1930 than in 1920, but this repre- sented an increase of only 1 percent. Most women workers, more- over, had low-paying jobs, ranging from stenographers to maids. The number of women doctors actually decreased, and even though women earned nearly one-third of all graduate degrees, only 4 percent of full professors were female. For the most part, the professions were reserved for men, with women relegated to such fi elds as teaching and nursing.
Women had won the right to vote in 1920, but the Nineteenth Amendment proved to have less impact than its proponents had hoped. Adoption of the amendment robbed women of a unifying cause, and the exercise of the franchise itself did little to change pre- vailing sex roles. Men remained the principal breadwinners in the family; women cooked, cleaned, and reared the children. “Th e cre- ation and fulfi llment of a successful home,” a Ladies Home Journal writer advised women, “is a bit of craft smanship that compares favorably with building a beautiful cathedral.”
Th e feminist movement, however, still showed signs of vitality in the 1920s. Social feminists pushing for humanitarian reform won enactment of the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, which provided for federal aid to establish state programs for maternal and infant health care. Although the failure to enact a child labor amendment in 1925 marked the beginning of a decline in humanitarian reform, for the rest of the decade, women’s groups continued to work for good-government measures, for the inclusion of women on juries, and for consumer legislation.
One group of activists, led by Alice Paul’s National Woman’s Party (NWP), lobbied for full equality for women under the law. In 1923, the NWP succeeded in having an Equal Rights Amendment introduced in Congress. Th e amendment stated simply, “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” Most other women’s organi- zations, notably the League of Women Voters, opposed the amend- ment because it threatened gender-specifi c legislation such as the Sheppard-Towner Act that women had fought so hard to enact. Th e drive for the ERA in the 1920s failed.
Growing assertiveness had a profound impact on feminism in the 1920s. Instead of crusading for social progress, young women concentrated on individual self-expression by rebelling against Victorian restraints. In the larger cities, some quickly adopted what critic H. L. Mencken called the fl apper image, portrayed most strik- ingly by artist John Held, Jr. Cutting their hair short, raising their skirts above the knee, and binding their breasts, “fl appers” set out
594 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
permissiveness joyfully, with the automobile giving couples an easy way to escape parental supervision.
Th ere is considerable debate, however, over the extent of the sexual revolution in the 1920s. Later studies by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey showed that premarital intercourse was twice as common among women born aft er 1900 than for those born before the turn of the century. But a contemporary survey of more than two thousand middle-class women by Katherine B. Davis found that only 7 percent of those who were married had had sexual relations before marriage and that only 14 percent of the single women had engaged in intercourse. Actual changes in sexual behavior are beyond the historian’s reach, hidden in the privacy of the bed- room, but the old Victorian prudishness was a clear casualty of
Sheik with Sheba is the title of this John Held, Jr., drawing, which appeared on a 1925 cover of Judge magazine. Held’s drawings define the image of the “flapper” era—the young woman with rolled-down stockings and rouged knees and the young man with cigarette and pocket flask at the wheel of his car.
Read the Document Elanor Rowland Wembridge, “Petting and the Campus” (1925)
between rival bootleggers; by 1929, Chicago had witnessed more than five hundred gangland murders. Underworld czars controlled illicit empires; Al Capone’s produced rev- enue of $60 million a year.
Sports became a national mania in the 1920s as people found more leisure time. Golf boomed, with some two million men and women playing on nearly five thousand courses across the country. Spectator sports attracted even more attention. Boxing drew huge crowds to see fi ghters such as Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. Baseball attendance soared. More than twenty million fans attended games in 1927, the year Babe Ruth became a national idol by hitting sixty home runs. On college cam- puses, football became more popu- lar than ever. Universities vied with each other in building massive sta- diums, seating upward of seventy thousand people.
In what Frederick Lewis Allen called “the ballyhoo years,” the popular yearning for excitement led people to seek vicarious thrills in all kinds of ways—applauding Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic, cheering Gertrude Ederle’s swim across the English Channel, and fl ocking to such bizarre events as six-day bicycle races, dance mara- thons, and fl agpole sittings. It was a time of pure pleasure seeking, when people sought to escape from the increasingly drab world of the assembly line by worshiping heroic individuals.
Sex became another popular topic in the 1920s as Victorian standards began to crumble. Sophisticated city dwellers seemed to be intent on exploring a new freedom in sexual expression. Plays and novels focused on adultery, and the new urban tabloids—led by the New York Daily News —delighted in telling their readers about love nests and kept women. Th e popular songs of the decade, such as “Hot Lips” and “Burning Kisses,” were less romantic and more explicit than those of years before. Hollywood exploited the obsession with sex by producing movies with such provocative titles as Up in Mabel’s Room, A Shocking Night , and Women and Lovers . Th eda Bara and Clara Bow, the “vamp” and the “It” girl, set the model for feminine seductiveness while Rudolph Valentino became the heartthrob of millions of American women. Young people embraced the new
City Life in the Jazz Age 595
from Christians—Good Lord, deliver us,” he pleaded. It was not diffi cult to discover Mencken’s dislikes (including Jews, as his published diary makes clear); the hard part was fi nding out what he affi rmed, other than wit and a clever turn of phrase. A born cynic, he served as a zealous guardian of public rationality in an era of excessive boosterism.
Th e cultural explosion of the 1920s was surprisingly broad. It included novelists such as Sherwood Anderson and John Dos Passos, who described the way the new machine age undermined such tradi- tional American values as craft smanship and a sense of community, and playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, Maxwell Anderson, and Elmer Rice, who added greatly to the stature of American theater. Women writers were particularly eff ective in dealing with regional themes. Edith Wharton continued to write penetratingly about east- ern aristocrats in books such as Th e House of Mirth (1905) and Th e Age of Innocence (1921); Willa Cather and Ellen Glasgow focused on the plight of women in the Midwest and the South, respectively, in their short stories and novels. Th ese writers portrayed their heroines in the traditional roles of wives and mothers; playwright Zona Gale, on the other hand (who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1920 for Miss Lulu Bett ), used her title character to depict the dilemmas facing an unmarried woman in American society.
Art and especially music made significant advances as well. Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfi eld captured the ugliness of city life and the loneliness of its inhabitants in their realistic paintings. Aaron Copland and George Gershwin added a new vitality to American music. But African Americans migrating northward brought the most signifi cant contribution: the spread of jazz—fi rst to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago, and fi nally to New York. Th e form of jazz known as the blues, so expressive of the suff ering of African Americans, became an authentic national folk music, and performers such as Louis Armstrong enjoyed popularity around the world.
Th e cultural growth of the 1920s was the work of blacks as well as whites. W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the newspaper Crisis , became the intellectual voice of the black community developing in New York City’s Harlem. In 1917, James Weldon Johnson, who had been a professor of literature at Fisk University, published Fift y Years and Other Poems , in which the title poem commented on the half century of suff ering that had followed the Emancipation Proclamation, and called for the promise of that period to be redeemed:
Th ink you that John Brown’s spirit stops? Th at Lovejoy was but idly slain? Or do you think those precious drops From Lincoln’s heart were shed in vain?
As other African American writers gathered around them, Du Bois and Johnson became the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance . Th e NAACP moved its headquarters to Harlem, and in 1923, the Urban League began publishing Opportunity , a magazine devoted to scholarly studies of racial issues, including black nation- alism and emigration to Africa. (See the Feature Essay, “Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism ,” pp. 596 – 597 .)
African American literature blossomed rapidly. In 1922, critics hailed the appearance of Claude McKay’s book of verses, White Shadows . In stark images, McKay expressed both his resentment against racial injustice and his pride in blackness.
the 1920s. Sex was no longer a taboo subject, at least in urban areas; men and women now could discuss it openly, and many of them did.
The Flowering of the Arts The greatest cultural advance of the 1920s was visible in the outpouring of literature. The city gave rise to a new class of intellectuals—writers who commented on the new industrial society. Many had been uprooted by World War I. They were bewildered by the rapidly changing social patterns of the 1920s and appalled by the materialism of American culture. Some fled to Europe to live as expatriates, congregating in Paris cafés to bemoan the loss of American innocence and purity. Others stayed at home, observing and condemning the excesses of a business civilization. All shared a sense of disillusionment and wrote pessimistically of the flawed promise of American life. Yet, ironically, their body of writing revealed a profound creativity that suggested America was coming of age intellectually.
Th e exiles included the poets T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound and the novelist Ernest Hemingway. Pound discarded rhyme and meter in a search for clear, cold images that conveyed reality. Like many of the writers of the 1920s, he reacted against World War I, expressing a deep regret for the tragic waste of a whole generation in defense of a “botched civilization.”
Eliot, who was born in Missouri but became a British subject, displayed even more profound despair. In Th e Waste Land , which appeared in 1922, he evoked images of fragmentation and sterility that had a powerful impact on the other disillusioned writers of the decade. He reached the depths in Th e Hollow Men (1925), a biting description of the emptiness of modern man.
Ernest Hemingway sought redemption from the modern plight in the romantic individualism of his heroes. Preoccupied with violence, he wrote of men alienated from society who found a sense of identity in their own courage and quest for personal honor. His own experiences, ranging from driving an ambulance in the war to stalking lions in Africa, made him a legendary fi gure; his greatest eff ect on other writers, however, came from his sparse, direct, and clean prose style.
Th e writers who stayed home were equally disdainful of contem- porary American life. F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled American youth in Th is Side of Paradise (1920) and Th e Great Gatsby (1925), writing in bittersweet prose about “the beautiful and the damned.” Amid the glitter of life among the wealthy on Long Island’s North Shore came the haunting realization of emptiness and lack of human concern.
Sinclair Lewis became the most popular of the critical novelists. Main Street , published in 1920, satirized the values of small-town America as dull, complacent, and narrow-minded; Babbitt , which appeared two years later, poked fun at the commercialism of the 1920s, portraying George Babbitt as the stereotype of the lazy, smug middle-class businessman who hailed the decade as a New Era.
Most savage of all was H. L. Mencken, the Baltimore news- paperman and literary critic who founded American Mercury magazine in 1923. Declaring war on “Homo boobiens,” Mencken mocked everything he found distasteful in America, from the Rotary Club to the Ku Klux Klan. “From Boy Scouts, and from Home Cooking, from Odd Fellows’ funerals, from socialists,
596
powerful reinforcement to black disil- lusionment with white America, and to Garvey’s m essage of black national- ism and racial redemption.
Garvey’s upbringing in Jamaica, under the color-based caste system of the British-ruled West Indies, convinced him that only black solidarity could lead his race out of subjugation. Dreaming of an independent black Africa, he embraced black nationalism and economic self-help, and in 1914 he molded these ideas into a vision of the Negro race redeemed through his new organization, the United
from a mark of inferiority into the basis of a program of pride and lib- eration. “The world has made being black a crime,” he declared, “and instead of making it a crime I hope to make it a virtue.”
Nowhere did these ideas fi nd a more enthusiastic reception than in the United States. World War I brought American blacks to northern cit- ies in unprecedented numbers, but the postwar economic slump aggra- vated already existing racial tensions. Urban slums, job discrimination, dis- franchisement, and segregation gave
“In a world of wolves one should go armed,” wrote Marcus Garvey in 1919, “and one of the most powerful defensive weapons within the reach of Negroes is the practice of race fi rst in all parts of the world.” This emphasis on black solidarity refl ected Garvey’s belief that racial oppression and exploitation lay at the heart of most of the world’s soci- eties. Negro equality, he insisted, would come not through integra- tion or civil rights legislation, but only by transforming black heritage
Marcus Garvey Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism
Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism on myhistorylab
Marcus Garvey’s advocacy of black nationalism and independent black entrepreneurship were, in part, discredited by his trial and conviction for mail fraud. He is shown here in custody on the way to Atlanta federal prison in 1925.
Read the Document Pearson Profiles, Marcus Garvey
597
of BSL stock. The evidence suggested that while BSL’s leaders made poor business decisions, neither Garvey nor his executives drew large salaries or lived lavishly at company expense. The BSL may have been ill-advised and badly managed, but it does not appear to have been fraudulent. The jury, however, found Garvey guilty (despite acquitting his codefendants), and the judge sentenced him to the maximum fi ve-year term.
On February 8, 1925, Garvey entered the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Ironically, once he was behind bars, he gained the sup- port of many of his erstwhile detrac- tors who protested the severity of white justice. Under mounting pres- sure, President Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence in 1927. Immediate deportation followed, as required by U.S. immigration law. On December 10, 1927, Garvey returned to Jamaica, where one of the largest crowds in the island’s history greeted him with a hero’s welcome.
Garvey tried in vain to revital- ize the UNIA in Jamaica, but with the onset of the Great Depression, American blacks concentrated more on survival than on racial national- ism. Garvey slipped into obscurity and died in 1940 at the age of fi fty- two. Despite this end, however, his movement had inspired many blacks who were disgusted by the hypocrisy of American democracy and frus- trated by the failure of gradualism to improve their lot. His appeals offered them an alternative to the legalistic approach of the more conservative black establishment, and an empha- sis on pride in their heritage that infl uenced many black Americans in succeeding generations.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did W. E. B. Du Bois and other black leaders fi nd Marcus Garvey so threatening?
2. Why did Garvey embrace the Ku Klux Klan?
inherent right . . . to possess himself of Africa.” The convention also urged the teaching of black history in schools, demanded an end to lynching and seg- regation, and elected Garvey as the provisional president of Africa.
Garvey’s vision began to unravel with his Liberian Rehabilitation project. The black African republic welcomed his offer of fi nancial and technical assistance through the UNIA, and in late 1920 he began to raise money for a reconstruction loan. In subsequent months, however, he diverted much of the proceeds to keep the ailing BSL afl oat. With large capital outlays, poor management, and high operating costs, Garvey’s dream of a maritime empire verged on fi nancial collapse. The “establishment” black press accused Garvey of adventurism, oppor- tunism, and diversion from the real path of progress. His views on the Ku Klux Klan made him even more contro- versial. While deploring Klan terror and violence, Garvey voiced appreciation of Klan candor on race relations:
I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon Clubs, and White American societies as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together. I like honesty and fair play. You may call me a Klansman if you will, but potentially every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically, and politically is concerned . . .
So stark a statement of racial separatism and suspicion of whites appalled other black leaders. W. E. B. Du Bois described him as “the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race,” and a black newspaper promised to “drive Garvey and Garveyism in all its sinister viciousness from the American soil.” Yet Marcus Garvey and his message endured; by 1921, the UNIA had more than eight hundred offi cial and unoffi cial branches.
Garvey’s battle with black lead- ers was but one of his challenges. In May 1923, he and three associates went on trial for mail fraud in the sale
Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In 1916, Garvey toured the United States, and American blacks responded so strongly to his message that he moved UNIA headquarters to Harlem. With a new weekly, the Negro World , Garvey advanced his crusade for racial redemption and separatism. The paper extolled the beauty of black skin color and African features, and his editorials demanded economic self- reliance and collective black action. “Up, you mighty race,” he exhorted. “You can accomplish what you will.”
Garvey put his principles into practice in 1919 when he launched the Black Star Line (BSL), a steamship corporation that he believed would demonstrate black competence in business, enhance racial pride, and strengthen the bonds among blacks worldwide. A company brochure offered every black investor the prom- ise of easy dividends and an opportu- nity to climb the ladder of success for only $5 per share. In November 1919, the BSL launched its fi rst of three ships and stock sales soared. Spirits were equally high at UNIA’s fi rst interna- tional convention, held in New York in 1920, which brought together several thousand delegates from all forty-eight states and more than twenty countries. After leading the opening day parade, which stretched for several miles through the streets of Harlem, Garvey delivered the keynote address before a crowd of twenty-fi ve thousand:
We are the descendents of a suffering people. We are the descendents of a people determined to suffer no longer. We shall now organize the 400,000,000 Negroes of the world into a vast organization to plant the ban- ner of freedom on the great continent of Africa….If Europe is for Europeans, then Africa shall be for the black p eoples of the world.
Others echoed his sentiments. UNIA delegates meeting in Harlem approved the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, which declared that the black man had “an
598 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
In retrospect, there is a striking paradox about the literary fl owering of the 1920s. Nearly all the writers, black as well as white, cried out against the conformity and materialism of the contemporary scene. Th ey were critical of mass production and reliance on the machine; they wrote wistfully of the disappear- ance of the artisan and of a more relaxed way of life. Few took any interest in politics or in social reform. Th ey retreated instead into individualism, seeking an escape into their art from the prevailing business civilization. Whether they went abroad or stayed home, the writers of the 1920s turned inward to avoid being swept up in the consumer goods revolution. Yet despite their withdrawal, and perhaps because of it, they produced an astonishingly rich and varied body of work. American writing had a greater intensity and depth than in the past; American writers, despite their alienation, had placed their country in the forefront of world literature.
The Rural Counterattack
How did conservatives resist the changes of the decade?
The shift of population from the countryside to the city led to heightened social tensions in the 1920s. Intent on preserving traditional social values, rural Americans saw in the city all that
Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes won critical acclaim for the beauty of their poems and the eloquence in their portrayals of the black tragedy.
Art and music also fl ourished during Harlem’s golden age. Plays and concerts at the 135th Street YMCA; floor shows at Happy Rhone’s nightclub (attended by many white celebrities); rent parties where jazz musicians played to raise money to help writers, artists, and neighbors pay their bills—all were part of the ferment that made Harlem “the Negro Capital of the World” in the 1920s. “Almost everything seemed possible above 125th Street in the early twenties for these Americans who were determined to thrive separately to better proclaim the ideals of integration,” com- mented historian David Lewis. “You could be black and proud, politically assertive and economically independent, creative, and disciplined—or so it seemed.”
Although its most famous writers were identifi ed with New York’s Harlem, the new African American cultural awareness spread to other cities in the form of poetry circles and theater groups. The number of African Americans graduating from college rose from 391 in 1920 to 1,903 by 1929. Although blacks were still an oppressed minority in the America of the 1920s, they had taken major strides toward achieving cultural and intellectual fulfi llment.
The Harlem Renaissance Watch the Video
Archibald Motley, Barbecue. Motley, one of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance, combined the traditions of his native New Orleans with the energy and rhythms of 1920s Harlem.
The Rural Counterattack 599
was evil in contemporary life. Saloons, whorehouses, little Italys and little Polands, communist cells, free love, and atheism— all were identified with the city. Accordingly, the countryside struck back at the newly dominant urban areas, aiming to restore the primacy of the Anglo-Saxon and predominantly Protestant culture they revered. This counterattack won con- siderable support in the cities from those so recently uprooted from their rural backgrounds.
Other factors contributed to the intensity of the counterattack. Th e war had unleashed a nationalistic spirit that craved unity and conformity. In a nation where one-third of the people were foreign born, the attack on immigrants and the call for 100 percent Americanism took on a frightening zeal. When the war was over, groups such as the American Legion tried to root out “ un-American” behavior and insisted on cultural as well as political conformity. Th e prewar progressive reform spirit added to the social tension. Stripped of much of its former idealism, progressivism focused on such social problems as drinking and illit- eracy to justify repressive measures such as prohibition and immigration restriction. Th e result was tragic. Amid the emergence of a new urban culture, the movements aimed at preserving the values of an ear- lier America succeeded only in compli- cating life in an already diffi cult period of cultural transition.
The Fear of Radicalism The first and most intense outbreak of national alarm, the Red Scare , came in 1919. The heightened nationalism of World War I, aimed at achieving unity at the expense of ethnic diversity, found a new target in bolshevism. The Russian Revolution and the triumph of Marxism frightened many Americans. A growing turn to communism among American radicals (especially the foreign born) accel- erated these fears. Although the numbers involved were tiny—at most there were sixty thousand communists in the United States in 1919—they were highly vis- ible. Located in the cities, their infl uence appeared to be magnifi ed with the out- break of widespread labor unrest.
A general strike in Seattle, a police strike in Boston, and a violent strike in the iron and steel industry thoroughly alarmed the American people in the spring and summer of 1919. A series of bombings led to panic. First the mayor of strikebound Seattle received a small brown package containing a homemade bomb; then an
alert New York postal employee detected sixteen bombs addressed to a variety of famous citizens (including John D. Rockefeller); and fi nally, on June 2, a bomb shattered the front of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home. Although the man who delivered it was blown to pieces, authorities quickly identifi ed him as an Italian anarchist from Philadelphia.
In the ensuing public outcry, Attorney General Palmer led the attack on the alien threat. A Quaker and progressive, Palmer abandoned his earlier liberalism to launch a massive roundup of foreign-born radicals. In a series of raids that began
A. Mitchell Palmer on the Menace of Communism (1920) Read the Document
United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer organized and implemented law enforcement raids against suspected communists and other radicals in 1919 and 1920. The Palmer raids, part of a nationwide Red Scare, involved the arrest of over three thousand persons and the deportation of over five hundred resident aliens.
600 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
the 1920s and made that decade one of the least attractive in American history.
Prohibition In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, and sent the amendment to the states for ratification. A little over a year later, in January 1919, Nebraska was the necessary thirty-sixth state to ratify, and Prohibition became the law of the land.
Eff ective January 16, 1920, the Volstead Act, which imple- mented Prohibition, banned most commercial production and dis- tribution of beverages containing more than one-half of 1 percent of alcohol by volume. (Exceptions were made for medicinal and reli- gious uses of wine and spirits. Production for one’s own private use was also allowed.) Prohibition was the result of both a rural eff ort of the Anti-Saloon League, backed by Methodist and Baptist clergy men, and the urban progressive concern over the social disease of drunkenness, especially among industrial workers. Th e moral issue had already led to the enactment of prohibition laws in twenty-six states by 1920; the real tragedy would occur in the eff ort to extend this “noble experiment” to the growing cities, where it was deeply resented by ethnic groups such as the Germans and the Irish and was almost totally disregarded by the well-to-do and the sophisticated.
Prohibition did in fact lead to a decline in drinking. Americans consumed much less alcohol in the 1920s than in the prewar years. Rural areas became totally dry, and in the cities, the consumption of alcoholic beverages dropped sharply among the lower classes, who could not aff ord the high prices for bootleg liquor. Among the mid- dle class and the wealthy, however, drinking became fashionable. Bootleggers supplied whiskey, which quickly replaced lighter spirits such as wine and beer. The alcohol was either smuggled from abroad (a $40 million a year business by 1924) or illicitly manu- factured in America. Exotic products such as Jackass Brandy, Soda Pop Moon, and Yack Yack Bourbon were common—and all could be fatal. Despite the risk of illness or death from extraordinarily high alcohol content or poorly controlled distillation, Americans consumed some 150 million quarts of liquor a year in the 1920s. Bootleggers took in nearly $2 billion annually, about 2 percent of the gross national product.
Urban resistance to Prohibition finally led to its repeal in 1933. But in the intervening years, it damaged American soci- ety by breeding a profound disrespect for the law. The flamboy- ant excesses of bootleggers were only the more obvious evils spawned by prohibition. In city after city, police openly toler- ated the traffic in liquor, and judges and prosecutors agreed to let bootleggers pay merely token fines, creating almost a sys- tem of licenses. Prohibition satisfied the countryside’s desire for vindication, yet rural and urban America alike suffered from this overzealous attempt to legislate morals.
The Ku Klux Klan Th e most ominous expression of protest against the new urban culture was the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. On Th anksgiving night in 1915, on Stone Mountain in Georgia, Colonel William J.
on November 7, federal agents seized suspected anarchists and communists and held them for deportation with no regard for due process of law. In December, 249 aliens—including such well-known radical leaders as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman—were sent to Russia aboard the Buford , dubbed the “Soviet Ark” by the press. Nearly all were innocent of the charges against them. A month later, Palmer rounded up nearly four thousand suspected communists in a single evening. Federal agents broke into homes, meeting halls, and union offi ces without search warrants. Many native-born Americans were caught in the dragnet and spent several days in jail before being released; aliens rounded up were deported without hearings or trials.
For a time, it seemed that the Red Scare reflected the prevailing views of the American people. Instead of condemning their government’s action, citizens voiced their approval and even urged more drastic steps. One patriot said his solution to the alien problem was simple: “S.O.S.—ship or shoot.” General Leonard Wood, the former army chief of staff , favored placing Bolsheviks on “ships of stone with sails of lead,” while evangelist Billy Sunday preferred to take “these ornery, wild-eyed socialists” and “stand them up before a firing squad and save space on our ships.” Infl amed by public statements like these, a group of legionnaires in Centralia, Washington, dragged a radical from the town jail, castrated him, and hanged him from a railway bridge. Th e coro- ner’s report blandly stated that the victim “jumped off with a rope around his neck and then shot himself full of holes.”
Th e very extremism of the Red Scare led to its rapid demise. In early 1920, courageous government offi cials from the Department of Labor insisted on due process and full hearings before anyone else was deported. Prominent public leaders began to speak out against the acts of terror. Charles Evans Hughes, the defeated GOP candi- date in 1916, off ered to defend six socialists expelled from the New York legislature; Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, the embodiment of middle-class values, expressed his opinion that “too much has been said about Bolshevism in America.” Finally, Palmer himself, with evident presidential ambition, went too far. In April 1920, he warned of a vast revolution to occur on May 1; the entire New York City police force, some eleven thousand strong, was placed on duty to prepare for imminent disaster. When no bombings or violence took place on May Day, the public began to react against Palmer’s hysteria. Despite a violent explosion on Wall Street in September that killed thirty-three people, the Red Scare died out by the end of 1920. Palmer passed into obscurity, the tiny Communist party became torn with factionalism, and the American people tried hard to forget their loss of balance.
Yet the Red Scare exerted a continuing infl uence on American society in the 1920s. Th e foreign-born lived in the uneasy realiza- tion that they were viewed with hostility and suspicion. Two Italian aliens in Massachusetts, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested in May 1920 for a payroll robbery and murder. Th ey faced a prosecutor and jury who condemned them more for their ideas than for any evidence of criminal conduct and a judge who referred to them as “those anarchist bastards.” Despite a world- wide eff ort that became the chief liberal cause of the 1920s, the courts rejected all appeals. Sacco, a shoemaker, and Vanzetti, a fi sh peddler, died in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. Th eir fate symbolized the bigotry and intolerance that lasted through
The Rural Counterattack 601
culture, as Klansmen perceived it, came also from immigrants, Jews, and Catholics. Th ey attributed much of the tension and confl ict in society to the prewar fl ood of immigrants, foreigners who spoke diff erent languages, worshiped in strange churches, and lived in distant, threatening cities. Th e Klansmen struck back by coming together and enforcing their own values. Th ey punished blacks who did not know their place, women who practiced the new morality, and aliens who refused to conform. Beating, fl og- ging, burning with acid—even murder—were con- doned. Th ey also tried more peaceful methods of coercion, formulating codes of behavior and seeking community-wide support.
Th e Klan entered politics, at fi rst hesitantly, then with growing confi dence. Th e KKK gained control of the legislatures in Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Indiana; in 1924, it blocked a resolution of censure at the Democratic national convention. With an esti- mated fi ve million members by the mid-1920s, the Klan seemed to be fully established.
Much of its appeal lay in the sanctuary it off ered to people anxious about the direction of American society. Protestant to the core, the Klan provided reassurance sometimes missing in mem- bers’ churches. Members were beguiled by the titles, ranging from Imperial Wizard to Grand Dragon, and they gloried in the ritual that centered around the letter K . Th us each Klan had its own Klalendar, held its weekly Klonklave in the local Klavern, and followed the rules set forth in the Kloran. Members found a sense of identity in the group activi- ties, whether they were peaceful picnics, ominous parades in white robes, or fiery cross burnings at night.
Although it was a men’s organization, the Klan did not neglect the family. There was a Women’s Order, a Junior Order for boys, and a Tri-K Klub for girls. Members had to be born in America, but for- eign-born Protestants were allowed to join a special Krusaders affi liate. Only blacks, Catholics, Jews, and prostitutes were beyond redemption to these lonely and anxious men who came together to chant:
United we stick Divided we’re stuck. Th e better we stick Th e better we Klux!
The Klan fell even more quickly than it rose. Its more vio- lent activities—which included kidnapping, lynching, setting fire to synagogues and Catholic churches, and, in one case, murdering a priest—began to offend the nation’s conscience. Misuse of funds and sexual scandals among Klan leaders, nota- bly in Indiana, repelled many of the rank and file; effective counterattacks by traditional politicians ousted the KKK from control in Texas and Oklahoma. Membership declined sharply after 1925; by the end of the decade, the Klan had virtually
Simmons and thirty-four followers founded the modern Klan. Only “native born, white, gentile Americans” were permit- ted to join “the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Membership grew slowly during World War I, but aft er 1920, fueled by postwar fears and shrewd promotional techniques, the Klan mushroomed. In villages, towns, and small cities across the nation—no longer simply in the South—Anglo-Saxon Protestant men fl ocked into the newly formed chapters, seeking to relieve their anxiety over a changing society by embracing the Klan’s unusual rituals and by demonstrating their hatred against those they considered a threat to American values.
Th e Klan of the 1920s, unlike the night riders of the post– Civil War era, was not just antiblack; the threat to American
Read the Document Court Statements from Sacco and Vanzetti
Italian immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were accused of killing a paymaster and stealing about $16,000 in 1920. Many believed they were convicted and executed in 1927 because of their anarchistic beliefs.
602 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
“barbarian horde” and a “foreign tide” that would inundate the United States with “dangerous and deadly enemies of the country.” Even though the actual number of immigrants, 810,000 in 1920 (fewer than the prewar yearly average), did not match these projections, Congress, in 1921, passed an emergency immigration act. Th e new quota system restricted immigration from Europe to 3 percent of the number of nationals from each country living in the United States in 1910.
Th e 1921 act failed to satisfy the nativists. Th e quotas still permitted more than fi ve hundred thousand Europeans to come to the United States in 1923, nearly half of them from southern and eastern Europe. Th e declining percentage of Nordic immi- grants alarmed writers such as Madison Grant, who warned the American people the Anglo-Saxon stock that had founded the nation was about to be overwhelmed by lesser breeds with infe- rior genes. “Th ese immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes and are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ide- als,” Grant wrote.
Psychologists, relying on primitive IQ tests used by the army in World War I, confi rmed this judgment. (See the Feature Essay in Chapter 24 , “Measuring the Mind,” pp. 574 – 575 .) One senator
disappeared. But its spirit lived on, testimony to the recurring demons of nativism and hatred that have surfaced periodically throughout the American experience.
Immigration Restriction Th e nativism that permeated the Klan found its most success- ful outlet in the immigration legislation of the 1920s. Th e sharp increase in immigration in the late nineteenth century had led to a broad-based movement, spearheaded by organized labor and by New England aristocrats such as Henry Cabot Lodge, to restrict the fl ow of people from Europe. In 1917, over Wilson’s veto, Congress enacted a literacy test that reduced the number of immi- grants allowed into the country. Th e war caused a much more drastic decline—from an average of 1 million a year between 1900 and 1914 to only 110,000 in 1918.
Aft er the armistice, however, rumors began to spread of an impending fl ood of people seeking to escape war-ravaged Europe. Kenneth Roberts, a popular historical novelist, warned that all Europe was on the move, with only the limits of available steam- ship space likely to stem the fl ow. Worried congressmen spoke of a
A 1925 Ku Klux Klan demonstration in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended by nearly thirty thousand robed members and marked by the induction of eight thousand young boys in the Junior Order. Only native-born, white Americans “who believe in the tenets of the Christian religion” were admitted into the Klan. The original Klan, formed during the Reconstruction era to terrorize former slaves, disbanded in 1869. The Klan that formed in 1915 declined after the mid-1920s but did not officially disband until 1944. Two years later, a third Klan emerged, focusing on the civil rights movement and communism.
Read the Document Creed of Klanswomen, 1924
Politics of the 1920s 603
J. Frank Norris erected a six thousand-seat sanctuary for the First Baptist Church, bathing it in spotlights so it could be seen for thirty miles across the North Texas prairie.
Far from dying out, as divinity professor Thomas G. Oden noted, biblical fundamentalism retained “remark- able grass roots strength among the organization men and the industrialized mass society of the 20th century.” The rural counterattack, while challenged by the city, did enable some older American values to survive in the midst of the new mass production culture.
Politics of the 1920s
How did the politics of the 1920s refl ect changes in the economy and in American society?
Th e tensions between the city and the countryside also shaped the course of politics in the 1920s. On the surface, it was a Republican decade. Th e GOP (“Grand Old Party”) controlled the White House from 1921 to 1933 and had majorities in both houses of Congress from 1919 to 1931. Th e Republicans used their return to power aft er World War I to halt further reform legislation and to estab- lish a friendly relationship between government and business. Important shift s were taking place, however, in the American electorate. The Democrats, although divided into competing urban and rural wings, were laying the groundwork for the future by winning over millions of new voters, especially among the ethnic groups in the cities. Th e rising tide of urban voters indi- cated a fundamental shift away from the Republicans toward a new Democratic majority.
Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover Th e Republicans regained the White House in 1920 with the election of Warren G. Harding of Ohio. A dark-horse contender, Harding won the GOP nomination when the convention dead- locked and he became the compromise choice. Handsome and dignified, Harding reflected both the virtues and blemishes of small-town America. Originally a newspaper publisher in Marion, he had made many friends and few enemies throughout his career as a legislator, lieutenant governor, and fi nally, aft er 1914, U.S. senator. Conventional in outlook, Harding was a genial man who lacked the capacity to govern and who, as president, broadly delegated power.
He made some good cabinet choices, notably Charles Evans Hughes as secretary of state and Herbert C. Hoover as secretary of commerce, but two corrupt offi cials—Attorney General Harry Daugherty and Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall—sabotaged his administration. Daugherty became involved in a series of ques- tionable deals that led ultimately to his forced resignation; Fall was the chief fi gure in the Teapot Dome scandal . Two oil promoters gave Fall nearly $400,000 in loans and bribes; in return, he helped them secure leases on naval oil reserves in Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming. The scandal came to light after Harding’s death from a heart attack in 1923. Fall eventually served a year in jail, and the reputation of the Harding administration never recovered.
claimed that all the nation’s ills were due to an “intermingled and mongrelized people” as he demanded that racial purity replace the older reliance on the melting pot. In 1924, Congress adopted the National Origins Quota Act , which limited immigration from Europe to 150,000 a year; allocated most of the available slots to immigrants from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia; and banned all Asian immigrants. Th e measure passed Congress with overwhelming rural support.
The new restrictive legislation marked the most endur- ing achievement of the rural counterattack. Unlike the Red Scare, prohibition, and the Klan, the quota system would sur- vive until the 1960s, enforcing a racist bias that excluded Asians and limited the immigration of Italians, Greeks, and Poles to a few thousand a year while permitting a steady stream of Irish, English, and Scandinavian immigrants. Th e large corporations, no longer dependent on armies of unskilled immigrant workers, did not object to the 1924 law; the machine had replaced the immigrant on the assembly line. Yet even here the victory was not complete. A growing tide of Mexican laborers, exempt from the quota act, fl owed northward across the Rio Grande to fi ll the continuing need for unskilled workers on the farms and in the service trades. Th e Mexican immigrants, as many as one hundred thousand a year, marked the strengthening of an element in the national ethnic mosaic that would grow in size and infl uence until it became a major force in modern American society.
The Fundamentalist Challenge Th e most signifi cant—and, as it turned out, longest-lasting— challenge to the new urban culture was rooted in the traditional religious beliefs of millions of Americans who felt alienated from city life, from science, and from much of what modern- ization entailed. Sometimes this challenge was direct, as when Christian fundamentalists campaigned against the teaching of evolution in the public schools. Th eir success in Tennessee touched off a court battle, the Scopes trial , that drew the atten- tion of the entire country to the small town of Dayton in the summer of 1925. (See the Law and Society essay, “Th e Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial ,” pp. 608 – 611 .)
Other aspects of the fundamentalist challenge were more subtle but no less important in countering the modernizing trend. As middle- and upper-class Americans drifted into a genteel Christianity that stressed good works and respectability, the Baptist and Methodist churches continued to hold on to the old faith. In addition, aggressive fundamentalist sects such as the Churches of Christ, the Pentecostals, and Jehovah’s Witnesses grew rapidly. While church membership increased from 41.9 million in 1916 to 54.5 million in 1926, the number of churches actually declined during the decade. More and more rural dwell- ers drove their cars into town instead of going to the local cross- roads chapel.
Many of those who came to the city in the 1920s brought their religious beliefs with them and found new outlets for their traditional ideas. Thus evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson enjoyed amazing success in Los Angeles with her Church of the Four-Square Gospel, building the Angelus Temple to seat more than fi ve thousand worshipers. And in Fort Worth, the Reverend
604 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
he proclaimed. “Th e man who builds a factory builds a temple; the man who works there worships there.” Consistent with this philosophy, he believed his duty was simply to preside benignly, not govern the nation. “Four-fi ft hs of all our troubles in this life would disappear,” he said, “if we would just sit down and be still.” Calvin Coolidge, one observer noted, “aspired to become the least President the country ever had; he attained his desire.” Satisfi ed with the prosperity of the mid-1920s, the people responded favorably. Coolidge was elected to a full term by a wide margin in 1924.
Vice President Calvin Coolidge assumed the presidency upon Harding’s death, and his honesty and integrity quickly reassured the nation. Coolidge, born in Vermont of old Yankee stock, had fi rst gained national attention in 1919 as governor of Massachusetts when he had dealt fi rmly with a Boston police strike by declaring, “Th ere is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.” A reserved, reticent man, Coolidge became famous for his epigrams, which contempo- raries mistook for wisdom. “Th e business of America is business,”
Read the Document Executive Orders and Senate Resolutions on Teapot Dome
During the administration of William H. Taft, the U.S. government had set aside tracts of oil-rich land to be held in reserve for the U.S. Navy, to be used in case of national emergency. The land was under the control and discretion of the secretary of the Navy.
Politics of the 1920s 605
Th e revenue acts of the 1920s greatly reduced the burden of taxation; by the end of the decade, the government was collecting one-third less than it had in 1921, and the number of people paying income taxes dropped from more than 6.5 million to 4 million. Yet the greatest relief went to the wealthy. Th e public was shocked to learn in the 1930s that J. P. Morgan, Jr. and his nineteen part- ners had paid no income tax at all during the depths of the Great Depression.
Th e growing crisis in American farming during the decade forced the Republican administrations to seek new solutions. Th e end of the European war led to a sharp decline in farm prices and a return to the problem of overproduction. Southern and western lawmakers formed a farm bloc in Congress to press for special legislation for American agriculture. Th e farm bloc supported the higher tariffs, which included protection for constituents’ crops, and helped secure passage of legislation to create federal supervision over stockyards, packinghouses, and grain trading.
Th is special-interest legislation failed to get at the root of overproduction, however. Farmers then supported more contro- versial measures designed to raise domestic crop prices by having the government sell the surplus overseas at low world prices. Coolidge vetoed the legislation on grounds that it involved unwarranted government interference in the economy.
Yet the government’s role in the economy increased rather than lessened in the 1920s. Republicans widened the scope of federal activity and nearly doubled the ranks of govern- ment employees. Herbert Hoover led the way in the Commerce Department, establishing new bureaus to help make American industry more effi cient in housing, transportation, and mining. Under his leadership, the government encouraged corporations to develop welfare programs that undercut trade unions, and he tried to minimize labor disturbances by devising new federal machinery to mediate disputes. Instead of going back to the laissez-faire tradition of the nineteenth century, the Republican administrations of the 1920s were pioneering a close relationship between government and private business.
The Divided Democrats While the Republicans ruled in the 1920s, the Democrats seemed bent on self-destruction. The Wilson coalition fell apart in 1920 as pent-up dissatisfaction stemming from the war enabled Harding to win by a landslide. Th e pace of the second Industrial Revolution and the growing urbanization split the party in two. One faction was centered in the rural South and West. Traditional Democrats who had supported Wilson stood for Prohibition, fundamentalism, the Klan, and other facets of the rural counterattack against the city. In contrast, a new breed of Democrat was emerging in the metropolitan areas of the North and Midwest. Immigrants and their descendants began to become active in the Democratic party. Catholic or Jewish in religion and strongly opposed to Prohibition, they had little in common with their rural counterparts.
The split within the party surfaced dramatically at the national convention in New York in 1924. Held in Madison Square Garden, a hall built in the 1890s and too small and
When Coolidge announced in 1927 that he did not “choose to run,” Herbert Hoover became the Republican choice to succeed him. By far the ablest GOP leader of the decade, Hoover epitomized the American myth of the self-made man. Orphaned as a boy, he had worked his way through Stanford University and had gained both wealth and fame as a mining engineer. During World War I, he had displayed admirable administra- tive skills in directing Wilson’s food program at home and relief activities abroad. Sober, intelligent, and immensely hardwork- ing, Hoover embodied the nation’s faith in individualism and free enterprise.
As secretary of commerce under Harding and Coolidge, he had sought cooperation between government and business. He used his offi ce to assist American manufacturers and exporters in expanding their overseas trade, and he strongly supported a trade association movement to encourage cooperation rather than cutthroat competition among smaller American companies. He did not view business and government as antagonists. Instead, he saw them as partners, working together to achieve effi ciency and affluence for all Americans. His optimistic view of the future led him to declare in his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1928 that “we in America today are nearer to the fi nal triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”
Republican Policies During the 1920 campaign, Warren Harding urged a return to “not heroism, but healing, not nostrums, but normalcy.” Misreading his speechwriter’s “normality,” he coined a new word that became the theme for the Republican administrations of the 1920s. Aware that the public was tired of zealous reform- minded presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Harding and his successors sought a return to traditional Republican policies. In some areas they were successful, but in others the Republican leaders were forced to adjust to the new realities of a mass production society. Th e result was a mixture of traditional and innovative measures that was neither wholly reactionary nor entirely progressive.
Th e most obvious attempt to go back to the Republicanism of William McKinley came in tariff and tax policy. Fearful of a fl ood of postwar European imports, Congress passed an emergency tariff act in 1921 and followed it a year later with the protectionist Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act. Th e net eff ect was to raise the basic rates substantially over the moderate Underwood Tariff schedules of the Wilson period.
Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, a wealthy Pittsburgh banker and industrialist, worked hard to achieve a simi- lar return to normalcy in taxation. Condemning the high wartime tax rates on businesses and wealthy individuals, Mellon pressed for repealing an excess profi ts tax on corporations and slash- ing personal rates on the very rich. Using the new budget system adopted by Congress in 1921, he reduced government spending from its World War I peak of $18 billion to just over $3 billion by 1925, thereby creating a slight surplus. Congress responded in 1926 by cutting the highest income tax bracket to a modest 20 percent.
606 CHAPTER 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
the prototype of the urban Democrat. He was Catholic; he was associated with a big-city machine; he was a “wet” who wanted to end Prohibition. Starting out in the Fulton Fish Market as a boy, he had joined Tammany Hall and gradually climbed the political ladder, rising from subpoena server to state legislator to gover- nor, a post he held with distinction for nearly a decade. Rejected by rural Democrats in 1924, he still had to prove he could unite the South and West behind his leadership. His lack of education, poor grammar, and distinctive New York accent all hurt him, as did his eastern provincialism. When reporters asked him about his appeal in the states west of the Mississippi, he replied, “What states are west of the Mississippi?”
Th e choice facing the American voter in 1928 seemed unusu- ally clear-cut. Herbert Hoover was a Protestant, a dry, and an old- stock American, who stood for effi ciency and individualism; Smith was a Catholic, a wet, and a descendant of immigrants, who was closely associated with big-city politics. Just as Smith appealed to new voters in the cities, so Hoover won the support of many old- line Democrats who feared the city, Tammany Hall, and the pope.
Yet beneath the surface, as Allan J. Lichtman points out, there were “striking similarities between Smith and Hoover.” Both were self-made men who embodied the American belief in freedom of opportunity and upward mobility. Neither advocated any signifi - cant degree of economic change nor any redistribution of national wealth or power. Th ough religion proved to be the most impor- tant issue in the minds of the voters, hurting Smith far more than prohibition or his identifi cation with the city, the Democratic can- didate’s failure to spotlight the growing cracks in prosperity or to off er alternative economic policies ensured his defeat.
cramped for the more than one thousand delegates, the con- vention soon degenerated into what one observer described as a “snarling, cursing, tenuous, suicidal, homicidal roughhouse.” City slickers mocked the “rubes and hicks” from the “sticks”; populist orators struck back by denouncing the city as “want- ing in national ideals, devoid of conscience . . . rooted in cor- ruption, directed by greed, and dominated by selfi shness.” An urban resolution to condemn the Ku Klux Klan led to a spirited response from the rural faction and its defeat by a single vote. Th en for nine days, in the midst of a stifl ing heat wave, the delegates divided between Alfred E. Smith, the governor of New York, and William G. McAdoo of California, Wilson’s secretary of the treasury. When it became clear that neither the city nor the rural candidate could win a majority, both men withdrew; on the 103rd ballot, the weary Democrats fi nally chose John W. Davis, a former West Virginia congressman and New York corporation lawyer, as their compromise nominee.
In the ensuing election, the conservative Davis had diffi culty setting his views apart from those of Republican president Calvin Coolidge. For the discontented, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin off ered an alternative by running on an independent Progressive Party ticket. Coolidge won easily, receiving 15 million votes to 8 million for Davis and nearly 5 million for La Follette. Davis had made the poorest showing of any Democratic candidate in the twentieth century.
THE ELECTION OF 1924
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Coolidge Republican 15,725,016 382
Davis Democrat 8,386,503 136
La Follette Progressive 4,822,856 13
Yet the Democrats were in far better shape than this set- back indicated. Beginning in 1922, the party had made heavy inroads into the GOP majority in Congress. The Democrats took seventy-eight seats away from the Republicans in that election, many of them in the cities of the East and Midwest. In New York alone, they gained thirteen new congressmen, all but one in districts with heavy immigrant populations. Even in 1924, the Republican vote in large cities declined as many urban voters chose La Follette in the absence of an attractive Democratic candidate. In 1926, the Democrats came within one vote of controlling the Senate and picked up nine more seats in the House in metropolitan areas. The large cities were swinging clearly into the Democratic column; all the party needed was a charismatic leader who could fuse the older rural elements with the new urban voters.
The Election of 1928 Th e selection of Al Smith as the Democratic candidate in 1928 indicated the growing power of the city. Born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan of mixed Irish-German ancestry, Smith was
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Election of 1928
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN Herbert C. Hoover
Popular Vote
21,391,381444
DEMOCRATIC Alfred E. Smith 15,016,44387
MINOR PARTIES 330,725
36,738,549531
Conclusion: The Old and the New 607
The 1928 election was a dubious victory for the Republicans. Hoover won easily, defeating Smith by more than six million votes and carrying such traditionally Democratic states as Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida. But Smith succeeded for the first time in winning a majority of votes for the Democrats in the nation’s twelve largest cities. A new Democratic electorate was emerging, consisting of Catholics and Jews, Irish and Italians, Poles and Greeks. Now the task was to unite the traditional Democrats of the South and West with the urban voters of the Northeast and Midwest.
Conclusion: The Old and the New
Th e election-night celebrations at Hoover campaign headquar- ters were muted by Prohibition and by the president-elect’s natural reserve. Had Hoover known what lay just ahead for the country, and for his presidency, no doubt the party would have been even more somber.
During the 1920s, America struggled to enter the modern era. Th e economics of mass production and the politics of urbaniza- tion drove the country forward, but the persistent appeal of indi- vidualism and rural-based values held it back. Americans achieved greater prosperity than ever before, but the prosperity was unevenly distributed. Further, as the outbursts of nativism, ethnic and racial bigotry, and intolerance revealed, prosperity hardly guaranteed generosity or unity. Nor, for that matter, did it guarantee contin- ued prosperity, even for those who benefi ted initially. As much as America changed during the 1920s, in one crucial respect the coun- try remained as before. Th e American economy, for all its remark- able productive capacity, was astonishingly fragile. Th is was the message Hoover was soon to learn.
Watch the Video Prosperity of the 1920s and the Great Depression
The development of mile-long breadlines in cities and towns throughout the country following the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 symbolized the crushing end of the prosperity of the 1920s.
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From the start, Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes was about far more than Scopes. Supporters and opponents of the antievolution law converged on Dayton from around the country. The law’s supporters brought in the renowned orator William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic nomi- nee for president, former secretary of state, and fervent Christian fundamen- talist, to assist the prosecution, headed by chief prosecutor A. Thomas Stewart, attorney general of Tennessee. Since the early 1920s Bryan had led the charge against the theories of Charles Darwin and the teaching of evolution in the schools; his syndicated newspaper col- umn, “Weekly Bible Talks,” frequently hammered Darwinism and what Bryan considered excessive faith in science.
The ACLU summoned counsel for the defense and Clarence Darrow, one of the most celebrated trial lawyers in America in the 1920s, volunteered his services as the chief defense attorney. He delighted in defending unpopular causes, including labor activists (he had defended socialist leader Eugene V. Debs in the Pullman strike of 1894), political radicals, and murder suspects. He was also an outspoken agnostic, doubting the existence of God, and a vocal critic of Christian fundamentalists, includ- ing Bryan.
A small army of reporters descended upon Dayton, including journalist H. L. Mencken, widely known for his bit- ing wit and disdain for middle America, who was writing for the Baltimore Sun and the American Mercury . From all over America and from various for- eign countries the journalists came, eager to convey to their readers every detail of “the Monkey trial,” as the trial was dubbed. The new technology of radio supplemented the newspaper
legislation to keep the scientifi c the- ory out of the classroom.
Such a law was introduced in Tennessee by John W. Butler, a state representative. The statute passed both houses of the Tennessee legislature by a large majority and was signed into law by the governor in March 1925. The Butler Act, as it became known, made it unlawful for a teacher in state- supported schools “to teach any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” Violating the law was designated a misdemeanor punishable by a fi ne of $100 to $500 for each offense.
In response to the Butler Act, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) advertised for teachers in Tennessee willing to challenge the new law in court. Civic boosters in Dayton, eager to draw attention to their small town in eastern Tennessee, persuaded John Scopes, a science teacher and assistant football coach in Dayton, to accept the ACLU offer. Scopes was a logical choice. He opposed the antievolution law on philosophical grounds, and he had little to lose personally, being twenty-four and single and with no particular desire to remain in Dayton. Furthermore, he was a likable young man, popular around town and with otherwise conventional views, and so wouldn’t muddy the legal waters by provoking the judge or jury unnecessarily. Scopes admitted that anyone teaching from the state’s approved biology textbook, Hunter’s Civic Biology , which included sections on evolution of animals and humans, would be breaking the new law. Scopes had used the text as a substitute biology teacher. He agreed to be arrested to test the law in court.
During the postwar 1920s, a “new” America emerged. Largely urban, secular, and focused on the future, the “modern” cul- ture challenged the traditional val- ues and familiar way of life of many Americans, especially those liv- ing in rural areas. Intense cultural confl ict characterized the decade. Those who saw in modern culture numerous threats to the moral fab- ric of the nation increasingly turned to their faith for stability and com- fort. The popularity of Protestant fundamentalism, which held to a literal interpretation of the Bible, increased dramatically during this period, particularly in the South. According to fundamentalists, one of the key modernist attacks on tra- ditional religious beliefs came from the realm of science.
Advancements in science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries fueled modernization, and Americans increasingly placed their faith in the authority of science and progress. There was growing accep- tance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which demonstrated that plants and animals—including humans—evolved from lower life forms by a process of natural selec- tion. By the 1920s, discussion of evolution theory had entered pub- lic school classrooms. Though many Americans could reconcile a belief in evolution with their religious beliefs, fundamentalists thought the theory of evolution contradicted the Biblical story of creation and was therefore blasphemous—particularly the notion that humans evolved from a lower primate form. Fundamentalists led a charge against evolution, particularly against its teaching in the schools, and several southern states turned to
The Scopes “Monkey” Trial Contesting Cultural Differences
Law and Society
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commenced softly, conveying an impression of calm reason. But as he warmed to his subject, his voice rose and his words became more intense. He denied that he or most of the citi- zens of Tennessee advocated teaching the Bible in schools. And even if they did advocate it, the Tennessee consti- tution prevented them. The question at hand was different, Bryan said.
The question is, can a minority in this state come in and compel a teacher to teach that the Bible is not true, and make the parents of these children pay the expenses of the teacher to tell their children what these people believe is false and dangerous? Has it come to a time when the minority can take charge of a state like Tennessee and compel the majority to pay their teachers while they take religion out of the heart of the children of the parents who pay the teachers?
Bryan was a master at working an audience, and the jurors and specta- tors in the courtroom—and a larger
like evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church.”
Darrow and the defense team wanted to introduce scientifi c evidence supporting the theory of evolution by summoning a number of scientists from various fi elds as expert witnesses. The prosecution protested opening the case to this wider issue. “I say, bar the door and not allow science to enter,” declared Stewart, the chief prosecu- tor. After hearing arguments from both sides and initial testimony from the defense’s fi rst witness, the court sided with Stewart and Tennessee. “The evidence of experts would shed no light on the issues,” Judge Raulston ruled.
It was Bryan’s speech for the pros- ecution that brought real excitement to the courtroom and the nationwide attention to Dayton that the city’s supporters had hoped for. The Great Commoner, as Bryan was known,
coverage, especially after Judge John Raulston agreed to allow microphones in the courtroom.
The proceedings opened on Friday, July 10. To the prosecution, the case was fairly simple. They held that the state had the constitutional right to set the curriculum in state-funded schools. The question to be decided was whether Scopes had violated the Butler Act by covering the theory of evolution in his classroom. Prosecution witnesses, including a school offi cial and several of Scopes’s students, testifi ed that he had.
Darrow and the defense argued principally that the antievolution law violated several clauses of the Tennessee constitution as well as the guarantee of freedom of speech and provision for separation of church and state in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Contending that the law also violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s declaration that no state was permitted to pass a law that abridged citizens’ privileges, Darrow argued, “If today you can take a thing
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Bryan: Those are the people whom you insult.
Darrow: You insult every man of sci- ence and learning in the world because he does not believe in your fool religion.
Judge Raulston: I will not stand for that.
Darrow: For what he is doing? Judge Raulston: I am talking to
both of you.
Such dignity as the trial initially possessed had disappeared by now. After the exchange continued for some time, Darrow asked Bryan if he had ever wondered where Cain’s wife came from. “No, sir,” Bryan replied. “I leave the agnostics to hunt for her.” Darrow asked Bryan if the six days of creation were twenty-four-hour days. Bryan allowed that they might have been longer.
Finally Tom Stewart broke into Darrow’s questioning. “What is the purpose of this examination?” the chief prosecutor demanded.
“The purpose is to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible,” Bryan asserted.
Darrow answered differently. “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.”
Darrow was allowed to continue his questioning about creation. Might it have lasted more than a modern week? Bryan granted that it could have. How much more? “It might have continued for millions of years.”
Darrow’s examination of Bryan lasted two hours. Before the end it was obvious that it had little to do with the case at hand—but everything to do with the larger issue joined by Darrow and Bryan. As a reporter for the Nashville Banner explained, “In reality, it was a debate between Darrow and Bryan on Biblical history, on agnosti- cism and belief in revealed religion.”
Not surprisingly, judgments regard- ing the outcome of the debate depended on the source of those judgments. The New York Times thought Darrow scored a clear victory. “Mr. Bryan’s complete lack of interest in many of
given illustratively. For instance: “Ye are the salt of the earth.” I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had fl esh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God’s people.
Darrow pressed on. Did Bryan believe that a whale swallowed Jonah?
Bryan: When I read that a big fi sh swallowed Jonah—it does not say whale—
Darrow: Doesn’t it? Are you sure? Bryan: That is my recollection of it.
A big fi sh, and I believe it, and I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both do what He pleases.
Darrow continued his line of ques- tioning, asking Bryan to interpret other passages of the Bible. Had Joshua really made the sun stand still?
Bryan: I believe what the Bible says.
Did that mean that the sun actu- ally stood still, or that the Earth stopped spinning? For that matter, did Mr. Bryan believe that the Earth circled the sun, or vice versa?
Bryan assured Darrow and the court that he knew that the Earth orbited the sun. But he allowed that the author of the Joshua passage might not have. “I believe that the Bible is inspired, an inspired author. Whether one who wrote as he was directed to write understood the things he was writing about, I don’t know.” Darrow inter- rupted, but Bryan went on: “I believe it was inspired by the Almighty, and He may have used language that could be understood at that time—instead of using language that could not be understood until Darrow was born.”
Listeners, siding with Bryan but squirming under Darrow’s question- ing, broke into loud applause here. When the applause recurred, Darrow said sarcastically, “Great applause from the bleachers.”
Bryan: From those whom you call “yokels.”
Darrow: I have never called them yokels.
The exchange grew nastier.
group listening in the yard outside the court—hung on his every word. They laughed as he lampooned the Darwinians; they nodded agreement as he affi rmed the teachings of the Bible. They thundered their approval of his wry observation: “The Christian believes that man came from above, but the evolutionist believes he must have come from below.” Following a loud “Amen!” from the audience, Darrow, who had been sitting silently through Bryan’s long speech, inter- jected: “I hope the reporters got the amens in the record. I want some- where, at some point, to fi nd some court where a picture of this will be painted.” Such information in the offi - cial record would ensure higher courts a more complete picture of the atmo- sphere in the courtroom.
Denied the opportunity to call on expert witnesses to provide support for the theory of evolution, Darrow found another opportunity after the defense made an unusual request to place Bryan on the witness stand. There was some question as to whether Bryan could or should testify, as he had no fi rsthand knowledge of what Scopes had or hadn’t done, and was no expert on the constitutions of Tennessee or the United States. But the defense asked permission to question Bryan as an expert witness on the Bible. Bryan indicated willingness and Judge Raulston—who relished the public- ity the case was generating—let the two celebrities go at each other. What resulted was one of the most dramatic courtroom scenes in American history.
Darrow asked Bryan whether he had given “considerable study to the Bible.” Bryan responded, “I have studied the Bible for about fi fty years, or some time more than that . . . .”
Given that opening, Darrow went on to ask questions designed to under- mine a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible.
Darrow: Do you claim that every- thing in the Bible should be liter- ally interpreted?
Bryan: I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there. Some of the Bible is
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however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such bans were unconsti- tutional. During the 1970s and 1980s various Sunbelt school districts man- dated that “creationism”—essentially the Biblical version of life’s origins, though typically without the explicit references to Genesis—be given equal time in the classroom with evolution. Arkansas and Louisiana passed such laws, but in 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that these laws were also unconsti- tutional. Still the issue refused to die. In 1999, the Kansas school board ordered that the theory of evolution should be deemphasized in the state’s classrooms. The Kansas board even- tually changed its mind, but in 2005 it reversed course again, directing teachers to point out the defi cien- cies in the theory of evolution, in the name of “intelligent design,” the latest variant of creationism. Other states considered similar measures, demonstrating, if nothing else, that the Scopes trial was far more than a curiosity from the past.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did different observers interpret the outcome of the Scopes trial so differently?
2. Why does the issue of evolution in the public schools continue to resurface decades after laws banning its teaching were found unconstitutional?
The Scopes trial settled nothing. The defense appealed the conviction to the Tennessee Supreme Court, where it was set aside on a technicality. But the antievolution law was left intact, and stood for another forty years, until the Tennessee legislature repealed it in 1967. In the immediate aftermath of the Scopes trial, both sides claimed moral victory, and the rift that gave rise to the case simply grew wider. Fundamentalism was discredited in large parts of urban America, but it sank roots in the rural regions of the country, becoming stronger than ever, if some- times less visible. Several state legis- latures considered antievolution bills in the latter half of the 1920s, but only Georgia and Mississippi actually passed laws restricting teaching of Darwin’s theory. Concern over diminishing sales in the South and West, however, drove textbook publishers to revise coverage of evolution in many textbooks—deem- phasizing the topic or eliminating it entirely. With or without legislation opposing its teaching, evolution did dis- appear from many classrooms.
In 1960, the liberal New Republic declared, “The Monkey Trial is now a historical curiosity”—a judgment that proved premature when evolu- tion reemerged as a controversial issue. The constitutional question of whether the First Amendment permit- ted states to ban teaching of a theory that contradicted religious beliefs had not been resolved by the Scopes case. In the 1968 case Epperson v. Arkansas ,
the things closely connected with such religious questions as he had been sup- porting for many years was strikingly shown again and again by Mr. Darrow,” the Times explained. The Memphis Commercial Appeal thought Bryan had held his own: “Darrow succeeded in showing that Bryan knows little about the science of the world. Bryan suc- ceeded in bearing witness bravely to the faith which he believes transcends all the learning of men.”
The reaction to the trial’s verdict was similar. Scopes, to no one’s sur- prise, was convicted of violating the law and Judge Raulston fi ned him $100. Even Darrow, intending to appeal the verdict to a higher court, recommended that the jury fi nd Scopes guilty. Antievolutionists in Tennessee and elsewhere took the conviction as vindication of their beliefs. But to many Americans with more secular views, the conviction was simply further evidence of the wrongheadedness of Bryan and the Tennessee legislature. When Bryan died suddenly just fi ve days after the trial ended, a southern journal- ist approached Darrow for comment. “People down here believe that Bryan died of a broken heart because of your questioning,” the journalist said. Darrow, referring to Bryan’s notoriously large appetite, reportedly responded, “Broken heart nothing. He died of a busted belly.” H. L. Mencken remarked, “God aimed at Darrow, missed, and hit Bryan instead.”
612 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER REVIEW
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T I M E L I N E
1919 U.S. agents arrest 1,700 in Red Scare raids; Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) ratifi ed
1920 Nineteenth Amendment passed, granting women the right to vote
1922 Fordney-McCumber tariff becomes law; T. S. Eliot publishes The Waste Land
1923 Newspapers expose Ku Klux Klan graft, torture, and murder
1924 Senate probes Teapot Dome scandal; National Origins Quota Act restricts immigration from Europe and bans immigration from Asia
1925 John Scopes convicted of teaching theory of evolu- tion in violation of Tennessee law (July)
1927 Charles Lindbergh completes fi rst nonstop transat- lantic fl ight from New York to Paris (May); Sacco and Vanzetti executed (August); Babe Ruth hits 60th home run (September)
1928 Hoover defeats Smith for president
The Second Industrial Revolution
What was new about the American economy in the 1920s?
The American economy in the 1920s underwent a second industrial revolution. Powered by electricity and featuring the mass production of automobiles and other consumer
goods, the second industrial revolution lifted the American standard of living to new heights. (p. 589 )
City life in the Jazz Age
How did life in the cities change after World War I?
During the 1920s, the focus of American life shifted to the cities, which for the first time contained most of the American population. Women found new opportunities to express themselves, and sports, music, literature, and the
arts flourished as never before. (p. 592 )
The Rural Counterattack
How did conservatives resist the changes of the decade?
The changes of the 1920s alarmed many conservatives, who tried to resist them. The police and courts cracked down on radicals; prohibition outlawed liquor; the Ku Klux Klan
attacked immigrants and minorities; Congress restricted immigration; and fundamentalist Christians decried the changing code of morality and the teaching of evolution in the schools. (p. 598 )
Politics in the 1920s
How did the politics of the 1920s refl ect changes in the economy and in American society?
The 1920s were a decade of Republican politics. Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover favored business and the wealthy. In the election of 1928, voters had a clear choice
between Hoover, the candidate of the countryside and conservatism, and Al Smith, the candidate of the cities and change, Hoover won in a landslide. (p. 603 )
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
Harlem Renaissance An African American cultural, literary, and artistic movement centered in Harlem, in New York City, in the 1920s. Harlem, the largest black community in the world outside of Africa, was considered the cultural capital of African Americans. p. 595
Red Scare A wave of anticommunist, antiforeign, and antilabor hysteria that swept over America in 1919. It resulted in the deportation of many alien residents and violated the civil liberties of many of its victims. p. 599
Prohibition The ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. The Eighteenth Amendment, adopted in 1919, established prohibition. It was repealed by the Twenty- First Amendment in 1933. p. 600
Nativism Hostility to things foreign. p. 602
National Origins Quota Act This 1924 law established a quota system that restricted immigration from Asia and southern and Eastern Europe and reduced the annual total of immigrants. p. 603
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C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. How did the automobile increase the independence of young people during the 1920s?
2. Why did the new opportunities for women upset conservatives?
3. What did the Red Scare and the desire for immigration reform have in common?
4. How did the presidential election of 1928 reflect the anxieties of the postwar era?
Scopes Trial Also called the “monkey trial,” the 1924 Scopes trial was a contest between modern liberalism and religious fundamentalism. John T. Scopes was prosecuted for teaching Darwinian evolution in defiance of Tennessee state law. He was found guilty and fined $100. Scopes’s convic- tion was later set aside on a technicality. p. 603
Teapot Dome scandal A 1924 scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for leasing government-owned oil lands in Wyoming (Teapot Dome) and California (Elks Hill) to private businessmen. p. 603
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The Second Industrial Revolution
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The Great White Way – Times Square p. 591
Elanor Rowland Wembridge, “Petting and the Campus” (1925) p. 594
Executive Orders and Senate Resolutions on Teapot Dome p. 604
A. Mitchell Palmer on the Menace of Communism (1920) p. 599
Court Statements from Sacco and Vanzetti p. 601
Creed of Klanswomen (1924) p. 602
Watch the Video: The Harlem Renaissance p. 598
Pearson Profiles, Marcus Garvey p. 594
Prosperity of the 1920s and the Great Depression p. 607
The Scopes “Monkey” Trial: Contesting Cultural Differences p. 608
Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism p. 596
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City Life in the Jazz Age
The Rural Counterattack
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Contents and Learning Objectives Questions
the depression, when his son was four years old, Worthington couldn’t afford enough eggs for a proper egg hunt. So he devised a plan. “I hid a couple in the piano and all around. Tommy got his little Easter basket, and as he would find the eggs, I’d steal ’em out of the basket and rehide them. . . . He hunted Easter eggs for three hours and he never knew the difference.”
N o American who lived through the Great Depression ever forgot the experience. As the stories of Heline, Kael, and Worthington show, the individual memories were of hard times, but also of determination, adaptation, and survival.
The depression decade had an equally profound effect on American institutions. To cope with the problems of poverty and dislocation, Americans looked to government as never before, and in doing so transformed American politics and public life. Th e agent of the transformation—the man America turned to in its moment of trial—was Franklin D. Roosevelt. His answer to the country’s demands for action was an ambitious program of relief and reform called the New Deal .
The Great Depression
What were the causes and effects of the Great Depression?
Th e depression of the 1930s came as a shock to Americans who had grown used to the prosperity of the 1920s. Th e consumer revolution of that earlier decade had fostered a general confi dence that the American way of life would continue to improve. But following the collapse of the stock market in late 1929, factories
The Struggle Against Despair Oscar Heline never forgot the terrible waste of the Great Depression. “Grain was being burned,” he told inter- viewer Studs Terkel. “It was cheaper than coal.” Heline lived in Iowa, in the heart of the farm belt. “A county just east of here, they burned corn in their courthouse all winter. . . . You couldn’t hardly buy groceries for corn.” Farmers, desperate for higher prices, resorted to destruc- tion. As Heline recalled, “People were determined to withhold produce from the market—livestock, cream, butter, eggs, what not. If they would dump the produce, they would force the market to a higher level. The farmers would man the highways, and cream cans were emptied in ditches and eggs dumped out. They burned the trestle bridge, so the trains wouldn’t be able to haul grain.”
Film critic Pauline Kael recounted a different memory of the 1930s. Kael was a college student in California during the Great Depression, and was struck by the number of students who were missing fathers. “They had wandered off in disgrace because they couldn’t support their families. Other fathers had killed themselves, so the family could have the insurance. Families had totally broken down.” Kael and many of her classmates struggled to stay in school. “There were kids who didn’t have a place to sleep, huddling under bridges on the campus. I had a scholarship, but there were times when I didn’t have any food. The meals were often three candy bars.”
Howard Worthington resorted to trickery after losing his job in Chicago. One Easter Sunday during
THE GREAT DEPRESSION PG. 614 What were the causes and effects of the Great Depression?
FIGHTING THE DEPRESSION PG. 619 How did Franklin Roosevelt fi ght the Depression?
ROOSEVELT AND REFORM PG. 624 How did the New Deal reform American life?
THE IMPACT OF THE NEW DEAL PG. 627 What was the lasting impact of the New Deal?
END OF THE NEW DEAL PG. 630 How and why did the New Deal end?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal 26
Chapter 26 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New DealListen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
recognized the danger signals and forced a halt in installment buy- ing and slowed bank loans, the nation might have experienced a sharp but brief depression.
Neither government nor business leaders were so farsighted. Th e Federal Reserve Board lowered the discount rate, charging banks less for loans in an attempt to stimulate the economy. Much of this additional credit, however, went not into solid investment in factories and machinery but instead into the stock market, touch- ing off a new wave of speculation that obscured the growing eco- nomic slowdown and ensured a far greater crash to come.
Individuals with excess cash began to invest heavily in the stock market, betting the already impressive rise in security prices would bring them even greater windfall profi ts. Th e market had advanced in spurts during the decade; the value of all stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange rose from $27 billion in 1925 to $67 billion in early 1929. Th e strongest surge began in the spring of 1928, when investors ignored the declining production fi gures in
closed, machines fell silent, and millions of Americans walked the streets looking for jobs that didn’t exist.
The Great Crash Th e consumer goods revolution contained the seeds of its own demise. Th e productive capacity of the automobile and appliance industries grew faster than the eff ective demand. Each year aft er 1924, the rate of increase in the sale of cars and refrigerators and ranges slowed, a natural consequence as more and more people already owned these durable goods. Production began to falter, and in 1927, the nation underwent a mild recession. Th e sale of durable goods declined, and construction of houses and buildings fell slightly. If corporate leaders had heeded these warning signs, they might have responded by raising wages or lowering prices, both eff ective ways to stimulate purchasing power and sustain the consumer goods revolution. Or if government offi cials had
During the Great Depression, market prices for produce were so low that farmers could scarcely afford to harvest their crops. Many resorted to destroying produce in an attempt to limit supplies and force prices higher, such as these striking dairy farmers in Illinois dumping cans of milk into the street.
616 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
Within weeks the gains of the previous two years had vanished.
Th e great crash of the stock market soon spilled over into the larger economy. Banks and other financial institutions suffered heavy losses in the market and were forced to curtail lending for consumer purchases. As consumers came up short, factories cut back production, laying off some workers and reducing hours for others. Th e layoff s and cutbacks lowered purchasing power even further, so fewer people bought cars and appliances. More factory layoffs resulted, and some plants closed entirely, leading to the availability of even less money for the purchase of consumer goods.
Th is downward economic spiral continued for four years. By 1932, unemployment had swelled to 25 percent of the workforce. Steel production was down to 12 percent of capac- ity, and the vast assembly lines in Detroit produced only a trickle of cars each day. Th e gross national product fell to 67 percent of
the 1929 level. Th e bright promise of mass production had ended in a nightmare.
Th e basic explanation for the Great Depression lies in the fact that U.S. factories produced more goods than the American peo- ple could consume. Th e problem was not that the market for such products was fully saturated. In 1929, there were still millions of Americans who did not own cars or radios or refrigerators, but many of them could not aff ord the new products. Th ere were other contributing causes—unstable economic conditions in Europe, the agricultural decline since 1919, corporate mismanagement, and excessive speculation—but it all came down to the fact that people did not have enough money to buy the consumer products coming off the assembly lines. Installment sales helped bridge the gap, but by 1929 the burden of debt was just too great.
Th e new economic system had failed to distribute wealth more broadly. Too much money had gone into profi ts, dividends, and industrial expansion, and not enough had gone into the hands of the workers, who were also consumers. Factory produc- tivity had increased 43 percent during the decade, but the wages of industrial workers had gone up only 11 percent. If the billions that went into stock market speculation had been used instead to increase wages—which would then have increased consumer pur- chasing power—production and consumption could have been brought into balance. Yet it is too much to expect that the prophets of the new era could have foreseen this fl aw and corrected it. Th ey were pioneering a new industrial system, and only out of the bitter experience of the Great Depression would they discover the full dynamics of the consumer goods economy.
Effect of the Depression It is diffi cult to measure the human cost of the Great Depression. Th e material hardships were bad enough. Men and women lived in lean-tos made of scrap wood and metal, and families went without
the belief they could make a killing in the market. People bet their savings on speculative stocks. Corporations used their large cash reserves to supply money to brokers who in turn loaned it to inves- tors on margin; in 1929, for example, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey loaned out $69 million a day in this fashion.
Investors could now play the market on credit, buying stock listed at $100 a share with $10 down and $90 on margin, the bro- ker’s loan for the balance. If the stock advanced to $150, the investor could sell and reap a gain of 500 percent on the $10 investment. And in the bull market climate of the 1920s, everyone was sure the market would go up.
By 1929, it seemed the whole nation was engaged in speculation. In city aft er city, brokers opened branch offi ces, each complete with a stock ticker and a huge board covered with the latest Wall Street quotations. People crowded into the customers’ rooms in the offi ces, fi lling the seats and greeting the latest advances of their favorite stocks with shouts of approval. So great was the public’s interest in the stock market that newspapers carried the stock averages on their front pages.
In reality, though, more people were spectators than speculators; fewer than three million Americans owned stocks in 1929, and only about a half million were active buyers and sellers. But the bull market became a national obsession, assur- ing everyone that the economy was healthy and preventing any serious analysis of its underlying fl aws. When the market soared to more than $80 billion in total value by mid-summer, the Wall Street Journal discounted any possibility of a decline, proclaiming, “Th e outlook for the fall months seems brighter than at any time.”
And then things changed, almost overnight. On October 24— later known as Black Th ursday—the rise in stock prices faltered, and when it did investors nervously began to sell. Such leading stocks as RCA and Westinghouse plunged, losing nearly half their value in a single day. Speculators panicked as their creditors demanded new collateral, and the panic caused prices to plummet still further.
U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT, 1929–1942
1929
2
4
6
8
10
12
Millions
1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942
Stock Market Crash 1929
FDR Inaugurated
President 1933
Recession 1938
World War II Begins 1939
U.S. Enters World War II
December 1941
New Deal Recovery
1936
The Great Depression View the Map
The Great Depression 617
among the first to be laid off. Mexican immigrants, who had fl owed in to replace European immigrants, met with competition from angry citizens now willing to do stoop labor in the fi elds and work as track layers on the railroads. Immigration offi cials used technicalities to halt the fl ow across the Rio Grande and even to reverse it; nearly a half million Mexicans were deported in the 1930s, including families with children born in the United States.
The poor—black, brown, and white—survived because they knew better than most Americans how to exist in poverty. They stayed in bed in cold weather, both to keep warm and to avoid unnecessary burning up of calories; they patched their shoes with pieces of rubber from discarded tires, heated only
meat and fresh vegetables for months, existing on a diet of soup and beans. Th e psychological burden was even greater: Americans suff ered through year aft er year of grinding poverty with no letup in sight. Th e unemployed stood in line for hours waiting for relief checks; veterans sold apples or pencils on street corners, their manhood—once prized so highly by the nation—now in question. People left the city for the countryside but found no salvation on the farm. Crops rotted in the fi elds because prices were too low to make harvesting worthwhile; sheriff s fended off angry crowds as banks foreclosed long-overdue mortgages on once prosperous farms.
Few escaped the suff ering. African Americans who had left the poverty of the rural South for factory jobs in the North were
Homeless Shantytown, Seattle, 1937 View the Closer Look
Urban shantytowns, often called “Hoovervilles,” named after President Herbert Hoover, were built by homeless men and women during the Great Depression. These settlements were composed of shacks and tents and often constructed on empty urban land near soup kitchens.
618 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
to move south in the winter or west in the summer. On the Missouri Pacifi c alone, the number of vagrants increased from just over 13,000 in 1929 to nearly 200,000 in 1931. One town in the Southwest hired special police to keep vagrants from leaving the boxcars. Th ose who became tramps had to keep on the move, but they did fi nd a sense of community in the hobo jungles that sprang up along the major railroad routes. Here the unfortunate could fi nd a place to eat and sleep, and people with whom to share their misery. Louis Banks, a black veteran, told interviewer Studs Terkel what these informal camps were like:
Black and white, it didn’t make any diff erence who you were, ‘cause everybody was poor. All friendly, sleep in a jungle. We used to take a big pot and cook food, cabbage, meat and beans all together. We all set together, we made a tent. Twenty-fi ve or thirty would be out on the side of the rail, white and colored: Th ey didn’t have no mothers or sisters, they didn’t have no home, they were dirty, they had overalls on, they didn’t have no food, they didn’t have anything.
the kitchens of their homes, and ate scraps of food that others would reject.
Th e middle class, which had always lived with high expecta- tions, was hit hard. Professionals and white-collar workers refused to ask for charity even while their families went without food; one New York dentist and his wife turned on the gas and left a note say- ing, “We want to get out of the way before we are forced to accept relief money.” People who fell behind in their mortgage payments lost their homes and then faced eviction when they could not pay the rent. Health care declined. Middle-class people stopped going to doctors and dentists regularly, unable to make the required cash payment in advance for services rendered.
Even the well-to-do were aff ected, giving up many of their for- mer luxuries and weighed down with guilt as they watched former friends and business associates join the ranks of the impoverished. “My father lost everything in the depression” became an all-too- familiar refrain among young people who dropped out of college.
Many Americans sought escape in movement. Men, boys, and some women rode the rails in search of jobs, hopping freights
Read the Document Women on the Breadlines
The Great Depression devastated millions who lost their jobs and often then the means to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. Overwhelmed local and private charities could not keep up with the demands for assistance, and many looked to the federal gov- ernment for direct relief from their suffering. Breadlines stretched as far as the eye could see as impoverished workers lined up in the hope of obtaining some meager rations for their hungry families.
Fighting the Depression 619
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which Congress established in early 1932. Th e RFC loaned government money to fi nancial institutions to save them from bankruptcy. Hoover’s critics, however, pointed out that while he favored aid to business, he still opposed measures such as direct relief and massive public works that would help the millions of unemployed.
By 1932, Hoover’s efforts to overcome the depression had clearly failed. Th e Democrats had gained control of the House of
Fighting the Depression
How did Franklin Roosevelt fi ght the Depression?
The Great Depression presented an enormous challenge for American political leadership. Th e inability of the Republicans to overcome the economic catastrophe provided the Democrats with the chance to regain power. Although they failed to achieve full recovery before the outbreak of World War II, the Democrats did succeed in alleviating some of the suff er- ing and establishing political dominance.
Hoover and Voluntarism Herbert Hoover was the Great Depression’s most prominent victim. When the eco- nomic downturn began in late 1929, he tried to rally the nation with bold fore- casts of better days ahead. His repeated assertion that prosperity was just around the corner bred cynicism and mistrust. Expressing complete faith in the American economic system, Hoover blamed the depression on foreign causes, especially unstable European banks. Th e president rejected proposals for bold government action and relied instead on voluntary cooperation within business to halt the slide. He called the leaders of industry to the White House and secured their agree- ment to maintain prices and wages at high levels. Yet within a few months, employers were reducing wages and cutting prices in a desperate eff ort to survive.
Hoover also believed in voluntary efforts to relieve the human suffering brought about by the depression. He called on private charities and local governments to help feed and clothe those in need. But when these sources were exhausted, he rejected all requests for direct fed- eral relief, asserting that such handouts would undermine the character of proud American citizens.
As the depression deepened, Hoover reluctantly began to move beyond vol- untarism to undertake more sweeping government measures. A new Federal Farm Board loaned money to aid cooperatives and bought up surplus crops in the open market in a vain eff ort to raise farm prices. At Hoover’s request, Congress cut taxes in an attempt to restore public confi dence and adopted a few federal public works projects, such as Boulder (Hoover) Dam, to provide jobs for idle men.
To help imperiled banks and insur- ance companies, Hoover proposed the
Dorothea Lange and Migrant Mother Watch the Video
Dorothea Lange was a documentary photographer whose work for the New Deal agencies, the Resettlement Administration (RA) and the Farm Security Administration (FSA), highlighted and sympathized with the plight of poor and displaced sharecroppers, farm families, and migrant worker families (above) during the Great Depression.
620 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
a winning smile; and a buoyant confi dence he could easily transmit to others. Some believed he was too vain and superfi cial as a young man, but his bout with polio gave him both an understanding of human suff ering and a broad political appeal as a man who had faced heavy odds and overcome them. He understood the give-and-take of politics, knew how to use fl attery to win over doubters, and was especially eff ective in exploiting the media, whether in bantering with newspaper reporters or reaching out to the American people on the radio. Although his mind was quick and agile, he had little patience with philosophical nuances; he dealt with the appearance of issues, not their deeper substance, and he displayed a fl exibility toward political principles that oft en dis- mayed even his warmest admirers.
Roosevelt took advantage of the opportunity off ered by the Great Depression. With the Republicans discredited, he culti- vated the two wings of the divided Democrats, appealing to both the traditionalists from the South and West and the new urban elements in the North. Aft er winning the party’s nomination in 1932, he broke with tradition by fl ying to Chicago and accepting in person, telling the cheering delegates, “I pledge you—I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people.”
In the fall, he defeated Herbert Hoover in a near landslide for the Democrats. Roosevelt tallied 472 electoral votes as he swept the South and West and carried nearly all the large industrial states as well. Farmers and workers, Protestants and Catholics, immigrants and native born rallied behind the new leader who promised to restore prosperity. Roosevelt not only met the challenge of the depression but also solidifi ed the shift to the Democratic Party and created an enduring coalition that would dominate American politics for a half century.
Representatives in the 1930 elections and were pressing the president to take bolder action, but Hoover stubbornly resisted. His public image suff ered its sharpest blow in the summer of 1932 when he ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear out the bonus army . Th is ragged group of some twenty-two thousand World War I veterans had come to Washington in the summer of 1932 to lobby Congress to pay immediately a bonus for military service that was due them in 1945. Aft er the Senate rejected the bonus bill, some of the veterans stayed in Washington, living in ramshackle huts in Anacostia Flats along the Potomac. Mounted troops drove the bonus army out of the capital, blinding the veterans with tear gas and burning their shacks.
Meanwhile, the nation’s banking structure approached collapse. Bank failures rose steadily in 1931 and 1932 as customers responded to rumors of bankruptcy by rushing in to withdraw their deposits. Th e banking crisis completed the nation’s disenchantment with Hoover; people were ready for a new leader in the White House.
The Emergence of Roosevelt The man who came forward to meet this national need was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Born into the old Dutch colonial aristoc- racy of New York, FDR was a distant cousin of the Republican Teddy. He grew up with all the advantages of wealth: private tutors, his own sailboat and pony, frequent trips to Europe, and education at Groton and Harvard. His strong-willed mother smoothed all the obstacles in the path of her only child and gave him a priceless sense of inner security. After graduation from Harvard, he briefly attended law school but left to plunge into politics. He served in the New York legislature and then went to Washington as assistant secretary of the navy under Wilson, a post he filled capably during World War I. Defeated as the Democratic vice presidential candidate in 1920, Roosevelt had just begun a banking career when he suffered an attack of polio in the summer of 1921. Refusing to give in, he fought back bravely, and though he never again walked unaided, he reentered politics in the mid-1920s and was elected governor of New York in 1928.
Roosevelt’s dominant trait was his ability to persuade and con- vince other people. He possessed a marvelous voice, deep and rich;
11
29 14 26
35
5
3 16
8 4
174 3
15 8
47
11
12 19
5
22
11
3
9
8 6
7
23 10
9
11
9 11 12
7
8
13
11
8
3 3
4
4
4
3
4
4
11
Election of 1932
Electoral Vote by State
DEMOCRATIC Franklin D. Roosevelt
Popular Vote
22,821,857472
REPUBLICAN Herbert C. Hoover 15,761,84159
MINOR PARTIES 1,153,306
39,737,004531
1929
659
1352 1456
2294
5190
1930 1931 1932 1933
BANK FAILURES, 1929–1933
Source: Data compiled from C. D. Bremer, American Bank Failures
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 42.
Fighting the Depression 621
people could safely put their money back into these institutions. Th e next day, March 13, the nation’s largest and strongest banks opened their doors; at the end of the day, customers had deposited more cash than they withdrew. Th e crisis was over; gradually, other banks opened, and the runs and failures ceased.
“Capitalism was saved in eight days,” boasted one of Roosevelt’s advisers. Most surprising was the conservative nature of FDR’s action. Instead of nationalizing the banks, he had simply thrown the government’s resources behind them and preserved private ownership. Th ough some other New Deal measures would be more radical, Roosevelt set a tone in the banking crisis. He was out to reform and restore the American economic system, not change it drastically. He drew on the progressive tradition and his experience with World War I mobilization to fashion a moderate program of government action.
For the next three months, until it adjourned in June, Congress responded to a series of presidential initiatives. During these “Hundred Days,” Roosevelt sent fi ft een major requests to Congress and received back fi ft een pieces of legislation. A few created agen- cies that have become a part of American life. Th e Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was one of the most ambitious of Roosevelt’s New Deal measures. Th is innovative eff ort at regional planning resulted in the building of a series of dams in seven states to control fl oods, ease navigation, and produce electricity.
The Hundred Days When Franklin Roosevelt took the oath of offi ce on March 4, 1933, the nation’s economy was on the brink of collapse. Unemployment stood at nearly thirteen million, one-fourth of the labor force; banks were closed in thirty-eight states. On inauguration morning, the governors of New York and Illinois closed the banks in the nation’s two largest cities, thus bringing the country’s fi nancial transactions to a halt. Speaking from the steps of the Capitol, FDR declared boldly, “First of all, let me assert my fi rm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjusti- fi ed terror.” Th en he announced he would call Congress into special session and request “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
Within the next ten days, Roosevelt won his fi rst great New Deal victory by saving the nation’s banks. On March 5, he issued a decree closing the banks and called Congress back into session. His aides draft ed new banking legislation and presented it to Congress on March 9; a few hours later, both houses passed it, and FDR signed the new legislation that evening. The measure provided for government supervision and aid to the banks. Strong ones would be reopened with federal sup- port, weak ones closed, and those in diffi - culty bolstered by government loans.
On March 12, FDR addressed the nation by radio in the fi rst of his fi reside chats . In conversational tones, he told the public what he had done. Some banks would begin to reopen the next day, with the government standing behind them. Other banks, once they became solvent, would open later, and the American
PRESIDENTIAL VOTING IN CHICAGO BY ETHNIC GROUPS, 1924–1932 (PERCENTAGE
DEMOCRATIC)
1924 1928 1932 Czechoslovakians 40 73 83
Poles 35 71 80
Lithuanians 48 77 84
Yugoslavs 20 54 67
Italians 31 63 64
Germans 14 58 69
Jews 19 60 77
Source: John M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1971).
FDR’s Inauguration Watch the Video
Franklin Roosevelt’s presidential inaugural on March 4, 1933 marked the beginning of a frenzied and dramatic effort by the president and Congress to save the nation’s economy and capitalism itself from complete collapse. President Roosevelt’s inaugural speech offered a bold and optimistic confidence that Americans would recover from their desperate economic woes.
622 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
hours, minimum wages, and the guarantee of collective bar- gaining by unions. No company could be compelled to join, but the New Deal sought complete participation by appealing to patriotism. Each firm that took part could display a blue eagle and stamp the symbol on its products. With energetic Hugh Johnson in charge, the NRA quickly enrolled the nation’s leading companies and unions. By the summer of 1933, more than five hundred industries had adopted codes that covered 2.5 million workers.
Th e NRA quickly bogged down in a huge bureaucratic morass. Th e codes proved to be too detailed to enforce easily. Written by the largest companies, the rules favored big business at the expense of smaller competitors. Labor quickly became disenchanted with Section 7a. Th e minimum wages were oft en near starvation level, while business avoided the requirement for collective bargaining by creating company unions that did not represent the real needs of workers. Aft er a brief upsurge in the spring of 1933, industrial production began to sag as disillusionment with the NRA grew. By 1934, more and more business owners were complaining about the new agency, calling it the “National Run Around.” When the Supreme Court fi nally invalidated the NRA in 1935 on constitu- tional grounds, few mourned its demise. Th e idea of trying to over- come the depression by relying on voluntary cooperation between competing businesses and labor leaders had collapsed in the face of individual self-interest and greed.
Th e New Deal’s attempt at farm recovery fared a little better. Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s secretary of agriculture, came up with an answer to the farmers’ old dilemma of overproduction. Th e government would act as a clearinghouse for producers of major crops, arranging for them to set production limits for wheat, cotton, corn, and other leading crops. Th e Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) , created by Congress in May 1933, would allocate acreage among individual farmers, encouraging them to take land out of production by paying them subsidies (raised by a tax on food processors). Unfortunately, Wallace preferred not to wait until the 1934 planting season to implement this program, and so farmers were paid in 1933 to plow under crops they had already planted and to kill livestock they were raising. Faced with the problem of hunger in the midst of plenty, the New Deal seemed to respond by destroying the plenty.
Th e AAA program worked better in 1934 and 1935 as land removed from production led to smaller harvests and rising farm prices. Farm income rose for the fi rst time since World War I, increasing from $2 billion in 1933 to $5 billion by 1935. Severe weather, especially Dust Bowl conditions on the Great Plains, contributed to the crop-limitation program, but most of the gain in farm income came from the subsidy payments themselves rather than from higher market prices.
On the whole, large farmers benefi ted most from the program. Possessing the capital to buy machinery and fertilizer, they were able to farm more effi ciently than before on fewer acres of land. Small farmers, tenants, and sharecroppers did not fare as well, receiving very little of the government payments and oft en being driven off the land as owners took the acreage previously cultivated by tenants and sharecroppers out of production. Some three million people left the land in the 1930s, crowding into the cities where they swelled the relief rolls. In the long run, the New Deal reforms improved the effi ciency of American agriculture, but at a real human cost.
Although critics lamented the cost of the project and its impact on the environment and certain local communities, it went far toward bringing one of the most underdeveloped parts of the country into the modern era.
Other New Deal agencies were temporary in nature, designed to meet the specifi c economic problems of the depression. None were completely successful; the depression would continue for another six years, immune even to Roosevelt’s magic. But psychologically, the nation turned the corner in the spring of 1933. Under FDR, the gov- ernment seemed to be responding to the economic crisis, enabling people for the fi rst time since 1929 to look to the future with hope.
Roosevelt and Recovery Two major New Deal programs launched during the Hundred Days were aimed at industrial and agricultural recovery. The fi rst was the National Recovery Administration (NRA) , FDR’s attempt to achieve economic advance through planning and coop- eration among government, business, and labor. In the midst of the depression, business owners were intent on stabilizing produc- tion and raising prices for their goods. Labor leaders were equally determined to spread work through maximum hours and to put a fl oor under workers’ income with minimum wages.
The NRA hoped to achieve both goals by permitting com- panies in each major industry to cooperate in writing codes of fair competition that would set realistic limits on produc- tion, allocate percentages to individual producers, and set firm guidelines for prices. Section 7a of the enabling act mandated protection for labor in all the codes by establishing maximum
Ohio R.
Cum berland R.
Tennessee R.
Paducah
Nashville
Muscle Shoals
Chattanooga
Knoxville Asheville
Bristol
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
ALABAMA GEORGIA
SOUTH CAROLINA
NORTH CAROLINA
WEST VIRGINIA
VIRGINIA
ILL.
Tennessee River watershed
Major TVA dams0 50 100 kilometers
0 50 100 miles
The Tennessee Valley Authority View the Map
THE TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) served a seven-state region in the Southeast. Develop- ing such a vast project required federal funding and management, both of which were provided through a federally owned corporation.
Fighting the Depression 623
two hours. By the end of 1933, Hopkins had cut through red tape to distribute money to nearly one-sixth of the American people. Th e relief payments were modest in size, but they enabled millions to avoid starvation and stay out of humiliating breadlines.
Another, more imaginative early effort was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) , which was Roosevelt’s own idea. Th e CCC enrolled young males from city families on relief and sent them to work on the nation’s public lands, cutting trails, planting trees, building bridges, and paving roads. Ultimately, more than two million young people served in the CCC, contributing both to their families’ incomes and to the nation’s welfare.
Hopkins realized the need to do more than just keep people alive, and he soon became an advocate of work relief. Hopkins argued that the government should put the jobless to work, not just to encour- age self-respect, but also to enable them to earn enough to purchase consumer goods and thus stimulate the entire economy. A Public Works Administration (PWA) headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes had been authorized in 1933, but Ickes, intent on the quality of the projects rather than human needs, failed to put many people to work. In the fall of 1933, Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration (CWA) and charged Hopkins with getting people off the unemployment lines and relief rolls and back to work. Hopkins had more than four million men and women at work by January 1934, building roads, schools, playgrounds, and athletic fi elds. Many of the workers were unskilled, and some of the projects were shoddy, but the CWA at least enabled people to work and earn enough money to survive the winter. Roosevelt, appalled at the huge expenditures involved, shut down the CWA in 1934 and forced Hopkins to return to federal relief payments as the only source of aid to the jobless.
Th e fi nal commitment to the idea of work relief came in 1935 when Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to spend nearly $5 billion authorized by Congress for emer- gency relief. Th e WPA, under Hopkins, put the unemployed on the federal payroll so they could earn enough to meet their basic needs and help stimulate the stagnant economy. Conservatives complained that the WPA amounted to nothing more than hiring the jobless to do make-work tasks with no real value. But Hopkins cared less about what was accomplished than about helping those who had been unemployed for years to get off the dole and gain self-respect by working again.
In addition to funding the usual construction and conserva- tion projects, the WPA tried to preserve the skills of American artists, actors, and writers. Th e Federal Th eatre Project produced plays, circuses, and puppet shows that enabled entertainers to prac- tice their craft s and to perform before people who oft en had never seen a professional production before. Similar projects for writers and artists led to a series of valuable state guidebooks and to murals that adorned public buildings across the land. A separate National Youth Administration (NYA) found part-time jobs for young people still in school and developed projects—ranging from auto- mobile repairing in New York City to erecting tuberculosis isolation units in Arizona—for 2.5 million young adults.
Th e WPA helped ease the burden for the unemployed, but it failed to overcome the depression. Rather than spending too much, as his critics charged, Roosevelt’s greatest failure was not spend- ing enough. Th e WPA never employed at any one time more than three million of the ten million jobless. Th e wages, although larger than relief payments, were still pitifully low, averaging only $52
Th e Supreme Court eventually found the AAA unconstitu- tional in 1936, but Congress reenacted it in modifi ed form that year and again in 1938. Th e system of allotments, now fi nanced directly by the government, became a standard feature of the farm economy. Other New Deal eff orts to assist the rural poor, notably the Farm Security Administration (FSA), sought to loan money to tenants and sharecroppers so they could acquire land of their own, but the sums appropriated by Congress were too modest. Th e FSA was able to extend loans to fewer than 2 percent of the nation’s tenant farmers. “Obviously,” the FSA director informed Roosevelt, “this . . . program can be regarded as only an experimental approach to the farm ten- ancy problem.” Th e result of the New Deal for American farming was to hasten its transformation into a business in which only the effi cient and well capitalized would thrive.
Roosevelt and Relief Th e New Deal was far more successful in meeting the most imme- diate problem of the 1930s—relief for the millions of unemployed and destitute citizens. Roosevelt never shared Hoover’s distaste for direct federal support; on May 12, 1933, in response to FDR’s March request, Congress authorized the RFC to distribute $500 million to the states to help individuals and families in need.
Roosevelt brought in Harry Hopkins to direct the relief program. A former social worker who seemed to live on black cof- fee and cigarettes, Hopkins set up a desk in the hallway of the RFC building and proceeded to spend more than $5 million in less than
Denver
Santa Fe
Topeka
Oklahoma City
Austin
TEXAS
OKLAHOMA
NEW MEXICO
NEBRASKA
COLORADO
WYOMING IOWA
MO
AR
LA
KANSAS
MEXICO Severe
Most Severe
Areas of Wind Erosion 1935–1940
THE DUST BOWL Drought and soil erosion brought on by overfarming turned the agricultural land of the Great Plains into a giant dust bowl during the 1930s. Especially hard hit were western Kansas and Oklahoma, eastern Colorado, and the Texas Panhandle. Giant dust storms forced many farmers to abandon their land.
624 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
the banking system in his weekly radio sermons to an audience of more than thirty million.
A more benign but equally threatening fi gure appeared in California. Francis Townsend, a 67-year-old physician, came for- ward in 1934 with a scheme to assist the elderly, who were suff ering greatly during the depression. Th e Townsend Plan proposed giving everyone over the age of 60 a monthly pension of $200 with the proviso that it must be spent within thirty days. Although designed less as an old-age pension plan than as a way to stimulate the econ- omy, the proposal understandably had its greatest appeal among the elderly. Th ey embraced it as a holy cause, joining Townsend Clubs across the country. Despite the criticism from economists that the plan would transfer more than half the national income to less than 10 percent of the population, more than ten million people signed petitions endorsing the Townsend Plan, and few politicians dared oppose it.
Th e third new voice of protest was that of Huey Long, the fl amboyant senator from Louisiana. Like Coughlin, an origi- nal supporter of the New Deal, Long turned against FDR and by 1935 had become a major political threat to the president. A shrewd, ruthless, yet witty man, Long had a remarkable ability to mock those in power. Th e Kingfi sh (a nickname he borrowed from Amos ’n Andy ) announced a nationwide “Share the Wealth” movement in 1934. He spoke grandly of taking from the rich to make “every man a king,” guaranteeing each American a home worth $5,000 and an annual income of $2,500. To fi nance the plan, Long advocated seizing all fortunes of more than $5 million and levying a tax of 100 percent on incomes greater than $1 mil- lion. By 1935, Long claimed to have founded twenty-seven thou- sand Share the Wealth clubs and had a mailing list of more than seven million people, including workers, farmers, college profes- sors, and even bank presidents. Th reatening to run as a third- party candidate in 1936, Long generated fear among Democratic leaders that he might attract three to four million votes, possibly enough to swing the election to the Republicans. Although an assassin killed Huey Long in Louisiana in late 1935, his popular- ity showed the need for the New Deal to do more to help those still in distress.
Social Security When the new Congress met in January 1935, Roosevelt was ready to support a series of reform measures designed to take the edge off national dissent. Th e recent elections had increased Democratic congressional strength signifi cantly, with the Republicans losing thirteen seats in the House and retaining less than one-third of the Senate. Many of the Democrats were to the left of Roosevelt, favoring increased spending and more sweeping federal programs. “Boys—this is our hour,” exulted Harry Hopkins. “We got to get everything we want . . . now or never.” Congress quickly appropri- ated $4.8 billion for the WPA and was prepared to enact virtually any proposal that Roosevelt off ered.
Th e most signifi cant reform enacted in 1935 was the Social Security Act . Th e Townsend movement had reminded Americans that the United States, alone among modern industrial nations, had never developed a welfare system to aid the aged, the disabled, and the unemployed. A cabinet committee began studying the
a month. Th us the WPA failed to prime the American economy by increasing consumer purchasing power. Factories remained closed and machinery idle because the American people still did not have the money, either from relief or the WPA, to buy cars, radios, appliances, and the other consumer goods that had been the basis for the prosperity of the 1920s. By responding to basic human needs, Roosevelt had made the depression bearable. Th e New Deal’s failure, however, to go beyond relief to achieve pros- perity led to a growing frustration and the appearance of more radical alternatives that challenged the conservative nature of the New Deal and forced FDR to shift to the left .
Roosevelt and Reform
How did the New Deal reform American life?
In 1935, the focus of the New Deal shift ed from relief and recovery to reform. During his fi rst two years in offi ce, FDR had concen- trated on fi ghting the Great Depression by shoring up the sagging American economy. Only a few new agencies, notably TVA, sought to make permanent changes in national life. Roosevelt was develop- ing a “broker-state” concept of government, responding to pressures from organized elements such as corporations, labor unions, and farm groups while ignoring the needs and wants of the dispossessed who had no clear political voice. Th e early New Deal tried to assist bankers and industrialists, large farmers, and members of the labor unions, but it did little to help unskilled workers and sharecroppers.
Th e continuing depression and high unemployment began to build pressure for more sweeping changes. Roosevelt faced the choice of either providing more radical programs, ones designed to end historical inequities in American life, or deferring to others who put forth solutions to the nation’s ills. Bolstered by an impressive Democratic victory in the 1934 congressional elections, Roosevelt responded by embracing a reform program that marked the climax of the New Deal.
Challenges to FDR Th e signs of discontent were visible everywhere by 1935. In the upper Midwest, progressives and agrarian radicals, led by Minnesota governor Floyd Olson, were calling for government action to raise farm and labor income. “I am a radical in the sense that I want a defi nite change in the system,” Olson declared. “I am not satisfi ed with patching.” Upton Sinclair, the muckraking novelist, nearly won the governorship of California in 1934 running on the slogan “End poverty in California,” while in the East a violent strike in the textile industry shut down plants in twenty states. Th e most seri- ous challenge to Roosevelt’s leadership, however, came from three demagogues who captured national attention in the mid-1930s.
Th e fi rst was Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest from Detroit, who had originally supported FDR. Speaking to a rapt nationwide radio audience in his rich, melodious voice, Coughlin appealed to the discontented with a strange mixture of crank monetary schemes and anti-Semitism. He broke with the New Deal in late 1934, denouncing it as the “Pagan Deal,” and founded his own National Union for Social Justice. Increasingly vitriolic, he called for monetary infl ation and the nationalization of
Roosevelt and Reform 625
Federal work relief programs helped millions maintain their self-respect. Workers in the CCC (top) received $30 a month for planting trees and building parks and trails. As indicated on the map, the PWA hired workers to build schools, dig irrigation ditches, construct sewage treatment plants, and erect bridges across the country.
626 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
Townsend’s proposal for $200 monthly pensions and increases in unemployment benefi ts. Congress then passed the Social Security Act by overwhelming margins.
Critics began to point out its shortcomings, as they have ever since. Th e old-age pensions were paltry. Designed to begin in 1942, they ranged from $10 to $85 a month. Not everyone was covered; many of those who most needed protection in their old age, such as farmers and domestic servants, were not included. And all partici- pants, regardless of income or economic status, paid in at the same rate, with no supplement from the general revenue. Th e trust fund also took out of circulation money that was desperately needed to stimulate the economy in the 1930s.
Other portions of the act were equally open to question. Th e cumbersome unemployment system off ered no aid to those currently
problem in 1934, and President Roosevelt sent its recommendations to Congress the following January.
Th e proposed legislation had three major parts. First, it provided for old-age pensions fi nanced equally by a tax on employers and workers, without government contributions. In addition, it gave states federal matching funds to provide modest pensions for the destitute elderly. Second, it set up a system of unemployment com- pensation on a federal-state basis, with employers paying a payroll tax and with each state setting benefi t levels and administering the program locally. Finally, it provided for direct federal grants to the states, on a matching basis, for welfare payments to the blind, handicapped, needy elderly, and dependent children.
Although there was criticism from conservatives who mourned the passing of traditional American reliance on self-help and individualism, the chief objections came from those who argued that the administration’s measure did not go far enough. Democratic leaders, however, defeated efforts to incorporate
Despite the administration’s boosterism, many believed that Social Security could not fulfi ll its promises.
Read the Document Frances Perkins and the Social Security Act (1935, 1960)
Read the Document Huey Long, “Share Our Wealth” (1935)
This political cartoon published in the Chicago Tribune in 1935 illustrates that conservatives and other opponents of the New Deal vehemently asserted that FDR’s recovery and reform program represented a dangerous threat to Americans’ economic liberties and the political freedoms secured by the Constitution of the United States.
Impact of the New Deal 627
Roosevelt fi nally succeeded in winning passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, but only at the cost of exempting many key industries from its coverage. Th e act provided for a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour by 1940 and a standard workweek of forty hours, with time and a half for overtime. Despite its loopholes, the legislation did lead to pay raises for the twelve million workers earn- ing less than 40 cents an hour. More important, like Social Security it set up a system—however inadequate—that Congress could build on in the future to reach more generous and humane levels.
Other New Deal reform measures met with a mixed reception in Congress. Proposals to break up the huge public utility holding companies created by promoters in the 1920s and to levy a “soak the rich” tax on the wealthy stirred up bitter debate, and these bills were passed only in greatly weakened form. Roosevelt was more successful in passing a banking act that made important reforms in the Federal Reserve System. He also gained congressional approval of the Rural Electrifi cation Administration (REA), which helped bring electricity to the 90 percent of American farms that still did not have it in the 1930s.
All in all, Roosevelt’s record in reform was similar to that in relief and recovery—modest success but no sweeping victory. A cautious and pragmatic leader, FDR moved far enough to the left to overcome the challenges of Coughlin, Townsend, and Long with- out venturing too far from the mainstream. His reforms improved the quality of life in America signifi cantly, but he made no eff ort to correct all the nation’s social and economic wrongs.
Impact of the New Deal
What was the lasting impact of the New Deal?
Th e New Deal had a broad infl uence on the quality of life in the United States in the 1930s. Government programs reached into areas hitherto untouched. Many of them brought about long-overdue improvements, but others failed to make any significant dent in historic inequities. The most important advances came with the dramatic growth of labor unions; the conditions for working women and minorities in nonunionized industries showed no comparable advance.
Rise of Organized Labor Trade unions were weak at the onset of the Great Depression, with a membership of fewer than three million workers. Most were in the American Federation of Labor (AFL), composed of craft unions that served the needs of skilled workers. Th e nation’s basic industries, such as steel and automobiles, were unorganized; the great mass of unskilled workers thus fared poorly in terms of wages and working conditions. Section 7a of the NRA had led to some growth in AFL ranks, but the union’s conservative leaders, eager to cooperate with business, failed to take full advantage of the opportunity to organize the mass production industries.
John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, took the lead in forming the Committee on Industrial Organization (CIO) in 1935. Th e son of a Welsh coal miner, Lewis was a dynamic and ruthless man. He had led the mine workers since 1919 and was determined to spread the benefi ts of unions throughout industry. Lewis fi rst battled
out of work, only to people who would lose their jobs in the future, and the benefi ts (depending on the state) ranged from barely ade- quate to substandard. Th e outright grants to the handicapped and dependent children were minute in terms of the need; in New York City, for example, a blind person received only $5 a week in 1937.
Th e conservative nature of the legislation refl ected Roosevelt’s own fi scal orthodoxy, but even more it was a product of his politi- cal realism. Despite the severity of the depression, he realized that establishing a system of federal welfare went against deeply rooted American convictions. He insisted on a tax on participants to give those involved in the pension plan a vested interest in Social Security. He wanted them to feel they had earned their pensions and that in the future no one would dare take them away. “With those taxes in there,” he explained privately, “no damned politician can ever scrap my social security program.” Above all, FDR had succeeded in establishing the principle of government responsibil- ity for the aged, the handicapped, and the unemployed. Whatever the defects of the legislation, Social Security stood as a landmark of the New Deal, creating a system to provide for the welfare of indi- viduals in a complex industrial society.
Labor Legislation Th e other major reform achievement in 1935 was passage of the National Labor Relations Act, or the Wagner Act , as it became known. Senator Robert Wagner of New York introduced legislation in 1934 to outlaw company unions and other unfair labor practices in order to ensure collective bargaining for unions. FDR, who had little knowledge of labor-management relations and apparently little interest in them, opposed the bill. In 1935, however, Wagner began to gather broad support for his measure, which passed the Senate in May with only twelve opposing votes, and the president, seeing passage as likely, gave it his approval. Th e bill moved quickly through the House, and Roosevelt signed it into law in July.
Th e Wagner Act created a National Labor Relations Board to pre- side over labor-management relations and enable unions to engage in collective bargaining with federal support. Th e act outlawed a variety of union-busting tactics and in its key provision decreed that whenever the majority of a company’s workers voted for a union to represent them, management would be compelled to negotiate with the union on all matters of wages, hours, and working conditions. With this unprecedented government sanction, labor unions could now recruit the large number of unorganized workers throughout the country. Th e Wagner Act, the most far-reaching of all New Deal measures, led to the revitalization of the American labor movement and a permanent change in labor-management relations.
Th ree years later, Congress passed a second law that had a lasting impact on American workers—the Fair Labor Standards Act. A long-sought goal of the New Deal, this measure aimed to establish both minimum wages and maximum hours of work per week. Since labor unions usually were able to negotiate adequate levels of pay and work for their members, the act was aimed at unorganized workers and met with only grudging support from unions. Southern conservatives opposed it strongly, both on ideo- logical grounds (it meant still greater government involvement in private enterprise) and because it threatened the low southern wages that had attracted northern industry since Reconstruction.
628 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
forcibly. When the Michigan governor refused to call out the national guard to break the strike, General Motors conceded defeat and signed a contract with the UAW. Chrysler quickly fol- lowed suit, but Henry Ford refused to give in and fought the UAW, hiring strikebreakers and beating up organizers. In 1941, however, Ford fi nally recognized the UAW. Smaller steel companies, led by Republic Steel, engaged in even more violent resistance; in one incident in 1937, police shot ten strikers. Th e companies eventually reached a settlement with the steel- workers’ union in 1941.
By the end of the 1930s, the CIO had some five million members, slightly more than the AFL. The successes were remarkable—in addition to the automak- ing and steel unions, organizers for the CIO and the AFL had been successful in the tex- tile, rubber, electrical, and metal industries. For the fi rst time, unskilled as well as skilled workers were unionized. Women and African Americans benefi ted from the creation of the CIO, not because the union followed enlight- ened policies, but simply because they made up a substantial proportion of the unskilled workforce that the CIO organized.
Yet despite these impressive gains, only 28 percent of all Americans (excluding farm- workers) belonged to unions by 1940. Millions in the restaurant, retail, and service trades remained unorganized, working long hours for very low wages. Employer resistance and traditional hostility to unions blocked further progress, as did the aloof attitude of President Roosevelt, who commented to labor and management, “A plague on both your houses” during the steel strike. Th e Wagner Act had helped open the way, but labor leaders such as Lewis, Philip Murray of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, and Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers deserved most of the credit for union achievements.
The New Deal Record on Help to Minorities Th e Roosevelt administration’s attempts to aid the downtrod- den were least eff ective with African Americans and other racial minorities. Th e Great Depression had hit blacks with special force. Share croppers and tenant farmers had seen the price of cotton drop from 18 to 6 cents a pound, far below the level needed to sustain a family on the land. In the cities, the saying “Last hired, fi rst fi red” proved all too true; by 1933, more than 50 percent of urban blacks were unemployed. Hard times sharp- ened racial prejudice. “No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job” became a rallying cry for many whites in Atlanta.
with the leadership of the AFL, and then—aft er being expelled—he renamed his group the Congress of Industrial Organizations and announced in 1936 that he would use the Wagner Act to extend col- lective bargaining to the nation’s auto and steel industries.
Within five years, Lewis had scored a remarkable series of victories. Some came easily. Th e big steel companies, led by U.S. Steel, surrendered without a fi ght in 1937; management realized that federal support put the unions in a strong position. Th ere was greater resistance in the automobile industry. When General Motors, the fi rst target, resisted, the newly created United Automobile Workers (UAW) developed an eff ective strike technique. In late December 1936, GM workers in Flint, Michigan, simply sat down in the factory, refus- ing to leave until the company recognized their union, and threaten- ing to destroy the valuable tools and machines if they were removed
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Mary McLeod Bethune was an African American educator and civil rights leader. She was one of several African American executive department administrators for President Franklin Roosevelt. McLeod was also a close friend of President Roosevelt’s wife and confidant, Eleanor, and a key political supporter of the president in the African American community.
Responding to the Great Depression: Whose New Deal?
Impact of the New Deal 629
aliens. Overall, the pattern was one of great economic hardship and relatively little federal assistance for Mexican Americans.
Native Americans, aft er decades of neglect, fared slightly better under the New Deal. Roosevelt appointed John Collier, a social worker who championed Indian rights, to serve as commissioner of Indian aff airs. In 1934, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act, a reform measure designed to emphasize tribal unity and auton- omy instead of attempting (as previous policy had done) to trans- form Indians into self-suffi cient farmers by granting them small plots of land. Collier employed more Native Americans in the Indian Bureau, supported educational programs on the reservations, and encouraged tribes to produce native handiwork such as blankets and jewelry. Despite modest gains however, the nation’s one-third million Indians remained the most impoverished citizens in America.
Women at Work Th e decade witnessed no signifi cant gain in the status of American women. In the midst of the Great Depression, there was little concern expressed for protecting or extending their rights. Th e popular idea that women worked for “pin money” while men were the breadwin- ners for their families led employers to discriminate in favor of men when cutting the workforce. Working women “are holding jobs that rightfully belong to the God-intended providers of the household,” declared a Chicago civic group. More than three-fourths of the nation’s school boards refused to hire married women, and more than half of them fi red women teachers who married. Federal regulations pro- hibited more than one member of a family from working in the civil service, and almost always it was the wife who had to defer to her hus- band. A Gallup poll revealed that 82 percent of the people disapproved of working wives, with 75 percent of the women polled agreeing.
Many of the working women in the 1930s were either single or the sole supporters of an entire family. Yet their wages remained lower than those for men, and their unemployment rate ran higher than 20 percent throughout the decade. Women over age 40 found it particularly hard to fi nd or retain jobs during the depression. Th e New Deal off ered little encouragement. NRA codes sanc- tioned lower wages for women, permitting laundries, for example, to pay them as little as 14 cents an hour. Th e minimum wage did help those women employed in industry, but too many worked as maids and waitresses—jobs not covered by the law—for the new law to have much overall eff ect on women’s income. Despite these hardships, the number of married women and women between the ages of 25 and 40 in the labor force increased during the 1930s. Relatively few women worked in heavy industry, where unemploy- ment was greatest; most were employed in the clerical and service sectors, areas of traditional female employment, in which jobs were more plentiful.
Th e one area of advance in the 1930s came in government. Eleanor Roosevelt set an example that encouraged millions of American women. Not content to be mistress of the White House, she traveled around the country, eager to uncover wrongs, bring them to the president’s attention, and, if possible, rectify them. (See the Feature Essay, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice ,” pp. 632–633 .) Frances Perkins, the secretary of labor, became the fi rst woman cabinet member, and FDR appointed women as ambassadors and federal judges for the fi rst time.
Th e New Deal helped African Americans survive the depres- sion, but it never tried to confront squarely the racial injustice built into the federal relief programs. Although the programs served blacks as well as whites, in the South the weekly payments blacks received were much smaller. In the early days, NRA codes permit- ted lower wage scales for blacks, while the AAA led to the eviction of thousands of Negro tenants and sharecroppers. African American leaders referred to the NRA as standing for “Negro Robbed Again” and dismissed the AAA as “a continuation of the same old raw deal.” Nor did later reform measures help very much. Neither the minimum wage nor Social Security covered those working as farm- ers or domestic servants, categories that comprised 65 percent of all African American workers. Th us an NAACP offi cial commented that Social Security “looks like a sieve with the holes just large enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”
Despite this bleak record, African Americans rallied behind Roosevelt’s leadership, abandoning their historic ties to the Republican party. In 1936, more than 75 percent of those African Americans who voted supported FDR. In part, this switch came in response to Roosevelt’s appointment of a number of prominent African Americans to high-ranking government positions, such as William H. Hastie in the Interior Department and Mary McLeod Bethune (founder and president of Bethune-Cookman College) in the National Youth Administration. Eleanor Roosevelt spoke out eloquently throughout the decade against racial discrimina- tion, most notably in 1939 when the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let African American contralto Marian Anderson sing in Constitution Hall. Th e fi rst lady and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes arranged for the singer to perform at the Lincoln Memorial, where seventy-fi ve thousand people gathered to hear her on Easter Sunday.
Perhaps the most infl uential factor in the African Americans’ political switch was the color-blind policy of Harry Hopkins. He had more than one million blacks working for the WPA by 1939, many of them in teaching and artistic positions as well as in construction jobs. Overall, the New Deal provided assistance to 40 percent of the nation’s blacks during the depression. Uneven as his record was, Roosevelt had still done more to aid this oppressed minority than any previous president since Lincoln. One African American news- paper commented that while “relief and WPA are not ideal, they are better than the Hoover bread lines and they’ll have to do until the real thing comes along.”
Th e New Deal did far less for Mexican Americans. Engaged primarily in agricultural labor, these people found their wages in California fi elds dropping from 35 to 14 cents an hour by 1933. Th e pool of unemployed migrant labor expanded rapidly with Dust Bowl conditions in the Great Plains and the subsequent fl ight of “Okies” and “Arkies” to the cotton fi elds of Arizona and the truck farms of California. Th e Roosevelt administration cut off any fur- ther infl ux from Mexico by barring entry of any immigrant likely to become a public charge; local authorities rounded up migrants and shipped them back to Mexico to reduce the welfare rolls.
The New Deal relief program did aid many thousands of Mexican Americans in the Southwest in the 1930s, although migrant workers had diffi culty meeting state requirements. Th e WPA hired Mexican Americans for a variety of construction and cultural programs, but aft er 1937 such employment was denied to
630 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
Republican majority that Al Smith had begun in 1928, carried urban areas by impressive margins, winning 3.6 million more votes than his opponents in the nation’s twelve largest cities. He held on to the traditional Democratic votes in the South and West and added to them by appealing strongly to the diverse religious and ethnic groups in the northern cities—Catholics and Jews, Italians and Poles, Irish and Slavs. Th e strong support of labor, together with three-quarters of the black vote, indicated that the nation’s new alignment followed economic as well as cultural lines. Th e poor and the oppressed, who in the depression years included many middle-class Americans, became attached to the Democratic party, leaving the GOP in a minority position, limited to the well-to-do and to rural and small- town Americans of native stock.
THE ELECTION OF 1936
Candidate
Party
Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Roosevelt Democratic 27,751,597 523
Landon Republican 16,679,583 8
The Supreme Court Fight FDR proved to be far more adept at winning electoral victories than in achieving his goals in Congress. In 1937, he attempted to use his recent success to overcome the one obstacle remaining in his path—the Supreme Court. During his fi rst term, the Court had ruled several New Deal programs unconstitutional, most notably the NRA and the AAA. Only three of the nine justices were sym- pathetic to the need for emergency measures in the midst of the depression. Two others were unpredictable, sometimes approving New Deal measures and sometimes opposing them. Four justices were bent on using the Constitution to block Roosevelt’s pro- posals. All were elderly men, and one, Willis Van Devanter, had planned to retire in 1932 but remained on the Court because he believed Roosevelt to be “unfi tted and unsafe for the Presidency.”
When Congress convened in 1937, the president off ered a startling proposal to overcome the Court’s threat to the New Deal. Instead of seeking a constitutional amendment either to limit the Court’s power or to clarify the constitutional issues, FDR chose an oblique attack. Declaring the Court was falling behind schedule because of the age of its members, he asked Congress to appoint a new justice for each member of the Court over the age of 70, up to a maximum of six.
Although this “court-packing” scheme , as critics quickly dubbed it, was perfectly legal, it outraged not only conservatives but liberals as well, who realized it could set a dangerous prec- edent for the future. Republicans wisely kept silent, letting prom- inent Democrats such as Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana lead the fi ght against Roosevelt’s plan. Despite all-out pressure from the White House, resistance in the Senate blocked early action on the proposal.
Th e Court defended itself well. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes testifi ed tellingly to the Senate Judiciary Committee, point- ing out that in fact the Court was up to date and not behind sched- ule as Roosevelt charged. Th e Court then surprised observers with
Women also were elected to offi ce in larger numbers in the 1930s. Hattie W. Caraway of Arkansas succeeded her husband in the Senate, winning a full term in 1934. Th at same year, voters elected six women to the House of Representatives. Public service, however, was one of the few professions open to women. Th e nation’s leading medical and law schools discouraged women from applying, and the percentage of female faculty members in colleges and universities continued to decline in the 1930s. In sum, a decade that was grim for most Americans was especially hard on American women.
End of the New Deal
How and why did the New Deal end?
Th e New Deal reached its high point in 1936, when Roosevelt was overwhelmingly reelected, and the Democratic party strength- ened its hold on Congress. Th is political triumph was deceptive. In the next two years, Roosevelt met with a series of defeats in Congress. Yet despite the setbacks, he remained a popular politi- cal leader who had restored American self-confidence as he strove to meet the challenges of the Great Depression.
The Election of 1936 Franklin Roosevelt enjoyed his finest political hour in 1936. A man who loved the give-and-take of politics, FDR faced chal- lenges from both the left and the right as he sought reelection. Father Coughlin and Gerald L. K. Smith, who inherited Huey Long’s following aft er the senator’s assassination in 1935, orga- nized a Union Party, with North Dakota Progressive Congressman William Lemke heading the ticket. At the other extreme, a group of wealthy industrialists formed the Liberty League to fi ght what they saw as the New Deal’s assault on property rights. Th e Liberty League attracted prominent Democrats, including Al Smith, but in 1936 it endorsed the Republican presidential candidate, Governor Alfred M. Landon of Kansas. A moderate, colorless fi g- ure, Landon disappointed his backers by refusing to campaign for repeal of the popular New Deal reforms.
Roosevelt ignored Lemke and the Union Party, focusing atten- tion instead on the assault from the right. Democratic spokes- men condemned the Liberty League as a “millionaire’s union” and reminded the American people of how much Roosevelt had done for them in fi ghting unemployment and providing relief. In his speeches, FDR condemned the “economic royalists” who were “unanimous in their hatred for me.” “I welcome their hatred,” he declared, and promised that in his second term, these forces would meet “their master.”
This frank appeal to class sympathies proved enormously successful. Roosevelt won easily, receiving fi ve million more votes than he had in 1932 and outscoring Landon in the electoral college by 523 to 8. Th e Democrats did almost as well in Congress, piling up margins of 331 to 89 in the House and 76 to 16 in the Senate (with 4 not aligned with either major party).
Equally important, the election marked the stunning success of a new political coalition that would dominate American politics for the next three decades. FDR, building on the inroads into the
Conclusion: The New Deal and American Life 631
a series of rulings approving such controversial New Deal measures as the Wagner Act and Social Security. In the midst of the strug- gle, Justice Van Devanter resigned, enabling FDR to make his fi rst appointment to the Court since taking offi ce in 1933. Believing he had proved his point, the president allowed his court-packing plan to die in the Senate.
During the next few years, four more vacancies occurred, and Roosevelt was able to appoint such distinguished jurists as Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court. Yet the price was high. Th e Court fi ght had badly weakened the president’s relations with Congress, opening deep rift s with members of his own party. Many senators and representatives who had voted reluctantly for Roosevelt’s measures during the depths of the Great Depression now felt free to oppose any further New Deal reforms.
The New Deal in Decline Th e legislative record during Roosevelt’s second term was meager. Aside from the minimum wage and a maximum-hour law passed in 1938, Congress did not extend the New Deal into any new areas. Attempts to institute national health insurance met with stubborn resistance, as did eff orts by civil rights advocates to pass antilynching legislation. Disturbed by the growing congressio- nal resistance, Roosevelt set out in the spring of 1938 to defeat a number of conservative Democratic congressmen and senators, primarily in the South. His targets gleefully charged the president with interference in local politics; only one of the men he sought to defeat lost in the primaries. Th e failure of this attempted purge further undermined Roosevelt’s strained relations with Congress.
Th e worst blow came in the economic sector. Th e slow but steady improvement in the economy suddenly gave way to a sharp recession in the late summer of 1937. In the following ten months, industrial production fell by one-third, and nearly four million workers lost their jobs. Critics of the New Deal quickly labeled the downturn “the Roosevelt recession,” and business executives claimed that it refl ected a lack of confi dence in FDR’s leadership.
Th e criticism was overblown but not without basis. In an eff ort to reduce expanding budget defi cits, Roosevelt had cut back sharply on WPA and other government programs aft er the election. Federal contributions to consumer purchasing power fell from $4.1 billion in 1936 to less than $1 billion in 1937. For several months, Roosevelt refused to heed calls from economists to restore heavy government spending. Finally, in April 1938, Roosevelt asked Congress for a $3.75 billion relief appropriation, and the economy began to revive. But FDR’s premature attempt to balance the budget had meant two more years of hard times and had marred his reputation as the energetic foe of the depression.
Th e political result of the attempted purge and the recession was a strong Republican upsurge in the elections of 1938. Th e GOP won an impressive 81 seats in the House and 8 more in the Senate, as well as 13 governorships. Th e party many thought dead suddenly had new life. Th e Democrats still held a sizable major- ity in Congress, but their margin in the House was particularly deceptive. There were 262 Democratic representatives to 169 Republicans, but 93 southern Democrats held the balance of power.
More and more oft en aft er 1938, anti–New Deal Southerners voted with Republican conservatives to block social and economic reform measures. Th us not only was the New Deal over by the end of 1938, but a new bipartisan conservative coalition that would prevail for a quarter century had formed in Congress.
Conclusion: The New Deal and American Life
The New Deal lasted a brief five years, and most of its mea- sures came in two legislative bursts in the spring of 1933 and the summer of 1935. Yet its impact on American life was enduring. Nearly every aspect of economic, social, and politi- cal development in the decades that followed bore the imprint of Roosevelt’s leadership.
Th e least impressive achievement of the New Deal came in the economic realm. Whatever credit Roosevelt is given for relieving human suff ering in the depths of the Great Depression must be balanced against his failure to achieve recovery in the 1930s. Th e moderate nature of his programs, especially the unwieldy NRA, led to slow and halting industrial recovery. Although much of the improvement that was made came as a result of government spending, FDR never embraced the concept of planned defi cits, striving instead for a balanced budget. As a result, the nation had barely reached the 1929 level of production a decade later, and there were still nearly ten million men and women unemployed.
Equally important, Roosevelt refused to make any sweeping changes in the American economic system. Aside from the TVA, there were no broad experiments in regional planning and no attempts to alter free enterprise beyond imposing some limited forms of government regulation. Th e New Deal did nothing to alter the basic distribution of wealth and power in the nation. Th e outcome was the preservation of the traditional capitalist system with a thin overlay of federal control.
More signifi cant change occurred in American society. With the adoption of Social Security, the government acknowledged for the fi rst time its responsibility to provide for the welfare of those unable to care for themselves in an industrial society. Th e Wagner Act helped stimulate the growth of labor unions to bal- ance corporate power, and the minimum wage law provided a much needed fl oor for many workers.
Yet the New Deal tended to help only the more vocal and organized groups, such as union members and commercial farmers. Those without effective voices or political clout— African Americans, Mexican Americans, women, sharecrop- pers, restaurant and laundry workers—received little help from the New Deal. For all the appealing rhetoric about the “forgotten man,” Roosevelt did little more than Hoover in responding to the long-term needs of the dispossessed.
Th e most lasting impact of the Roosevelt leadership came in politics. Taking advantage of the emerging power of ethnic voters and capitalizing on the frustration growing out of the depression, FDR proved to be a genius at forging a new coalition. Overcoming the friction between rural and urban Democrats that had pro- longed Republican supremacy in the 1920s, he attracted new groups to the Democratic Party, principally African Americans
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Franklin Roosevelt, placing her respon- sibilities as wife and mother fi rst, as she believed a woman should. FDR, as a New York state senator and later as assistant secretary of the Navy, carried the political torch for the fam- ily. However, her role changed in 1921 when Franklin was stricken with polio. Eleanor was determined to return him as soon as possible to political life, which she believed was the best anti- dote to his pain and depression. While working tirelessly to speed his recov- ery, she also struck out on her own to keep the Roosevelt name alive in New York politics, making speeches, writ- ing magazine articles, and chairing the Women’s Platform Committee at the Democratic National Convention in 1924. In the newly formed League of Women Voters and other activist
behalf of, those whose voices often went unheard made her one of the nation’s leading symbols of hope and compassion.
Eleanor Roosevelt entered pub- lic life as a reformer long before she became fi rst lady. Growing up shy and insecure in a prominent New York family (she was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt), she sought personal fulfi ll- ment through voluntary social work. Like many reformers of her day, she found her sense of social justice upset by the existence of poverty and inequality. Avoiding politics, which she then considered a “sinister affair,” she limited her activities to nonparti- san reform and relief organizations, such as settlement houses and the Consumer’s League. She curtailed her social work after her 1905 marriage to
In August 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt journeyed to Scotts Run, a poor mining community in West Virginia, to observe life in one of the nation’s poorest and most desolate areas. The fi rst lady toured the dilapidated homes and listened to the problems of the unemployed miners, some of whom had not worked in eight years. She also met with their wives and chil- dren, and visited with local African Americans. It was an experience few would forget; “Some of the Negroes,” wrote a local news- paper editor to Eleanor’s hus- band, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, “think she is God.” Millions of Americans held her in similar esteem. At the height of the Great Depression, ER’s will- ingness to listen to, and act on
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice
Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice on myhistorylab
During the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled thousands of miles each year to learn about conditions throughout the country. She is shown here in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1936, inspecting a WPA project to convert a city dump into a waterfront park.
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in life, for higher aspirations,” she declared, “is a menace to the nation as a whole.”
Like other fi rst ladies, Eleanor Roosevelt had to strike a balance between capitalizing on her unique access to the president and intrud- ing illegitimately into the affairs of the nation’s elected offi cials. Her posi- tion was complicated, as well, by her own ambivalence on certain issues. Although she advocated greater rights for women, for example, she did not believe in full equality between men and women. She thought that women required protective legislation on account of their special roles as wives and mothers.
While Mrs. Roosevelt was instru- mental in the few gains made by women and African Americans in the 1930s, her advocacy could not overcome the sexual and racial ste- reotypes that continued to limit their role in the workplace and society. Thus despite her efforts, the plight of these groups during the depres- sion was only slightly relieved. However, this is not to minimize her achievements. As the self-appointed conscience of the Roosevelt adminis- tration, she exposed the areas where the New Deal had not been realized. Her courage and vitality in the pur- suit of human rights and equality made her the embodiment of reform and social justice in the New Deal. Eleanor Roosevelt’s goal was a simple one, concluded one biographer, “a life of dignity and decency for all.”
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did Eleanor Roosevelt’s work with minorities upset some people?
2. What did Eleanor Roosevelt’s advocacy for more rights for women, blacks, and other minorities actually accomplish?
federal poverty standard. The fi rst lady spoke out eloquently in favor of equal opportunity for blacks and sought their inclusion in New Deal programs. She worked with Hopkins to employ more African Americans in federal projects, and lobbied within the administra- tion for the appointment of black men and women to administer programs designed specifi cally for them. Publicly, she endeavored to set an example by addressing black audiences through- out the country, presiding over a more egalitarian White House, and resign- ing her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution over the Marian Anderson incident (see p. 629 ) .
Her struggle against racial discrim- ination sometimes put Mrs. Roosevelt in confl ict with her husband’s efforts to keep the Democratic Party intact. Conservative southern Democrats castigated her as a radical; her more extreme critics called her a commu- nist. Rumors of “Eleanor Clubs”—said to be secret associations of black maids pledged to boycott white households— circulated in every southern state. (The FBI investigated the rumors and found no factual basis for them.) Hate mail emphasized the criticism.
The attacks didn’t deter Eleanor, but they caused Franklin Roosevelt to temporize on bills to ban lynching and abolish the poll tax; his wife’s support of these measures, however, put the Roosevelt name behind them without the same damaging political conse- quences. In her efforts to advance the cause of civil rights, Eleanor arranged for White House meetings between FDR and African American leaders, supported interracial projects, and spoke out forcefully against racial dis- crimination. To ER, such change did not help just one element of society, but brought benefi ts to the entire coun- try. “To deny any part of a population the opportunities for more enjoyment
organizations, she brought her reform- er’s impulse to politics by advocating measures such as a maximum hours law for working women. Through these efforts, she also formed the nucleus of a “woman’s network” that she would employ extensively during the New Deal years.
Focusing on those whose needs were greatest, Eleanor became the administration’s champion for the dis- possessed. While her husband appealed to the “forgotten man,” she concerned herself with the “forgotten woman.” She worked with Harry Hopkins to achieve equity for women on relief and to cre- ate more jobs for women under the aus- pices of the CWA and the WPA. With Frances Perkins, she helped establish camps for unemployed girls patterned after the CCC, and worked with the Women’s Trade Union League to guar- antee women equal pay for equal work on federal projects. She saw to it that, whenever possible, women adminis- trators were hired to supervise proj- ects for women, and in her syndicated newspaper column, “My Day,” she often dealt with the problems faced by women during the Great Depression. Her 1933 book, It’s Up to the Women , urged American women to join her in a crusade for decency and fairness. “For more than a century,” wrote one reviewer, “the Great White Father in the White House has been instructing his people in right conduct . . . But now the Great White Mother emerges as a personality in her own right and starts an independent course of instruction on her own account.”
Eleanor worked hard for African Americans, whose position at the bottom of American society deeply offended her sense of fairness and decency; in the late 1930s, three- quarters of adult blacks in America had not fi nished high school, and almost 90 percent lived below the
634 CHAPTER 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
MAJOR NEW DEAL LEGISLATION AND AGENCIES
Year Created Act or Agency Provisions 1933 Agricultural Adjustment
Administration (AAA) Attempted to regulate agricultural production through farm subsidies; reworked after the Supreme Court ruled its key regulatory provisions unconstitutional in 1936; coordinated agricultural production during World War II, after which it was disbanded.
Banking Act of 1933 (Glass- Steagall Act)
Prohibited commercial banks from selling stock or fi nancing corpora- tions; created FDIC.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) Young men between the ages of 18 and 25 volunteered to be placed in camps to work on regional environmental projects, mainly west of the Mississippi; they received $30 a month, of which $25 was sent home; disbanded during World War II.
Civil Works Administration (CWA) Emergency work relief program put more than four million people to work during the extremely cold winter of 1933–1934, after which it was disbanded.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
A federal guarantee of savings bank deposits initially of up to $2,500, raised to $5,000 in 1934, and frequently thereafter; continues today with a limit of $100,000.
Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA)
Combined cash relief to needy families with work relief; superseded in early 1935 by the extensive work relief projects of the WPA and unem- ployment insurance established by Social Security.
National Recovery Administration (NRA)
Attempted to combat the Great Depression through national economic planning by establishing and administering a system of industrial codes to control production, prices, labor relations, and trade practices among lead- ing business interests; ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1935.
Public Works Administration (PWA) Financed more than 34,000 federal and nonfederal construction projects at a cost of more than $6 billion; initiated the fi rst federal public housing program, made the federal government the nation’s leading producer of power, and advanced conservation of the nation’s natural resources; discontinued in 1939 due to its effectiveness at reducing unemployment and promoting private investment.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) An attempt at regional planning. Included provisions for environment and recreational design; architectural, educational, and health projects; and controversial public power projects; continues today to meet the Tennessee Valley’s energy and fl ood-control needs.
1934 Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
Regulatory agency with wide discretionary powers established to over- see wired and wireless communication; refl ected growing importance of radio in everyday lives of Americans during the Great Depression; continues to regulate television as well as radio.
Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
Expanded private home ownership among moderate-income families through federal guarantees of private mortgages, the reduction of down payments from 30 to 10 percent, and the extension of repayment from 20 to 30 years; continues to function today.
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
Continues today to regulate trading practices in stocks and bonds according to federal laws.
1935 National Labor Relations Board (NLRB); established by Wagner Act
Greatly enhanced power of American labor by overseeing collective bargaining; continues to arbitrate labor-management disputes today.
Social Security Act Guaranteed retirement payments for enrolled workers beginning at age 65; set up federal-state system of unemployment insurance and care for dependent mothers and children, the handicapped, and public health; continues today.
STUDY RESOURCES 635
and organized labor. His political success led to a major realign- ment that lasted long aft er he left the scene.
His political achievement also reveals the true nature of Roosevelt’s success. He was a brilliant politician who recognized the essence of leadership in a democracy—appealing directly to the people and giving them a sense of purpose. He succeeded in
infusing them with the same indomitable courage and jaunty opti- mism that had marked his own battle with polio. Th us, despite his limitations as a reformer, Roosevelt proved to be the leader the American people needed in the 1930s—a president who provided the psychological lift that helped them endure and survive the Great Depression.
Year Created Act or Agency Provisions National Youth Administration
(NYA) Established by the WPA to reduce competition for jobs by supporting education and training of youth; paid grants to more than 2 million high school and college students in return for work performed in their schools; also trained another 2.6 million out-of-school youths as skilled labor to prepare them for later employment in the private sector; disbanded during World War II.
Works Progress Administration (WPA)
Massive work relief program funded projects ranging from construction to acting; disbanded by FDR during World War II.
Farm Security Administration (FSA)
Granted loans to small farmers and tenants for rehabilitation and purchase of small-sized farms; Congress slashed its appropriations during World War II when many poor farmers entered the armed forces or migrated to urban areas.
1937 Rural Electrifi cation Administration (REA)
Transformed American rural life by making electricity available at low rates to American farm families in areas that private power companies refused to service; closed the cultural gap between rural and urban everyday life by making modern amenities, such as radio, available in rural areas.
1938 Fair Labor Standards Act Established a minimum wage of 40 cents an hour and a maximum workweek of 40 hours for businesses engaged in interstate commerce.
1936 FDR wins second term as president 1937 United Automobile Workers sit-down strike forces
General Motors contract (February); FDR loses court-packing battle (July); “Roosevelt recession” begins (August)
1938 Congress sets minimum wage at 40 cents an hour (June)
1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt elected president 1933 Emergency Banking Relief Act passed in one day
(March; Twenty-fi rst Amendment repeals prohibition (December)
1934 Securities and Exchange Commission authorized (June)
1935 Works Progress Administration (WPA) hires unem- ployed (April); Wagner Act grants workers collective bargaining (July); Congress passes Social Security Act (August)
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 26 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
636 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER REVIEW
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The Great Depression
What were the causes and effects of the Great Depression?
The Great Depression resulted from imbalances in the American economy that developed during the 1920s. Wealth was unequally distributed, depriving millions of the
purchasing power necessary to keep America’s factories and farms operat- ing at full capacity. The depression threw millions out of work, out of their homes, and into despair. (p. 614 )
Fighting the Depression
How did Franklin Roosevelt fi ght the Depression?
Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass relief, recovery, and reform measures known collectively as the New Deal. Begun during the Hundred Days, the New Deal stabilized the banks, reorganized American industry, assisted American agricul-
ture, and put Americans to work conserving and restoring the nation’s resources. (p. 619 )
Roosevelt and Reform
How did the New Deal reform American life?
In responses to the challenges of Charles Coughlin, Francis Townsend, and Huey Long, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to approve sweeping measures to reform American life. The Social Security Act established old-age
and disability pensions to alleviate poverty among the elderly and those unable to work. (p. 624 )
The Impact of the New Deal
What was the lasting impact of the New Deal?
The New Deal encouraged the emergence of organized labor as a major force in American economic life. It mod- estly improved the lot of African Americans, although it failed to tackle the racial prejudice that was at the heart of
much black poverty. It did little for Mexican Americans, and only a bit more for Native Americans. (p. 627 )
End of the New Deal
How and why did the New Deal end?
After a high point in 1936, the New Deal declined as a result of Roosevelt’s overreaching in the court-packing effort, growing resistance from conservatives, and a recession in 1937 that reminded the country that the New Deal had not
ended the Great Depression. (p. 630 )
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S New Deal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s program to combat the Great Depression. p. 614
Bonus Army In June 1932, a group of 20,000 World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of their “adjusted compensation” bonuses voted by Congress in 1924. Congress rejected their demands, and President Herbert Hoover had the Bonus Army forcibly dispersed. p. 620
Fireside chats Radio addresses by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1944, in which he spoke to the American people about such issues as the banking crisis, Social Security, and World War II. The chats enhanced Roosevelt’s popularity among ordinary Americans. p. 621
Tennessee Valley Authority A New Deal effort created in 1933 to build dams and power plants on the Tennessee River. Its programs helped raise the standard of living for millions in the Tennessee River valley. p. 621
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) One of the most popular New Deal programs, the CCC provided 300,000 young men between the ages of 18 and 25 with government jobs in reforestation and other conservation projects. p. 623
Works Progress Administration (WPA) New Deal agency to pro- vide work relief for the unemployed. p. 623
National Recovery Administration (NRA) This New Deal agency was created in 1933 to promote economic recovery and revive industry during the Great Depression. It permitted manufacturers to establish industry wide codes of “fair business practices” setting prices and produc- tion levels. It also provided for minimum wages and maximum working hours for labor and guaranteed labor the right to organize and bargain collectively (Section 7a). The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1935. p. 622
Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) Created by Congress in 1933 as part of the New Deal, this agency attempted to restrict agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies to take land out of production. The object was to raise farm prices, and it did, but the act did nothing for tenant farmers and sharecroppers. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1936. p. 622
Social Security Act The 1935 Social Security Act established a system of old age, unemployment, and survivors’ insurance funded by wage and payroll taxes. p. 624
STUDY RESOURCES 637
Wagner Act The 1935 Wagner Act, formally known as the National Labor Relations Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to super- vise union elections and designate winning unions as official bargaining agents. The board could also issue cease-and-desist orders to employers who dealt unfairly with their workers. p. 627
“court-packing” scheme Concerned that the conservative Supreme Court might declare all his New Deal programs unconstitutional, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress to allow him to appoint additional justices to the Court. Both Congress and the public rejected this “court- packing” scheme. p. 630
1. Could the Great Depression have been averted? What steps might the government have taken to prevent it?
2. Why did Americans respond so positively to Franklin Roosevelt? 3. How was the popularity of Francis Townsend and Huey Long like the
popularity of Roosevelt? How was it different?
4. Why did minorities not fully share the benefits of New Deal reforms?
5. Why was Roosevelt’s “court-packing” scheme so unpopular?
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 26 on MyHistoryLab
The Great Depression
The Great Depression p. 616 View the Map
Homeless Shantytown, Seattle 1937 p. 617
View the Closer Look ◾
Women on the Breadlines p. 618 Read the Document
Dorothea Lange and Migrant Mother p. 619
Watch the Video ◾
Roosevelt and Reform
Fighting the Depression
FDR’S Inauguration p. 621 Watch the Video
The Tennessee Valley Authority p. 622 View the Map ◾
Read the Document Huey Long, “Share Our Wealth” (1935) p. 626
The Impact of the New Deal
Responding to the Great Depression: Whose New Deal? p. 628
Watch the Video
End of the New Deal
Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice p. 632
Complete the Assignment ◾
Frances Perkins and the Social Security Act (1935, 1960) p. 626
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
◾ Read the Document
Contents and Learning Objectives
smaller countries of eastern Europe; an antiwar treaty with the United States would at least ensure American sympathy, if not involvement, in case of another European war. Kellogg delayed several months and then outmaneuvered Briand by proposing the pledge against war not be confined just to France and the United States, but instead be extended to all nations. An unhappy Briand, who had wanted a bilateral treaty with the United States, had no choice but to agree, and so the diplomatic charade finally culminated in the elaborate signing ceremony in Paris.
Eventually the signers of the Kellogg-Briand Pact included nearly every nation in the world, but the effect was negligible. All promised to renounce war as an instru- ment of national policy, except of course, as the British made clear in a reservation, in matters of self-defense. Enforcement of the treaty relied solely on the moral force of world opinion. The Pact of Paris was, as one senator
shrewdly commented, only “an international kiss.”
Unfortunately, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was symbolic of American foreign policy in the years immediately following World War I. Instead of asserting the role of world leadership its resources and power commanded, the United States retreated from involvement with other nations. America went its own way, extending trade and economic dominance but refusing to take the lead in maintaining world order. Th is retreat from responsibility seemed unimportant in the 1920s when exhaustion from World War I ensured relative peace
A Pact Without Power On August 27, 1928, U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, and representatives of twelve other nations met in Paris to sign a treaty outlawing war. Several hundred spectators crowded into the ornate clock room of the Quai d’Orsay to watch the historic ceremony. Six huge klieg lights illuminated the scene so photographers could record the moment for a world eager for peace. Briand opened the ceremony with a speech in which he declared, “Peace is proclaimed,” and then Kellogg signed the document with a foot-long gold pen given to him by the citizens of Le Havre as a token of Franco- American friendship. In the United States, a senator called the Kellogg-Briand Pact “the most telling action ever taken in human history to abolish war.”
In reality, the Pact of Paris was the result of a deter- mined American effort to avoid involvement in the European alliance system. In June 1927, Briand had sent a message to the American people inviting the United States to join with France in signing a treaty to outlaw war between the two nations. The invitation struck a sympathetic response, especially among paci- fists who had advocated the outlawing of war through- out the 1920s, but the State Department feared correctly that Briand’s true intention was to establish a close tie between France and the United States. The French had already created a network of alliances with the
RETREAT, REVERSAL, AND RIVALRY PG. 639 Why were the United States and Japan on a collision course in the years following World War I?
ISOLATIONISM PG. 641 What was isolationism, and why was it so appealing to Americans in the 1920s and 1930s?
THE ROAD TO WAR PG. 644 How did the United States go from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941?
TURNING THE TIDE AGAINST THE AXIS PG. 647 How did America and its allies halt the advances of Germany and Japan?
THE HOME FRONT PG. 649 How did American domestic life change during World War II?
VICTORY PG. 654 How did the war end, and what were its consequences?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Face of the Holocaust
America and the World, 1921–1945 27
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 27 America and the World, 1921–1945
Representatives of the United States, France, and twelve other nations gathered in Paris, France, in June 1927, to sign the Kellogg-Briand pact. The signatories promised to renounce war as a tool of national policy except in matters of self-defense.
and tranquility. But in the 1930s, when threats to world order arose in Europe and Asia, the American people retreated even deeper, searching for an isolationist policy that would spare them the agony of another great war.
Th ere was no place to hide in the modern world. Th e Nazi onslaught in Europe and the Japanese expansion in Asia fi nally convinced America to reverse its isolationist stance and become involved in World War II in late 1941, at a time when the chances for an Allied victory seemed most remote. With incredible swift ness, the nation mobilized its military and industrial strength. American armies were soon fi ghting on three continents, the U.S. Navy con- trolled the world’s oceans, and the nation’s factories were sending a vast stream of war supplies to more than twenty Allied countries.
When the Allied victory came in 1945, the United States was by far the most powerful nation in the world. But instead of the
enduring peace that might have permitted a return to a less active foreign policy, the onset of the Cold War with the Soviet Union brought on a new era of tension and rivalry. Th is time the United States could not retreat from responsibility. World War II was a coming of age for American foreign policy.
Retreat, Reversal, and Rivalry
Why were the United States and Japan on a collision course in the years following World War I?
“Th e day of the armistice America stood on the hilltops of glory, proud in her strength, invincible in her ideals, acclaimed and loved by a world free of an ancient fear at last,” wrote journal- ist George Creel in 1920. “Today we writhe in a pit of our own
640 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
recognition to the Bolshevik regime that had come to power in the Russian Revolution of 1917. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt fi nally ended the long estrangement by signing an agreement opening up diplomatic relations between the two countries. Th e Soviets soon went back on promises to stop all subversive activity in the United States and to settle prerevolutionary debts, but even if they rarely understood one another, at least the two nations had opened a channel of communication.
Cooperation in Latin America U.S. policy was both more active and more enlightened in the Western Hemisphere than in Europe. The State Department sought new ways in the 1920s to pursue traditional goals of polit- ical dominance and economic advantage in Latin America. Th e outcome of World War I lessened any fears of European threats to the area and thus enabled the United States to dismantle the interventions in the Caribbean carried out by Roosevelt, Taft , and Wilson. At the same time, both Republican and Democratic administrations worked hard to extend American trade and investment in the nations to the south.
Under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, American marines were withdrawn from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and in 1924 the last detachment left Nicaragua, ending a twelve-year occupation. Renewed unrest there the next year, however, led to a second inter- vention in Nicaragua, which did not end until the early 1930s.
Showing a new sensitivity, the State Department released the Clark Memorandum in 1930, a policy statement repudiating the controversial Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States had no right to intervene in neighboring states, declared Undersecretary of State J. Reuben Clark, although he asserted a traditional claim to protect American lives and property under international law.
When FDR took offi ce in 1933, relations with Latin America were far better than they had been under Wilson, but American trade in the hemisphere had fallen drastically as the depression worsened. Roosevelt moved quickly to solidify the improved rela- tions and gain economic benefi ts. With his usual fl air for the dra- matic, he proclaimed a Good Neighbor policy and then proceeded to win goodwill by renouncing the imperialism of the past.
In 1933, Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed a conditional pledge of nonintervention at the Pan-American Conference in Montevideo, Uruguay. A year later, the United States renounced the right to intervene in Cuban aff airs it had asserted under the Platt Amendment and loosened its grip on Panama. By 1936, American troops were no longer occupying any Latin American nation. FDR personally cemented the new policy by traveling to Buenos Aires to sign an agreement that forbade intervention “directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason” in the internal aff airs of a Central or South American state.
Th e United States had not changed its basic goal of politi- cal and economic dominance in the hemisphere; rather, the new policy of benevolence refl ected Roosevelt’s belief that cooperation and friendship were more eff ective tactics than threats and armed intervention. Mexico tried his patience in 1938 by nationalizing its oil resources; with admirable restraint, the president fi nally nego- tiated a settlement in 1941 on terms favorable to Mexico. Yet this
digging; despising ourselves and despised by the betrayed peoples of Earth.” Th e bitter disillusionment Creel described ran through every aspect of American foreign policy in the 1920s. In contrast to diplomatic actions under Wilsonian idealism, American diplomats in the 1920s made loans, negotiated treaties and agreements, and pledged the nation’s good faith, but they were careful not to make any binding commitments on behalf of world order. Th e result was neither isolation nor involvement but rather a cautious middle course that managed to alienate friends and encourage foes.
Retreat in Europe Th e United States emerged from World War I as the richest nation on Earth, displacing England from its prewar position of economic primacy. Th e Allied governments owed the United States a stag- gering $10 billion in war debts, money they had borrowed during and immediately aft er the confl ict. Each year of the 1920s saw the nation increase its economic lead as the balance of trade tipped heavily in America’s favor. Th e war-ravaged countries of Europe borrowed enormous amounts from American bankers to rebuild their e conomies; Germany alone absorbed more than $3 billion in American investments during the decade. By 1929, American exports totaled more than $7 billion a year, three times the prewar level, and American overseas investment had risen to $17.2 billion.
Th e European nations could no longer compete on equal terms. Th e high American tariff , fi rst imposed in 1922, was raised again with enactment of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in 1930. Th e high tariff frus- trated attempts by England, France, and a defeated Germany to earn the dollars necessary to meet their American fi nancial obligations. Th e Allied partners in World War I asked Washington to cancel the $10 billion in war debts, particularly aft er they were forced to scale down their demands for German reparations payments. American leaders from Wilson to Hoover refused the request, claiming the ungrateful Allies were trying to repudiate their obligations.
Only a continuing fl ow of private American capital to Germany allowed the payment of reparations to the Allies and the partial repayment of the Allies’ war debts in the 1920s. Th e fi nancial crash of 1929 halted the fl ow of American dollars across the Atlantic and led to subsequent default on the debt payments, with accompany- ing bitterness on both sides of the ocean.
Political relations fared little better. Th e United States never joined the League of Nations, nor did it take part in the attempts by England and France to negotiate European security treaties. American observers attended League sessions and occasionally took part in economic and cultural missions in Geneva. But the Republican administrations of the 1920s refused to compro- mise American freedom of action by embracing collective secu- rity, the principle on which the League was founded. And FDR, always realistic, made no eff ort to renew Wilson’s futile quest. Th us the United States remained aloof from the European bal- ance of power and refused to stand behind the increasingly shaky Versailles settlement.
Th e U.S. government ignored the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s. American businesses, however, exported large quantities of heavy machinery to Russia as part of its rapid industrialization. When that trade began to slump after 1930, business leaders hoped to revive it by calling on Washington to extend diplomatic
Isolationism 641
document contained any enforcement provision beyond a promise to consult in case of a violation. In essence, the Washington treaties formed a parchment peace, a pious set of pledges that attempted to freeze the status quo in the Pacifi c.
Th is compromise lasted less than a decade. In September 1931, Japanese forces violated the Nine Power Treaty and the Kellogg-Briand Pact by overrunning Manchuria in a brutal act of aggression. Th e United States, paralyzed by the depression, responded feebly. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson sent an observer to Geneva to assure cooperation with the League of Nations, which was content to investigate the “incident.” In January 1932, Stimson fell back on moral force, issuing notes vowing the United States would not recognize the legality of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria. Despite concurrence by the League on nonrecognition, the Japanese ignored the American moral sanction and incorporated the former Chinese province, now renamed Manchukuo, into their rapidly expanding empire.
Aside from the Good Neighbor approach in the Western Hemisphere, American foreign policy faithfully refl ected the pre- vailing disillusionment with world power that gripped the country aft er World War I. Th e United States avoided taking any constructive steps toward preserving world order, preferring instead the empty symbolism of the Washington treaties and the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
Isolationism
What was isolationism, and why was it so appealing to Americans in the 1920s and 1930s?
Th e retreat from an active world policy in the 1920s turned into a headlong fl ight back to isolationism in the 1930s. Two factors were responsible. First, the depression made foreign policy seem remote and unimportant to most Americans. As unemployment increased and the economic crisis intensifi ed aft er 1929, many people grew apa- thetic about events abroad. Second, the danger of war abroad, when it did fi nally penetrate the American consciousness, served only to strengthen the desire to escape involvement.
Th ree powerful and discontented nations were on the march in the 1930s—Germany, Italy, and Japan. In Germany, Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 as the head of a National Socialist, or Nazi, movement. A shrewd and charismatic leader, Hitler capitalized on both domestic discontent and bitterness over World War I. Blaming the Jews for all of Germany’s ills and asserting the supremacy of the “Aryan” race of blond, blue-eyed Germans, he quickly imposed a totalitarian dictatorship in which the Nazi party ruled and the Führer was supreme. At fi rst, his foreign policy seemed harmless, but as he consolidated his power, the ultimate threat to world peace became clearer. Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations, reoccupied the Rhineland, and formally denounced the Treaty of Versailles. His boasts of uniting all Germans into a Greater Th ird Reich that would last a thousand years fi lled his European oppo- nents with terror, blocking any eff ective challenge to his regime.
In Italy, another dictator, Benito Mussolini, had come to power in 1922. Emboldened by Hitler’s success, he embarked on an aggres- sive foreign policy in 1935. His invasion of the independent African nation of Ethiopia led its emperor, Haile Selassie, to call on the
economic loss was more than off set by the new trade opportunities opened up by the Good Neighbor policy. American commerce with Latin America increased fourfold in the 1930s, and investment rose substantially from its Great Depression low. Most important, FDR succeeded in forging a new policy of regional collective security. As the ominous events leading to World War II unfolded in Europe and Asia, the nations of the Western Hemisphere looked to the United States for protection against external danger.
Rivalry in Asia In the years following World War I, the United States and Japan were on a collision course in the Pacifi c. Th e Japanese, lacking the raw materials to sustain their developing industrial economy, were determined to expand onto the Asian mainland. Th ey had taken Korea by 1905 and during World War I had extended their control over the mines, harbors, and railroads of Manchuria, the indus- trial region of northeast China. Th e American Open Door policy remained the primary obstacle to complete Japanese dominion over China. Th e United States thus faced the clear-cut choice of either abandoning China or forcefully opposing Japan’s expansion. American eff orts to avoid making this painful decision postponed the eventual showdown but not the growing rivalry.
The first attempt at a solution came in 1921 when the United States convened the Washington Disarmament Conference, which included delegates from the United States, Japan, Great Britain, and six other nations. Th e major objective was a politi- cal settlement of the tense Asian situation, but the most pressing issue was a dangerous naval race between Japan and the United States. Both nations were engaged in extensive shipbuilding pro- grams begun during the war. Great Britain was forced to compete in order to preserve its traditional control of the sea; even so, pro- jected construction indicated that both the United States and Japan would overtake the British navy by the end of the decade. Japan, spending nearly one-third of its total budget on naval construc- tion, was eager for an agreement; in the United States, growing congressional concern over appropriations suggested the need for slowing the naval buildup.
In his welcoming address at the Washington Conference, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes outlined a specifi c plan for naval disarmament, calling for the scrapping of sixty-six battleships—thirty American, nineteen British, and seventeen Japanese. Th ree months later, delegates signed the Five Power Treaty embodying the main elements of Hughes’ proposal: limitation of capital ships (battleships and aircraft carriers) in a ratio of 5:5:3 for the United States, Britain, and Japan, respectively, and 1.67:1.67 for France and Italy. England reluctantly accepted equality with the United States, while Japan agreed to the lower ratio only in return for an American pledge not to fortify Pacifi c bases such as the Philippines and Guam. Th e treaty cooled off the naval race even though it did not include cruisers, destroyers, or submarines.
The Washington Conference produced two other major agreements: the Nine Power Treaty and the Four Power Treaty. Th e fi rst simply pledged all the countries involved to uphold the Open Door policy, while the other compact replaced the old Anglo-Japanese alliance with a new Pacifi c security pact signed by the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and France. Neither
642 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
fi rms such as Du Pont reaped from World War I, but Nye went fur- ther, charging that bankers and munitions makers were responsible for American intervention in 1917. No proof was forthcoming, but the public—prepared to believe the worst of businessmen during the Great Depression—accepted the “merchants of death” thesis.
The Nye Committee’s revelations culminated in neutrality legislation. In 1935, Senator Nye and another Senate colleague introduced measures to ban arms sales and loans to belligerents and to prevent Americans from traveling on belligerent ships. By out- lawing the activities that led to World War I they hoped the United States could avoid involvement in the new confl ict. Th is “never again” philosophy proved irresistible. In August 1935, Congress passed the fi rst of three Neutrality Acts . Th e 1935 law banned the sale of arms to nations at war and warned American citizens not to sail on belligerent ships. In 1936, a second act added a ban on loans, and in 1937, a third Neutrality Act made these prohibitions perma- nent and required, on a two-year trial basis, that all trade other than munitions be conducted on a cash-and-carry basis.
President Roosevelt played a passive role in the adoption of the neutrality legislation. At fi rst opposed to the arms embargo, he fi nally approved it for six months in 1935 in a compromise designed to save important New Deal legislation in Congress. Yet he also appeared to share the isolationist assumption that a European war would have no impact on vital national interests. He termed the fi rst neutrality act “entirely satisfactory” when he signed it. Others in the administration criticized the mandatory nature of the new law, pointing out that it prevented the United States from distinguishing between aggressors and their victims. Privately, Roosevelt expressed some of the same reservations, but publicly he bowed to the prevailing isolationism. He signed the subsequent neutrality acts without protest, and during the 1936 election, he delivered an impassioned denunciation of war. “I hate war,” he told an audience in Chautauqua, New York. “I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.”
Yet FDR did take a few steps to try to limit the nation’s retreat into isolationism. His failure to invoke the Neutrality Act aft er the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 enabled the hard-pressed Chinese to continue buying arms from the United States. In January 1938, he used his infl uence to block a proposal by Indiana Congressman Louis Ludlow to require a nationwide referendum before Congress could declare war. FDR’s strongest public statement came earlier, in Chicago in October 1937, when he denounced “the epidemic of world lawlessness” and called for an international eff ort to “quarantine” the disease. When reporters asked him if his call for “positive eff orts to preserve peace” signaled a repeal of the neu- trality acts, however, Roosevelt quickly reaffi rmed this isolationist legislation. Whatever his private yearning for cooperation against aggressors, the president had no intention of challenging the pre- vailing public mood of the 1930s.
War in Europe Th e neutrality legislation played directly into the hands of Adolf Hitler. Bent on the conquest of Europe, he could now proceed without worrying about American interference. In March 1938, he seized Austria in a bloodless coup. Six months later, he was demanding the Sudetenland, a province of Czechoslovakia with
League of Nations for support. With England and France far more concerned about Hitler, the League’s halfh earted measures utterly failed to halt Mussolini’s conquest. “Fift y-two nations had combined to resist aggression,” commented historian A. J. P. Taylor; “all they accomplished was that Haile Selassie lost all his country instead of only half.” Collective security had failed its most important test.
Japan formed the third element in the threat to world peace. Militarists began to dominate the government in Tokyo by the mid-1930s, using tactics of fear and even assassination against their liberal opponents. By 1936, Japan had left the League of Nations and had repudiated the Washington treaties. A year later, its armies began an invasion of China that marked the beginning of the Pacifi c phase of World War II.
Th e resurgence of militarism in Germany, Italy, and Japan undermined the Versailles settlement and threatened to destroy the existing balance of power. England and France in Europe proved as powerless as China in Asia to stop the tide of aggression. In 1937, the three totalitarian nations signed an anti-Comintern pact com- pleting a Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis. Th e alliance of the Axis Powers ostensibly was aimed at the Soviet Union, but in fact it threatened the entire world. Only a determined American response could unite the other nations against the Axis threat. Unfortunately, the United States deliberately abstained from assuming this role of leadership until it was nearly too late.
The Lure of Pacifi sm and Neutrality Th e growing danger of war abroad led to a rising American desire for peace and noninvolvement. Memories of World War I contributed heavily. Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front , as well as the movie based on it, reminded people of the brutality of war. Historians began to treat the Great War as a mistake, criticizing Wilson for failing to preserve American neutrality and claiming the clever British had duped the United States into entering the war. Walter Millis advanced this thesis in America’s Road to War, 1914–1917 , pub- lished in 1935. It was hailed as a vivid description of the process by which “a peace-loving democracy, muddled but excited, misinformed and whipped to a frenzy, embarked upon its greatest foreign war.”
American youth made clear their determination not to repeat the mistakes of their elders. Pacifi sm swept across college cam- puses. A Brown University poll indicated 72 percent of the students opposed military service in wartime. At Princeton, undergraduates formed the Veterans of Future Wars, a parody on veterans’ groups, to demand a bonus of $1,000 apiece before they marched off to a foreign war. In April 1934, students and professors alike walked out of class to attend massive antiwar rallies, which became an annual rite of spring in the 1930s. Demonstrators carried signs reading “Abolish the R.O.T.C.” and “Build Schools—Not Battleships,” and pacifi st orators urged students to sign a pledge not to support their country “in any war it might conduct.”
Th e pacifi st movement found a scapegoat in the munitions industry. Th e publication of several books exposing the unsavory business tactics of large arms dealers such as Krupp in Germany and Vickers in Britain led to a demand to curb these “merchants of death.” Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota headed a special Senate committee that spent two years investigating American munitions dealers. Th e committee revealed the enormous profi ts
Isolationism 643
Senator William Borah, who had led the fi ght against the League of Nations in 1919, responded that he believed the chances for war in Europe were remote. Aft er canvassing the senators pres- ent, Vice President John Nance Garner bluntly told FDR that the neutrality revision was dead. “You haven’t got the votes,” Garner commented, “and that’s all there is to it.”
On September 1, 1939, Hitler began World War II by invading Poland. England and France responded two days later by declar- ing war, although there was no way they could prevent the German conquest of Poland. Russia had played a key role, refusing Western overtures for a common front against Germany and fi nally signing a nonaggression treaty with Hitler in late August. Th e Nazi-Soviet Pact enabled Germany to avoid a two-front war; the Russians were rewarded with a generous slice of eastern Poland.
President Roosevelt reacted to the outbreak of war by pro- claiming American neutrality, but the successful aggression by Nazi Germany brought into question the isolationist assumption that American well-being did not depend on the European balance of power. Strategic as well as ideological considerations began to undermine the earlier belief that the United States could safely pur- sue a policy of neutrality and noninvolvement. Th e long retreat from responsibility was about to end as Americans came to realize that their own democracy and security were at stake in the European war.
a large German population. When the British and French leaders agreed to meet with Hitler at Munich, FDR voiced his approval. Roosevelt carefully kept the United States aloof from the decision to surrender the Sudetenland in the hopes of appeasing Hitler’s demand for land. At the same time, the president gave his tacit approval of the policy of appeasement by telling the British prime minister that he shared his “hope and belief that there exists today the greatest opportunity in years for the establishment of a new order based on justice and on law.”
Six months aft er the meeting at Munich, Hitler violated his promises by seizing nearly all of Czechoslovakia. In the United States, Roosevelt permitted the State Department to press for neu- trality revision. Th e administration proposal to repeal the arms embargo and place all trade with belligerents, including munitions, on a cash-and-carry basis soon met stubborn resistance from isola- tionists. Th ey argued that cash-and-carry would favor England and France, who controlled the sea. Th e House rejected the measure by a narrow margin, and the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 11 to postpone any action on neutrality revision.
In July 1939, Roosevelt fi nally abandoned his aloof posi- tion and met with Senate leaders to plead for reconsideration. Warnings of the imminence of war in Europe by both the presi- dent and the secretary of state failed to impress the isolationists.
World War II in Europe View the Map
Hitler sent his armies into Poland with tremendous force and firepower, devastating the country. Here German troops observe as the German Luftwaffe bombs Warsaw in September 1939, destroying the city and forcing its inhabitants to surrender.
644 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
Isolationists cried out against this departure from neutrality. A bold headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch read, “Dictator Roosevelt Commits Act of War.” A group of Roosevelt’s opponents in the Midwest formed the America First Committee to protest the drift toward war. Such diverse individuals as aviator-hero Charles Lindbergh, conservative Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, socialist leader Norman Th omas, and liberal educator Robert M. Hutchins condemned FDR for involving the United States in a foreign confl ict. Voicing belief in a “Fortress America,” they denied that Hitler threatened American security and claimed that the nation had the strength to defend itself regardless of what happened in Europe.
To support the administration’s policies, opponents of the isolationists organized the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. Eastern Anglophiles, moderate New Dealers, and liberal Republicans made up the bulk of the membership, with Kansas newspaper editor William Allen White serving as chairman. Th e White Committee, as it became known, advocated unlimited assistance to England short of war, although some of its members privately favored entry into the confl ict. Above all, the intervention- ists challenged the isolationist premise that events in Europe did not aff ect American security. “Th e future of Western civilization is being decided upon the battlefi eld of Europe,” White declared.
In the ensuing debate, the American people gradually came to agree with the interventionists. Th e battle of Britain helped. “Every time Hitler bombed London, we got a couple of votes,” noted one interventionist. Frightened by the events in Europe, Congress approved large sums for preparedness, increasing the defense budget from $2 billion to $10 billion during 1940. Roosevelt courageously asked for a peacetime draft , the fi rst in American history, to build up the army; in September, Congress agreed.
Th e sense of crisis aff ected domestic politics. Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term in 1940 because of the European war; the Republicans nominated Wendell Willkie, a former Democratic businessman who shared FDR’s commitment to aid for England. Both candidates made appeals to peace sentiment during the cam- paign, but Roosevelt’s decisive victory made it clear that the nation supported his increasing departure from neutrality.
Aft er the election, FDR took his boldest step. Responding to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s warning that England was running out of money, the president asked Congress to approve a new program to lend and lease goods and weapons to countries fi ghting against aggressors. Roosevelt’s call for America to become “the great arsenal of democracy” seemed straightfor- ward enough, but he acted somewhat deviously by naming the program Lend-Lease and by comparing it to loaning a neighbor a garden hose to put out a fi re.
Isolationists angrily denounced Lend-Lease as both unnecessary and untruthful. “Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum,” commented Senator Taft . “You don’t want it back.” In March 1941, however, Congress voted by substantial margins to authorize the president to “sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of” war supplies to “any country the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” Th e accompanying $7 billion appropriation ended the “cash” part of cash-and-carry and ensured Britain full access to American war supplies.
Th e “carry” problem still remained. German submarines were sinking more than 500,000 tons of shipping a month. England desperately needed the help of the American navy in escorting
The Road to War
How did the United States go from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941?
For two years, the United States tried to remain at peace while war raged in Europe and Asia. In contrast to the climate of the country while Wilson attempted to be impartial during most of World War I, however, the American people displayed an over- whelming sympathy for the Allies and total distaste for Germany and Japan. Roosevelt made no secret of his preference for an Allied victory, but a fear of isolationist criticism compelled him to move slowly, and oft en deviously, in adopting a policy of aid for England and France.
From Neutrality to Undeclared War Two weeks aft er the outbreak of war in Europe, Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the neutrality legislation. He wanted to repeal the arms embargo in order to supply weap- ons to England and France, but he refused to state this aim openly. Instead he asked Congress to replace the arms embargo with cash- and-carry regulations. Belligerents would be able to purchase war supplies in the United States, but they would have to pay cash and transport the goods in their own ships. Public opinion strongly supported the president, and Congress passed the revised neutral- ity policy by heavy margins in early November 1939.
A series of dramatic German victories had a profound impact on American opinion. Quiet during the winter of 1939–1940, the Germans struck with lightning speed and devastating eff ect in the spring. In April, they seized Denmark and Norway, and on May 10, 1940, they unleashed the blitzkrieg (lightning war) on the western front. Using tanks, armored columns, and dive-bombers in close coordination, the German army cut deep into the Allied lines, dividing the British and French forces. Within three weeks, the British were driven off the continent. In another three weeks, France fell to Hitler’s victorious armies.
Americans were stunned. Hitler had taken only six weeks to achieve what Germany had failed to do in four years of fi ghting in World War I. Suddenly they realized they did have a stake in the outcome; if England fell, Hitler might well gain control of the British navy. Th e Atlantic would no longer be a barrier; instead, it would be a highway for German penetration of the New World.
Roosevelt responded by invoking a policy of all-out aid to the Allies, short of war. In a speech at Charlottesville, Virginia, in June (just aft er Italy entered the war by invading France), he denounced Germany and Italy as representing “the gods of force and hate” and vowed, “Th e whole of our sympathies lies with those nations that are giving their life blood in combat against these forces.” It was too late to help France, but in early September, FDR announced the transfer of fi ft y old destroyers to England in exchange for rights to build air and naval bases on eight British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. Giving warships to a belligerent nation was clearly a breach of neutrality, but Roosevelt emphasized the importance of guarding the Atlantic approaches, calling the destroyers-for-bases deal “the most important action in the reinforcement of our national defense that has been taken since the Louisiana Purchase.”
The Road to War 645
weeks—or months at most—until repeated sinkings would lead to a formal declaration of war against Germany.
THE ELECTION OF 1940
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Roosevelt Democratic 27,244,160 449
Willkie Republican 22,305,198 82
In leading the nation to the brink of war in Europe, Roosevelt opened himself to criticism from both sides in the domes- tic debate. Interventionists believed he had been too cautious in dealing with the danger to the nation from Nazi Germany. Isolationists were equally critical of the president, claiming he had misled the American people by professing peace while plotting for war. Roosevelt was certainly less than candid, relying on execu- tive discretion to engage in highly provocative acts in the North Atlantic. He agreed with the interventionists that in the long run a German victory in Europe would threaten American security. But he also was aware that a poll taken in September 1941 showed nearly 80 percent of the American people wanted to stay out of World War II. Realizing that leading a divided nation into war would be disastrous, FDR played for time, inching the country toward war while waiting for the Axis nations to make the ultimate move. Japan fi nally obliged at Pearl Harbor.
Showdown in the Pacifi c Japan had taken advantage of the war in Europe to expand farther in Asia. Although successful aft er 1937 in conquering the populous coastal areas of China, the Japanese had been unable to defeat Chiang Kai-shek, whose forces retreated into the vast interior of the country. Th e German defeat of France and the Netherlands in 1940, however, left their colonial possessions in the East Indies and Indochina vulnerable and defenseless. Japan now set out to incorporate these territories—rich in oil, tin, and rubber—into a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Th e Roosevelt administration countered with economic pres- sure. Japan depended heavily on the United States for petroleum and scrap metal. In July 1940, President Roosevelt signed an order setting up a licensing and quota system for the export of these crucial materials to Japan and banned the sale of aviation gaso- line altogether. With Britain fi ghting for survival and France and the Netherlands occupied by Germany, the United States was now employing economic sanctions to defend Southeast Asia against Japanese expansion.
Tokyo appeared to be unimpressed. In early September, Japanese troops occupied strategic bases in the northern part of French Indochina. Later in the month, Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, a defensive treaty that confronted the United States with a possible two-ocean war. Th e new Axis align- ment confirmed American suspicions that Japan was part of a worldwide totalitarian threat. Roosevelt and his advisers, however, saw Germany as the primary danger; thus they pursued a policy of all-out aid to England while hoping that economic measures alone would deter Japan.
convoys across the U-boat–infested waters of the North Atlantic. Roosevelt, fearful of isolationist reaction, responded with naval patrols in the western half of the ocean. Hitler placed his submarine commanders under strict restraints to avoid drawing America into the European war. Nevertheless, incidents were bound to occur. In September 1941, aft er a U-boat narrowly missed torpedoing an American destroyer tracking it, Roosevelt denounced the German submarines as the “rattlesnakes of the Atlantic” and issued orders for the navy to convey British ships halfway across the ocean.
Undeclared naval war quickly followed. On October 17, 1941, a German submarine damaged the U.S. destroyer Kearney ; ten days later, another U-boat sank the Reuben James , killing more than one hundred American sailors. FDR issued orders for the destroyers to shoot U-boats on sight. He also asked Congress to repeal the “carry” section of the neutrality laws and permit American ships to deliver supplies to England. In mid-November, Congress approved these moves by slim margins. Now American merchant ships as well as destroyers would become targets for German attacks. By December, it seemed only a matter of
Charles Lindbergh, Radio Address (1941)
Read the Document
The famous American aviator-hero Charles Lindbergh was one of several prominent isolationist Americans who joined a public campaign in 1939 and between 1940–1941 to preserve American neutrality as the military conflict in Europe began to rage.
646 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
Japan, including the vital oil shipments, came to a complete halt. When the Dutch government in exile took similar action, Japan faced a dilemma: To have oil shipments resumed, Tokyo would have to end its aggression; the alternative would be to seize the needed petroleum supplies in the Dutch East Indies, an action that would mean war.
Aft er one fi nal diplomatic eff ort failed, General Hideki Tojo, an army militant, became the new premier of Japan. To mask its war preparations, Tokyo sent yet another envoy to Washington with new peace proposals. Code breaking enabled American diplomats to learn that the Japanese terms were unacceptable even before they were formally presented. Army and navy leaders urged President Roosevelt to seek at least a temporary settlement with Japan to give them time to prepare American defenses in the Pacifi c. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, however, refused to allow any concession; on November 26, he sent a stiff ten-point reply to Tokyo that included a demand for Japanese withdrawal from China.
Th e Japanese response came two weeks later. On the evening of December 6, 1941, the fi rst thirteen parts of the reply to Hull’s note arrived in Washington, with the fourteenth part to follow the
Th e embargo on aviation gasoline, extended to include scrap iron and steel in late September 1940, was a burden Japan could bear, but a possible ban on all oil shipments was a diff erent matter. Japan lacked petroleum reserves of its own and was entirely dependent on imports from the United States and the Dutch East Indies. In an attempt to ease the economic pressure through negotiation, Japan sent a new envoy to Washington in the spring of 1941. But the talks quickly broke down. Tokyo wanted nothing less than a free hand in China and an end to American sanctions, while the United States insisted on an eventual Japanese evacuation of all China.
In July 1941, Japan invaded southern Indochina, beginning the chain of events that led to war. Washington knew of this aggression before it occurred. Naval intelligence experts had broken the Japanese diplomatic code and were intercepting and reading all messages between Tokyo and the Japanese embassy in Washington. President Roosevelt responded on July 25, 1941, with an order freezing all Japanese assets in the United States. Th is step, initially intended only as a temporary warning to Japan, soon became a permanent embargo due to positive public reaction and State Department zeal. Trade with
The Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 View the Closer Look
The early morning surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, brought America directly into World War II against the Axis powers. The attack devastated this major American naval base and resulted in the loss of twenty-four hundred American sailors, the sinking of eight battleships, and severe damage to another twenty-one U.S. naval ships.
Turning the Tide Against the Axis 647
penetrated deep into Russia aft er an initial invasion in June 1941. Although they had failed to capture either Moscow or Leningrad, the Nazi forces had conquered the Ukraine and by the spring of 1942 were threatening to sweep across the Volga River and seize vital oil fi elds in the Caucasus. In North Africa, General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps had pushed the British back into Egypt and threatened the Suez Canal (see the map on p. 656 ).
Th e situation was no better in Asia. Th e Pearl Harbor attack had enabled the Japanese to move unopposed across Southeast Asia. Within three months, they had conquered Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, with its valuable oil fi elds, and were press- ing the British back both in Burma and New Guinea. American forces under General Douglas MacArthur had tried vainly to block the Japanese conquest of the Philippines. MacArthur fi nally escaped by torpedo boat to Australia; the American gar- rison at Corregidor surrendered aft er a long siege, the survivors then enduring the cruel death march across the Bataan peninsula. With the American navy still recovering from the devastation at Pearl Harbor, Japan controlled the western half of the Pacifi c (see the map on p. 650 ).
Over the next two years, the United States and its allies would fi nally halt the German and Japanese off ensives in Europe and Asia. But then they faced the diffi cult process of driving back the enemy, freeing the vast conquered areas, and fi nally defeating the Axis powers on their home territory. It would be a diffi cult and costly struggle that would require great sacrifi ce and heavy losses; World War II would test American will and resourcefulness to the utmost.
Wartime Partnerships Th e greatest single advantage that the United States and its part- ners possessed was their willingness to form a genuine coalition to bring about the defeat of the Axis powers. Although there were many strains within the wartime alliance, it did permit a high degree of coordination. In striking contrast was the behavior of Germany and Japan, each fi ghting a separate war without any attempt at cooperation.
Th e United States and Britain achieved a complete war- time partnership. Prewar military talks led to the formation of a Combined Chiefs of Staff , headquartered in Washington, which directed Anglo-American military operations. Th e close cooperation between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill ensured a common strategy. Th e leaders decided at the outset that a German victory posed the greater danger and thus gave priority to the European theater in the conduct of the war. In a series of meetings in December 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill signed a Declaration of the United Nations, eventually subscribed to by twenty-six countries, that pledged them to fi ght together until the Axis powers were defeated.
Relations with the other members of the United Nations coalition in World War II were not quite so harmonious. Th e decision to defeat Germany fi rst displeased the Chinese, who had been at war with Japan since 1937. Roosevelt tried to appease Chiang Kai-shek with a trickle of supplies, fl own in at great risk by American airmen over the Himalayas from India. France posed a more delicate problem. FDR virtually ignored the Free French
next morning. Naval intelligence actually decoded the message faster than the Japanese embassy clerks. A messenger delivered the text to President Roosevelt late that night; aft er glancing at it, he commented, “Th is means war.” Th e next day, December 7, the fourteenth part arrived, revealing that Japan totally rejected the American position.
Offi cials in Washington immediately sent warning messages to American bases in the Pacifi c, but they failed to arrive in time. At 7:55 in the morning, just before 1 p.m. in Washington, squad- rons of Japanese carrier-based planes caught the American fl eet at Pearl Harbor totally by surprise. In little more than an hour, they crippled the American Pacifi c fl eet and its major base, sink- ing eight battleships and killing more than twenty-four hundred American sailors.
In Washington, the Japanese envoys had requested a meeting with Secretary Hull at 1 p.m. Just before the meeting, news arrived of the attack on Pearl Harbor . An irate Cordell Hull read the note the Japanese handed him and then, unable to restrain himself any longer, burst out, “In all my fi ft y years of public service, I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions—on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government was capable of uttering them.”
Speaking before Congress the next day, President Roosevelt termed December 7 “a date which will live in infamy” and asked for a declaration of war on Japan. With only one dissenting vote, both branches passed the measure. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States; the nation was now fully involved in World War II.
Th e whole country united behind Roosevelt’s leadership to seek revenge for Pearl Harbor and to defeat the Axis threat to American security. Aft er the war, however, critics charged that FDR had entered the confl ict by a back door, claiming the president had deliberately exposed the Pacifi c fl eet to attack. Subsequent investigations uncov- ered negligence in both Hawaii and Washington but no evidence to support the conspiracy charge. Commanders in Hawaii, like most military experts, believed the Japanese would not launch an attack on a base four thousand miles from Japan. FDR, like too many Americans, had badly underestimated the daring and skill of the Japanese; he and the nation alike paid a heavy price for this cultural and racial prejudice. But there was no plot. Roosevelt could not have known that Hitler, so restrained in the Atlantic, would reverse his policy and foolishly declare war against the United States aft er Pearl Harbor. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the whole episode is that it took the shock of the Japanese sneak attack to make the American people aware of the extent of the Axis threat to their well-being and lead them to end the long American retreat from responsibility.
Turning the Tide Against the Axis
How did America and its allies halt the advances of Germany and Japan?
In the fi rst few months aft er the United States entered the war, the outlook for victory was bleak. In Europe, Hitler’s armies controlled virtually the entire continent, from Norway in the north to Greece in the south. Despite the nonaggression pact, German armies had
648 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
against Germany before the end of 1942 to off set growing pressure at home to concentrate on the Pacifi c; hence, aft er he overruled objections from his military advisers, American and British troops landed on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Morocco and Algeria in November 1942.
Th e British launched an attack against Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt and soon forced the Afrika Korps to retreat across Libya to Tunisia. Eisenhower, delayed by poor roads and bad weather, was slow in bringing up his forces, and in their fi rst encounter with Rommel at the Kasserine Pass in the desert south of Tunis, inex- perienced American troops suff ered a humiliating defeat. General George Patton quickly rallied the demoralized soldiers, and by May 1943, Germany had been driven from Africa, leaving behind nearly 300,000 troops.
During these same months, the Soviet Union’s Red Army had broken the back of German military power in the battle of Stalingrad. Turned back at the critical bend in the Volga, Hitler had poured in division aft er division in what was ultimately a losing cause; never again would Germany be able to take the off ensive in Europe.
At Churchill’s insistence, FDR agreed to follow up the North African victory with the invasion fi rst of Sicily and then Italy in the summer of 1943. Italy dropped out of the war when Mussolini fl ed to Germany, but the Italian campaign proved to be a strategic dead end. Germany sent in enough divisions to establish a strong defensive line in the mountains south of Rome; American and British troops were forced to fi ght their way slowly up the pen- insula, suff ering heavy casualties.
More important, these Mediterranean operations delayed the second front, postponing it eventually to the spring of 1944. Meanwhile, the Soviets began to push the Germans out of Russia and looked forward to the liberation of Poland, Hungary, and Romania, where they could establish “friendly” communist regimes. Having borne the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany, Russia was ready to claim its reward—the postwar dom- ination of eastern Europe.
Checking Japan in the Pacifi c Both the decision to defeat Germany fi rst and the vast expanses of the Pacifi c dictated the nature of the war against Japan. Th e United States conducted amphibious island-hopping campaigns rather than attempting to reconquer the Dutch East Indies, Southeast Asia, and China. Th ere would be two separate American operations. One, led by Douglas MacArthur based in Australia, would move from New Guinea back to the Philippines, while the other, commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz from Hawaii, was directed at key Japanese islands in the Central Pacifi c. Th e original plan called for the two off ensives to come together for the fi nal invasion of the Japanese home islands.
Success in the Pacifi c depended above all else on control of the sea. Th e devastation at Pearl Harbor gave Japan the initial edge, but fortunately, the United States had not lost any of its four air- craft carriers. In the battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, American naval forces blocked a Japanese thrust to outflank Australia. Th e turning point came one month later at Midway. A powerful Japanese task force threatened to seize this remote American out- post more than a thousand miles west of Pearl Harbor; Japan’s real
government in exile under General Charles de Gaulle. Roosevelt preferred to deal with the Vichy regime, despite its collaboration with Germany, because it still controlled the French fl eet and retained France’s overseas territories.
Th e greatest strain of all within the wartime coalition was with the Soviet Union. Although Roosevelt had ended the long period of nonrecognition in 1933, close ties had failed to develop. Th e Russian refusal to pay prerevolutionary debts, together with continued Soviet support of domestic communist activity in the United States in the 1930s, intensifi ed American distaste for Stalin’s regime. Th e great Russian purge trials and the temporary Nazi-Soviet alliance from 1939 to 1941, along with deep-seated cultural and ideological diff erences, made wartime cooperation diffi cult.
Ever the pragmatist, Roosevelt tried hard to break down the old hostility and establish a more cordial relationship with Russia during the war. Even before Pearl Harbor, he extended Lend-Lease aid to Russia, and aft er American entry into the war, this economic assistance grew rapidly, limited only by the diffi culty of delivering the supplies. Eager to keep Russia in the war, the pres- ident promised a visiting Russian diplomat in May 1942 that the United States would create a second front in Europe by the end of that year—a pledge he could not fulfi ll. In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill met in Casablanca, Morocco, where they declared a policy of unconditional surrender, vowing that the Allies would fi ght until the Axis nations were completely defeated.
Despite these promises, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of battle against Hitler in the early years of the war, fighting alone against more than two hundred German divisions. The United States and England, grateful for the respite to build up their forces, could do little more than off er promises of future help and send Lend-Lease supplies. Th e result was a rift that never fully healed—one that did not prevent the defeat of Germany but did ensure future tensions and uncertainties between the Soviet Union and the Western nations.
Halting the German Blitz From the outset, the United States favored an invasion across the English Channel. Army planners, led by Chief of Staff George C. Marshall and his protégé, Dwight D. Eisenhower, were convinced such a frontal assault would be the quickest way to win the war. Roosevelt concurred, in part because it fulfi lled his second-front commitment to the Soviets.
Th e initial plan, drawn up by Eisenhower, called for a full- scale invasion of Europe in the spring of 1943, with provision for a temporary beachhead in France in the fall of 1942 if necessary to keep Russia in the war. Marshall surprised everyone by plac- ing Eisenhower, until then a relatively junior general, in charge of implementing the plan.
But the British, remembering the heavy casualties of trench warfare in World War I, and hoping to protect the route to India, their most important colony, preferred a perimeter approach. Air and naval attacks around the edge of the continent, espe- cially in the Mediterranean, would be a prelude to a fi nal inva- sion of Germany. British strategists assented to the basic plan but strongly urged a preliminary invasion of North Africa in the fall of 1942. Roosevelt, too, wanted American troops engaged in combat
The Home Front 649
to produce tanks and airplanes; Henry Ford built the giant Willow Run factory, covering 67 acres, where forty-two thousand workers turned out a B-24 bomber every hour. Henry J. Kaiser, a California industrialist who constructed huge West Coast shipyards to meet the demand for cargo vessels and landing craft , operated on an equally large scale. His plant in Richmond, California, reduced the time to build a merchant ship from 105 to 14 days. In part, America won the battle of the Atlantic by building ships faster than German U-boats could sink them.
This vast industrial expansion, however, created many problems. In 1942, President Roosevelt appointed Donald Nelson, a Sears, Roebuck executive, to head a War Production Board (WPB). A jovial, easygoing man, Nelson soon was outmaneuvered by the army and the navy, which preferred to negotiate directly with large corporations. Th e WPB allowed business to claim rapid depreciation, and thus huge tax credits, for new plants, and it awarded lucrative cost-plus contracts for urgently needed goods. Shortages of critical materials such as steel, aluminum, and copper led to an allocation system based on military priorities. Rubber, cut off by the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia, was particularly scarce; the administration fi nally began gasoline rationing in 1943 to curb pleasure driving and prolong tire life. Th e government itself built fi ft y-one synthetic-rubber plants, which by 1944 were producing nearly one million tons a year for the tires of American airplanes and military vehicles. All in all, the nation’s factories turned out twice as many goods as did German and Japanese industry combined.
Roosevelt revealed the same tendency toward compromise in directing the economic mobilization as he did in shaping the New Deal. When the Office of Price Administration—which tried to curb infl ation by controlling prices and rationing scarce goods such as sugar, canned food, and shoes—clashed with the WPB, FDR appointed James Byrnes to head an Office of Economic Stabilization. Byrnes, a former South Carolina sena- tor and Supreme Court justice, used political judgment to settle disputes between agencies and keep all groups happy. Th e presi- dent was also forced to compromise with Congress, which pared down the administration’s requests for large tax increases. Half the cost of the war was fi nanced by borrowing; the other half came from revenues. A $7 billion revenue increase in 1942 included so many fi rst-time taxpayers that in the following year the Treasury Department instituted a new practice—withholding income taxes from workers’ wages.
A result of the wartime economic explosion was a grow- ing affl uence. Despite the federal incentives to business, heavy excess-profi t taxes and a 94 percent tax rate for the very rich kept the wealthy from benefi ting unduly. Th e huge increase in federal spending, from $9 billion in 1940 to $98 billion in 1944, spread through American society. A government agreement with labor unions in 1943 held wage rates to a 15 percent increase, but the long hours of overtime resulted in doubling and sometimes tripling the weekly paychecks of factory workers. Farmers shared in the new prosperity as their incomes quadrupled between 1940 and 1945. For the fi rst time in the twentieth century, the lowest fi ft h of wage earners increased their share of the national income in relation to the more affl uent; their income rose by 68 percent between 1941 and 1945, compared to a 20 percent increase for the well-to-do.
objective was the destruction of what remained of the American Pacifi c fl eet. Superior American airpower enabled Nimitz’s forces to engage the enemy at long range. Japanese fi ghters shot down thirty-fi ve of forty-one attacking torpedo bombers, but a second wave of dive-bombers scored hits on three Japanese carriers. Th e battle of Midway ended with the loss of four Japanese aircraft car- riers compared to just one American carrier. It was the fi rst defeat the modern Japanese navy had ever suff ered, and it left the United States in control of the Central Pacifi c.
Encouraged by the victory, American forces launched their fi rst Pacifi c off ensive in the Solomon Islands, east of New Guinea, in August 1942. Both sides suff ered heavy losses, but six months later the last Japanese were driven from the key island of Guadalcanal. At the same time, MacArthur began the long, slow, and bloody job of driving the Japanese back along the north coast of New Guinea.
By early 1943, the defensive phase of the war with Japan was over. Th e enemy surge had been halted in both the central and the southwestern Pacifi c, and the United States was preparing to penetrate the Gilbert, Marshall, and Caroline Islands and recap- ture the Philippines. Just as Russia had broken German power in Europe, so the United States, fi ghting alone except for Australia and New Zealand, had halted the Japanese. And, like the USSR with its plans for eastern Europe, America expected to reap the rewards of victory by dominating the Pacifi c in the future.
The Home Front
How did American domestic life change during World War II?
World War II had a greater impact than the Great Depression on American life. While American soldiers and sailors fought abroad, the nation underwent sweeping social and economic changes at home. American industry worked to capacity to meet the need for war materials. Increased production in both indus- try and agriculture benefi ted workers and farmers alike. Th e expansion of war-related industries encouraged many people to move to where new jobs had sprung up. Women moved out of the home into the paid workforce; rural dwellers relocated to urban areas, and northerners and easterners sought new oppor- tunities and new homes in the South and West. Another benefi - ciary of the return to prosperity brought on by the war was FDR, who had seen the nation through the dark days of the depression. Th e nation’s economic recovery helped him win reelection to the presidency for a fourth term in 1944.
The Arsenal of Democracy American industry made the nation’s single most important contri- bution to victory. Even though more than fi ft een million Americans served in the armed forces, it was the nearly sixty million who worked on farms and factories who achieved the miracle of production that ensured the defeat of Germany and Japan. Th e manufacturing plants that had run at half capacity through the 1930s now hummed with activity. In Detroit, automobile assembly lines were converted
650 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
California; Mobile, Alabama; and other centers of defense produc- tion grew by more than 50 percent in just a year or two. Rural areas lost population while coastal regions, especially along the Pacifi c and the Gulf of Mexico, drew millions of people. Th e location of army camps in the South and West created boom conditions in the future Sunbelt, as did the concentration of aircraft factories and shipyards in this region. California had the greatest gains, adding nearly two million to its population in less than fi ve years.
This movement of people caused severe social problems. Housing was in short supply. Migrating workers crowded into house trailers and boardinghouses, bringing unexpected windfalls to landlords. In one boomtown, a reporter described an old Victorian house that had five bedrooms on the second floor.
Most important, this rising income ensured postwar prosperity. Workers and farmers saved their money, channeling much of it into government war bonds, waiting for the day when they could buy the cars and home appliances they had done without during the long years of depression and war.
A Nation on the Move Th e war led to a vast migration of the American population. Young men left their homes for training camps and then for service overseas. Defense workers and their families, some nine million people in all, moved to work in the new booming shipyards, muni- tions factories, and aircraft plants. Norfolk, Virginia; San Diego,
Equator Equator
Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945
Midway June 3–6, 1942
Okinawa Apr. 1–June 22, 1945
Iwo Jima Feb. 19–Mar. 16, 1945
Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941
Guadalcanal Aug. 7, 1942– Feb. 9, 1943
Leyte Gulf Oct. 23–26, 1944
Coral Sea May 7–8, 1942
Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945
Mariana Is.
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Midway Is. (U.S.)
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.
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Extent of Japanese control, Aug. 1942
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World War II in the Pacific View the Map
WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC The tide of battle turned in the Pacific the same year as in Europe. The balance of sea power shifted back to the United States from Japan after the naval victories of 1942.
The Home Front 651
to northern and western cities, fi nding jobs in the automobile, aircraft , and shipbuilding industries.
The movement of an estimated seven hundred thousand people helped transform black-white relations from a regional issue into a national concern that could no longer be ignored. Th e limited housing and recreational facilities for both black and white war workers created tensions that led to urban race riots. On a hot Sunday evening in June 1943, blacks and whites began exchanging insults and then blows near Belle Isle recreation park in Detroit. Th e next day, a full-scale riot broke out in which twenty-three blacks and nine whites died. Th e fi ghting raged for twenty-four hours until national guard troops were brought in to restore order. Later that summer, only personal intervention by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia quelled a Harlem riot that took the lives of six blacks.
Th ese outbursts of racial violence fueled the resentments that would grow into the postwar civil rights movement. For most African Americans, despite economic gains, World War II was a reminder of the inequality of American life. “Just carve on my tombstone,”
“Th ree of them,” he wrote, “held two cots apiece, the two oth- ers held three cots.” But the owner revealed that “the third fl oor is where we pick up the velvet . . . . We rent to workers in diff erent shift s . . . three shift s a day . . . seven bucks a week apiece.”
Family life suff ered under these crowded living conditions. An increase in the number of marriages, as young people searched for something to hang on to in the midst of wartime turmoil, was off - set by a rising divorce rate. Th e baby boom that would peak in the 1950s began during the war and brought its own set of problems. Only a few publicly funded day-care centers were available, and working mothers worried about their “latchkey children.” Schools in the boom areas were unable to cope with the infl ux of new students; a teacher shortage, intensifi ed by the lure of higher wages in war industries, compounded the education crisis.
Despite these problems, women found the war a time of eco- nomic opportunity. Th e demand for workers led to a dramatic rise in women’s employment, from fourteen million working women in 1940 to nineteen million by 1945. Most of the new women work- ers were married and many were middle-aged, thus broadening the composition of the female workforce, which in the past had been composed primarily of young single women. Women entered industries once viewed as exclusively male; by the end of the war, they worked alongside men tending blast furnaces in steel mills and welding hulls in shipyards. Few challenged the traditional view of gender roles, yet the wartime experience helped temporar- ily undermine the concept that woman’s only proper place was in the home. Women enjoyed the heft y weekly paychecks, which rose by 50 percent from 1941 to 1943, and they took pride in their con- tributions to the war eff ort. “To hell with the life I have had,” com- mented a former fashion designer. “Th is war is too damn serious, and it is too damn important to win it.”
African Americans shared in the wartime migration, but racial prejudice limited their social and economic gains. Nearly one million served in the armed forces, but relatively few saw combat. Th e army placed black soldiers in segregated units, usually led by white offi cers, and used them for service and construction tasks. Th e navy was even worse, relegating them to menial jobs until late in the war. African Americans were denied the chance to become petty offi cers, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox explained, because experience had shown that “men of the colored race . . . cannot maintain discipline among men of the white race.”
African American civilians fared a little better. In 1941, black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a massive march on Washington to force President Roosevelt to end racial discrimi- nation in defense industries and government employment and to integrate the armed forces. FDR compromised, persuading Randolph to call off the march and drop his integration demand in return for an executive order creating a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to ban racial discrimination in war industries. As a result, African American employment by the fed- eral government rose from sixty thousand in 1941 to two hundred thousand by the end of the war. Th e FEPC proved less successful in the private sector. Weak in funding and staff , the FEPC was able to act on only one-third of the eight thousand complaints it received. Th e nationwide shortage of labor was more infl uential than the FEPC in accounting for the rise in black employment during wartime. African Americans moved from the rural South
Rosie the Riveter Watch the Video
U.S. government publicity campaigns encouraged women to assume work in male dominated trades during World War II to replace men who were now in the military. Perhaps, the best known symbol of this industrial female worker was “Rosie the Riveter,” a strong, efficient, and patriotic woman who also retained admirable feminine qualities.
652 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
dressed in their distinctive outfi ts—long jackets worn with pants tightly pegged at the ankles. Th e racial prejudice heightened feel- ings of ethnic identity and led returning Mexican American veter- ans to form organizations such as the American G.I. Forum to press for equal rights in the future.
A tragic counterpoint to the voluntary movement of American workers in search of jobs was the forced relocation of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Responding to racial fears in California aft er Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt approved an army order in February 1942 to move all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to concentration camps in the inte- rior. More than two-thirds of those detained were Nisei , native- born Americans whose only crime was their Japanese ancestry. Forced to sell their farms and businesses at distress prices, the Japanese Americans lost not only their liberty but also most of their worldly goods. Herded into ten hastily built detention centers in seven western and southern states, they lived as prisoners in tar- papered barracks behind barbed wire, guarded by armed troops.
Appeals to the Supreme Court proved fruitless; in 1944, six justices upheld relocation on grounds of national security in war- time. Beginning in 1943, individual Nisei could win release by pledging their loyalty and fi nding a job away from the West Coast. Some thirty-fi ve thousand left the camps during the next two years, including more than thirteen thousand who joined the armed forces. Th e all-Nisei 442nd Combat Team served gallantly in the European theater, losing more than fi ve hundred men in battle and winning more than a thousand citations for bravery. One World War II veteran remembers that when his unit was in trouble, the commander would issue a familiar appeal: “Call in the Japs.”
remarked one black soldier in the Pacifi c, “‘Here lies a black man killed fi ghting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.”’
One-third of a million Mexican Americans served in the armed forces and shared some of the same experiences as African Americans. Although they were not as completely segregated, many served in the 88th Division, made up largely of Mexican American offi cers and troops, which earned the nickname “Blue Devils” in the Italian campaign. At home, Spanish-speaking people left the rural areas of Texas, New Mexico, and California for jobs in the cities, especially in aircraft plants and petroleum refi neries. Despite low wages and union resistance, they improved their economic posi- tion substantially. But they still faced discrimination based both on skin color and language, most notably in the Los Angeles “zoot suit” riots in 1943 when white sailors attacked Mexican American youths
WASHINGTON
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0 300 kilometers
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Internment camps
JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT CAMPS Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt established the War Relocation Authority and charged the agency with the task of evacuating Japanese Americans from the West Coast and transporting them to internment camps.
A. Philip Randolph, “Why Should We March” (1942)
Read the Document
A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) was a prominent African American labor leader and civil rights leader. In 1941, FDR and Randolph reached a political compromise that averted a threatened march on Washington, D.C., demanding integration of the military and an end to racial discrimination in defense industries and government employment.
The Home Front 653
and four children from his farm in Stockton, California, to a camp in Arkansas, felt vindicated. “It was terrible,” he said, with tears in his eyes, “but it was a time of war. Anything can happen. I didn’t blame the United States for that.”
Win-the-War Politics Franklin Roosevelt used World War II to strengthen his leadership and maintain Democratic political dominance. As war brought about prosperity and removed the economic discontent that had
For other Nisei, the experience was bitter. More than fi ve thousand renounced their American citizenship and chose to live in Japan at the war’s end. Th e government did not close down the last detention center until March 1946. Japanese Americans never experienced the torture and mass death of the German concentration camps, but their treatment was a disgrace to a nation fi ghting for freedom and democracy. Finally, in 1988, Congress voted an indemnity of $1.2 billion for the estimated sixty thousand surviving Japanese Americans detained during World War II. Susumi Emori, who had been moved with his wife
Family in Jerome Camp , by Japanese American painter Henry Sugimoto, depicts a family in their quarters at an internment camp in a southern Arkansas swampland. Like many Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, the Sugimotos were first ordered from their homes to large assembly centers such as the former fairgrounds at Fresno, California. There, whole families were assigned to individual horse stalls while they awaited relocation to one of the internment camps located in isolated areas of California, Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and Arkansas. Conditions in the camps were equally dismal. Whole families lived in a single room furnished with little more than a few cots, some blankets, and a single light bulb.
Read the Document Japanese Relocation Order
654 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
that drove Germany and Japan back across the vast areas they had conquered and set the stage for their fi nal defeat.
Th e long-awaited second front fi nally came on June 6, 1944. For two years, the United States and England concentrated on building up an invasion force of nearly three million troops and a vast armada of ships and landing craft to carry them across the English Channel. Hoping to catch Hitler by surprise, Eisenhower chose the Normandy peninsula, where the absence of good har- bors had led to lighter German fortifications. Allied aircraft bombed northern France for six weeks preceding the assault in order to block the movement of German reinforcements once the invasion began.
D-Day was originally set for June 5, but bad weather forced a delay. Relying on a forecasted break in the storm, Eisenhower gambled on going ahead on June 6. During the night, three divisions parachuted down behind the German defenses; at dawn, the British and American troops fought their way ashore at five points along a sixty-mile stretch of beach, encountering stiff German resistance at several points. By the end of the day, however, Eisenhower had won his beachhead; a week later, more than one-third of a million men were slowly pushing back the German forces through the hedgerows of Normandy. The breakthrough came on July 25 when General Omar Bradley decimated the enemy with a massive artillery and aerial bombardment at Saint-Lô, opening a gap for General George Patton’s Third Army. American tanks raced across the French countryside, trapping thousands of Germans and liber- ating Paris by August 25. Allied troops reached the Rhine River by September, but a shortage of supplies, especially gasoline, forced a three-month halt.
Hitler took advantage of this breathing spell to deliver a daring counterattack. In mid-December, the remaining German armored divisions burst through a weak point in the Allied lines in the Ardennes Forest, planning a breakout to the coast that would have cut off nearly one-third of Eisenhower’s forces. A combination of tactical surprise and bad weather, which prevented Allied air support, led to a huge bulge in the American lines. But an airborne division dug in at the key crossroads of Bastogne, in Belgium, and held off a much larger German force. Allied reinforcements and clearing weather then combined to end the attack. By committing nearly all his reserves to the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler had delayed Eisenhower’s advance into Germany, but he also had fatally weakened German resistance in the west.
The end came quickly. A massive Russian offensive began in mid-January and swept across the Oder River toward Berlin. General Bradley’s troops, finding a bridge left virtually intact by the retreating Germans, crossed the Rhine on March 7. Eisenhower overruled the British, who favored one concen- trated drive on Berlin. Instead the Allied forces advanced on a broad front, capturing the industrial Ruhr basin and break- ing the Nazi death grip on prisoner populations. (See the Feature Essay, “The Face of the Holocaust ,” pp. 658–659 .) The Americans and British met the Russians at the Elbe in late April. With the Red Army already in the suburbs of Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30. A week later, on May 7, 1945, Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of all German forces. Just eleven months and a day after the landings
sustained the New Deal, FDR announced that “Dr. New Deal” had given way to “Dr. Win-the-War.” Congress, already controlled by a conservative coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans, had almost slipped into GOP hands in 1942. With a very low voter turnout, due in part to the large numbers of men in service and uprooted workers who failed to meet residency requirements for voting, the Republicans won forty-four new seats in the House and nine in the Senate and elected governors in New York and California as well.
In 1944, Roosevelt responded to the Democratic slippage by dropping Henry Wallace, his liberal and visionary vice president, for Harry Truman, a moderate and down-to-earth Missouri senator who was acceptable to all factions of the Democratic party. Equally impor- tant, FDR received increased political support from organized labor, which had grown in membership during the war from ten to fi ft een million. Th e newly organized political action committee (PAC) of the CIO, headed by Sidney Hillman, conducted massive door-to-door drives to register millions of workers and their families.
THE ELECTION OF 1944
Candidate Party
Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Roosevelt Democrat 25,602,504 432
Dewey Republican 22,006,285 99
Th e Republicans nominated Th omas E. Dewey, who had been elected governor of New York aft er gaining fame as a prosecutor of organized crime. Dewey, moderate in his views, played down opposition to the New Deal and instead tried to make Roosevelt’s age and health the primary issues, along with the charge that the Democrats were soft on communism.
Despite his abrasive campaign style, Dewey did not advocate a return to isolationism. Th e Republican Party was trying hard to shake the obstructionist image it had gained during the League of Nations fi ght in 1919; it went on record in 1943 as favoring American postwar cooperation for world peace. Indeed, Dewey pioneered a bipartisan approach to foreign policy. He accepted wartime planning for the future United Nations and kept the issue of an international organization out of the campaign.
Reacting to the issues of his age and health, especially aft er a long bout with infl uenza in the spring, FDR disregarded the advice of his doctors and took a fi ve-hour drive in an open car through the rain-soaked streets of New York City just before the election. His vitality impressed the voters, and in November 1944 he swept back into offi ce for a fourth term. Th e campaign, however, had taken its toll. Th e president, suff ering from high blood pressure and conges- tive heart failure, had only a few months left to lead the nation.
Victory
How did the war end, and what were its consequences?
World War II ended with surprising swift ness. By 1943, the Axis tide had been turned in Europe and Asia, and it did not take long for Russia, the United States, and England to mount the off ensives
Victory 655
vowed to put their faith in a new attempt at collective security. At Moscow in 1943, Secretary of State Cordell Hull had won Russian agreement to participate in a future world organization at the war’s end. Th e fi rst wartime Big Th ree conference brought together Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin at Teheran, Iran, in late 1943. Stalin reaffi rmed this commitment and also indicated to President Roosevelt that Russia would enter the war against Japan once Germany was defeated.
By the time the Big Three met again in February 1945 at the Yalta Conference , the military situation favored the Russians. While British and American forces were still recover- ing from the Battle of the Bulge, the Red Army was advancing to within fi ft y miles of Berlin. Stalin drove a series of hard bar- gains. He refused to give up his plans for communist domination of Poland and the Balkans, although he did agree to Roosevelt’s request for a Declaration of Liberated Europe, which called for free elections without providing for any method of enforcement or supervision. More important for the United States, Stalin prom- ised to enter the Pacifi c war three months aft er Germany surren- dered. In return, Roosevelt off ered extensive concessions in Asia,
in Normandy, the Allied forces had brought the war in Europe to a successful conclusion.
War Aims and Wartime Diplomacy The American contribution to Hitler’s defeat was relatively minor compared to the damage infl icted by the Soviet Union. At the height of the German invasion of Russia, more than 300 Soviet divisions had been locked in battle with 250 German ones, a striking contrast to the 58 divisions the United States and Britain used in the Normandy invasion. As his armies overran Poland and the Balkan countries, Joseph Stalin was determined to retain control over this region, which had been the historic pathway for Western invasion into Russia. Delay in opening the second front and an innate distrust of the West convinced the Soviets that they should maximize their territorial gains by imposing communist regimes on eastern Europe.
American postwar goals were quite diff erent. Now believing the failure to join the League of Nations in 1919 had led to the coming of World War II, the American people and their leaders
D-Day Landing, June 6, 1944 View the Closer Look
The D-Day Landing by American and British forces on June 6, 1944, actually represented two landings: an airborne assault of 24,000 Allied paratroopers shortly after midnight and an Allied amphibious landing by Allied armored and infantry divisions at 6:30 am off the coast of France in Normandy.
656 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
ahead. Th e defeat of Nazi Germany dissolved the one strong bond between the United States and the Soviet Union. With very diff er- ent histories, cultures, and ideologies, the two nations were bound to drift apart. It was now up to the inexperienced Harry Truman to manage the growing rivalry that was destined to develop into the future Cold War.
Triumph and Tragedy in the Pacifi c Th e total defeat of Germany in May 1945 turned all eyes toward Japan. Although the combined chiefs of staff had originally esti- mated it would take eighteen months aft er Germany’s surrender to conquer Japan, American forces moved with surprising speed.
including Russian control over Manchuria. While neither a sellout nor a betrayal, as some critics have charged, Yalta was a signifi- cant diplomatic victory for the Soviets—one that refl ected Russia’s major contribution to a victory in Europe.
For the president, the long journey to Yalta proved to be too much. His health continued to fail aft er his return to Washington. In early April, FDR left the capital for Warm Springs, Georgia, where he had always been able to relax. He was sitting for his por- trait at midday on April 12, 1945, when he suddenly complained of a “terrifi c headache,” then slumped forward and died.
Th e nation mourned a man who had gallantly met the chal- lenge of depression and global war. Unfortunately, FDR had taken no steps to prepare his successor for the diffi cult problems that lay
Sicily
Crete (Gr.)
Rhodes (It.)
1942
Nov.
Nov. 1942
July 1943
A ug. 1944
Apr . 19
45
Dec. 1944
A ug
. 1 94
4M ar. 1
944
Ju ly
19 44
A ug
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Kasserine Pass Feb. 14–22,1943
El Alamein Oct. 23–Nov. 5, 1942
Stalingrad Aug. 21, 1942–
Jan. 31, 1943Battle of the Bulge
Dec. 16, 1944– Jan. 31, 1945
D-Day June 6, 1944AT L A N T I C
O C E A N
B l a c k S e a
N o r t h S e a
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Rhine R .
Oder R.
Paris liberated
Aug. 1944
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June 4, 1944
Leningrad besieged Sept. 1941–June 19, 1944
Berlin surrendered May 2, 1945
London Warsaw
Moscow
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a
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(Vichy France) Joined Allies Nov. 1942
YUGO. ITALY
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Extent of Axis control, early Nov. 1942
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Axis Powers before World War II
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WORLD WAR II IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA The tide of battle shifted in this theater during the winter of 1942–1943. The massive German assault on the eastern front was turned back by the Russians at Stalingrad, and the Allied forces recaptured North Africa.
Victory 657
The Big Three—Yalta Conference Watch the Video
Admiral Nimitz swept through the Gilbert, Caroline, and Marshall Islands in 1944, securing bases for further advances and building airfi elds for American B-29s to begin a deadly bombardment of the Japanese home islands. General MacArthur cleared New Guinea of the last Japanese defender in early 1944 and began planning his long-heralded return to the Philippines. American troops landed on the island of Leyte on October 20, 1944, and Manila fell in early February 1945. Th e Japanese navy, in a Pacifi c version of the Battle of the Bulge, launched a daring three-pronged attack on the American invasion fl eet in Leyte Gulf. Th e U.S. Navy rallied to blunt all three Japanese thrusts, sinking four carriers and ending any further Japanese naval threat.
Th e defeat of Japan was now only a matter of time. Th e United States had three possible ways to proceed. Th e military favored a full-scale invasion, beginning on the southernmost island of Kyushu in November 1945 and culminating with an assault on Honshu (the main island of Japan) and a climactic battle for Tokyo in 1946; casualties were expected to run into the hundreds
of thousands. Diplomats suggested a negotiated peace, urging the United States to modify the unconditional surrender formula to permit Japan to retain the institution of the emperor.
Th e third possibility involved the highly secret Manhattan Project . Since 1939, the United States had spent $2 billion to develop an atomic bomb based on the fi ssion of radioactive uranium and plu- tonium. Scientists, many of them refugees from Europe, worked to perfect this deadly new weapon at the University of Chicago; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and a remote laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. In the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, they successfully tested the fi rst atomic bomb, creating a fi reball brighter than several suns and a telltale mushroom cloud that rose some 40,000 feet above an enormous crater in the desert fl oor.
Truman had been unaware of the existence of the Manhattan Project before he became president on April 12. Now he simply fol- lowed the recommendation of a committee headed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to drop the bomb on a Japanese city. Th e committee discussed but rejected the possibility of inviting the
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (left) and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov (right) meet prior to the start of the Yalta Conference, February 4–11, 1945. The wartime conference, also attended by President Franklin Roosevelt and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, was organized mainly to discuss the postwar reorganization of European nations and Soviet entrance into the war against Japan.
658
living hell were totally unprepared for what they found.
In November 1944 the U.S. Army discovered its fi rst camp, Natzwiller- Struthof, which had been abandoned by the Germans months before. Viewing Natzwiller from a distance, Milton Bracker of the New York Times noted its deceptive similarity to an American Civilian Conservation Corps camp: “The sturdy green barracks buildings looked exactly like those that housed forestry trainees in the U.S. during the early New Deal.”
alone would not stop the killing, that they would divert resources from the broader offensive against Germany, and that military victory was the surest path to the libera- tion of the camps. In part because no one in the United States compre- hended the full enormity of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” Roosevelt sided with the latter group, and no spe- cial action was taken against the death camps. As a result, it was by chance that Allied forces fi rst stum- bled upon the camps, and the GIs who threw open the gates to that
The liberation of the Nazi death camps near the end of World War II was not a prior- ity objective; nor was it a planned operation. Since 1942, the U.S. gov- ernment had known that the Nazis were murdering Jews en masse, but offi cials of the Roosevelt admin- istration were divided on what to do about it. Some argued for air raids on the death camps, even if such raids were likely to kill large numbers of the Jewish inmates. Others contended that air raids
The Face of the Holocaust Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment The Face of the Holocaust on myhistorylab
Thousands of piled shoes formerly belonging to Jewish and other European men, women, and children murdered at an unidentified Nazi death camp during World War II.
659
If the experience at Nordhausen gave many GIs a new sense of mis- sion in battle, it also forced them to distance themselves from the reali- ties of the camps. Only by closing off their emotions could they go about the grim task of sorting out the living from the dead and tending to the survivors. Margaret Bourke-White, whose Life magazine photographs brought the horrors of the death camps to millions on the home front, recalled working “with a veil over my mind.”
People often ask me how it is pos- sible to photograph such atrocities. In photographing the murder camps, the protective veil was so tightly drawn that I hardly knew what I had taken until I saw prints of my own photographs.
By the end of 1945, most of the lib- erators had come home and returned to civilian life. Once home, their expe- riences produced no common moral responses. No particular pattern emerged in their occupational, politi- cal, and religious behavior, beyond a fear of the rise of postwar totalitari- anism shared by most Americans. Few spoke publicly about their role in the liberation of the camps; most found that after a short period of grim fascination, their friends and families preferred to forget. Some had nightmares, but few reported being tormented by memories. For the lib- erators, the ordeal was over. For the survivors of the Holocaust , liberation was but the fi rst step in the tortuous process of rebuilding broken bodies and shattered lives.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did American leaders dur- ing the war have such diffi culty comprehending the scope of the Holocaust?
2. How did the discovery of the Holocaust confi rm Americans’ belief that the war was necessary and just?
stacked bodies—stacked bodies and wood and burned them.”
On April 12, generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton toured Ohrdruf. The generals, professional soldiers familiar with the devastation of battle, had never seen its like. Years later, Bradley recalled, “The smell of death overwhelmed us even before we passed through the stockade. More than 3200 naked, emaciated bodies had been fl ung into shallow graves. Others lay in the street where they had fallen.”
Eisenhower ordered every available armed forces unit in the area to visit Ohrdruf. “We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fi ght- ing for,” said Eisenhower. “Now at least he will know what he is fi ghting against.” He urged government offi cials and journalists to visit the camps and tell the world. In an offi cial message Eisenhower summed it up:
We are constantly fi nding German camps in which they have placed political prisoners where unspeakable conditions exist. From my own personal observation, I can state unequivocally that all written statements up to now do not paint the full horrors.
On April 11, the Timberwolf Division of the Third Army uncovered Nordhausen. They found three thou- sand dead and only seven hundred survivors. The scene sickened battle- hardened veterans:
The odors, well there is no way to describe the odors . . . . Many of the boys I am talking about now—these were tough soldiers, there were combat men who had been all the way through the invasion—were ill and vomiting, throwing up, just at the sight of this.
For some, the liberation of Nordhausen changed the meaning of the war.
I must also say that my fellow GIs, most thought that any stories they had read in the paper . . . were either not true or at least exaggerated. And it did not sink in, what this was all about, until we got into Nordhausen.
As he toured the grounds, however, he faced a starker reality and slowly came to think the unthinkable. In the crematorium, he reported, “I cranked the elevator tray a few times and slid the furnace tray a few times, and even at that moment, I did not believe what I was doing was real.”
“There were no prisoners,” he wrote, “no screams, no burly guards, no taint of death in the air as on a battlefi eld.” Bracker had to stretch his imagination to its limits to compre- hend the camp’s silent testimony to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. U.S. military person- nel who toured Natzwiller shared this sense of the surreal. In their report to headquarters, they carefully qualifi ed every observation. They described “what appeared to be a disinfec- tion unit,” a room “allegedly used as a lethal gas chamber,” “a cellar room with a special type elevator,” and “an incinerator room with equipment obviously intended for the burning of human bodies.” They saw before them the evidence of German atrocities, but the truth was so horrible, they could not quite bring themselves to draw the obvious conclusions.
Inside the Vicious Heart , Robert Abzug’s study of the liberation of the concentration camps, refers to this phenomenon as “double vision.” Faced with a revelation so terrible, witnesses could not fully comprehend the evi- dence of the systematic murder of more than six million men, women, and chil- dren. But as the Allied armies advanced into Germany, the shocking evidence mounted. On April 4, 1945, the Fourth Armored Division of the Third Army unexpectedly discovered Ohrdruf, a relatively small concentration camp. Ohrdruf’s liberation had a tremendous impact on American forces. It was the fi rst camp discovered intact, with its grisly array of the dead and dying. Inside the compound, corpses were piled in heaps in the barracks. An infantryman recalled, “I guess the most vivid recollection of the whole camp is the pyre that was located on the edge of the camp. It was a big pit, where they
660 CHAPTER 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
impress the Soviet Union with the fact that the United States had exclusive possession of the ultimate weapon. Th e available evidence indicates that while Truman and his associates were aware of the possible eff ect on the Soviet Union, their primary motive was to end World War II as quickly and eff ortlessly as possible. Th e saving of American lives, along with a desire for revenge for Pearl Harbor, were uppermost in the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet in using the atomic bomb to defeat Japan, the United States virtually guaranteed a postwar arms race with the Soviet Union.
Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War
Th e second great war of the twentieth century had a lasting impact on American life. For the fi rst time, the nation’s mili- tary potential had been reached. In 1945, the United States was unquestionably the strongest country on the earth, with eleven million men and women in uniform; a vast array of shipyards, aircraft plants, and munitions factories in full production; and a monopoly over the atomic bomb. For better or worse, the nation was now launched on a global career. In the future, the United States would be involved in all parts of the world, from western
Japanese to observe a demonstration shot at a remote Pacifi c site and even ruled out the idea of giving advance notice of the bomb’s destructive power. Neither Truman nor Stimson had any qualms about the decision to drop the bomb without warning. Th ey viewed it as a legitimate wartime measure, one designed to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans—and Japanese—that would be lost in a full-scale invasion.
Weather conditions on the morning of August 6 dictated the choice of Hiroshima as the bomb’s target. The explosion incinerated four square miles of the city, instantly killing more than sixty thousand. Two days later, Russia entered the war against Japan, and the next day, August 9, the United States dropped a sec- ond bomb on Nagasaki. Th ere were no more atomic bombs available, but no more were needed. Th e emperor personally broke a deadlock in the Japanese cabinet and persuaded his ministers to surrender unconditionally on August 14, 1945. Th ree weeks later, Japan signed a formal capitulation agreement on the decks of the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay to bring World War II to its offi cial close.
Many years later, scholars charged that Truman had more in mind than defeating Japan when he decided to use the atomic bomb. Citing air force and naval offi cers who claimed Japan could be defeated by a blockade or by conventional air attacks, these revi- sionists suggested the real reason for dropping the bomb was to
The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, a provincial capital and naval base in southern Japan, on August 9, 1945, virtually obliterated the city and killed about forty thousand people. Only buildings made with reinforced concrete remained standing after the blast.
Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War 661
huge defi cits had now become the norm as economic control passed from New York and Wall Street to Washington and Pennsylvania Avenue. Th e war led to far-reaching changes in American society that would become apparent only decades later. Such distinctive patterns of recent American life as the baby boom and the growth of the Sunbelt can be traced back to wartime origins. World War II was a watershed in twentieth-century America, ushering in a new age of global concerns and domestic upheaval.
Europe to remote jungles in Asia, from the nearby Caribbean to the distant Persian Gulf. And despite its enormous strength in 1945, the nation’s new world role would encompass failure and frustration as well as power and dominion.
Th e legacy of war was equally strong at home. Four years of fi ghting brought about industrial recovery and unparalleled prosperity. Th e old pattern of unregulated free enterprise was as much a victim of the war as of the New Deal; big government and
662 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER REVIEW
Retreat, Reversal, and Rivalry
Why were the United States and Japan on a col- lision course in the years following World War I?
To sustain its developing industrial economy after World War I, Japan sought to dominate China and exploit its resources. In response, the United States either had to
abandon China or forcefully oppose Japan’s expansion there. (p. 639 )
Isolationism
What were isolationism, and why was it so appealing to Americans in the 1920s and 1930s?
Disillusionment with the outcome of World War I led to a policy of isolationism, by which Americans hoped to avoid responsibility for the peace of Europe and Asia, and to spare
themselves the agony of war if peace failed. Isolationism had traditionally served Americans well, and many Americans expected that it would con- tinue to do so. (p. 641 )
The Road to War
How did the United States go from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941?
FDR gradually led the United States from neutrality in the 1930s to war in 1941, responding to German and Japanese aggression with careful political and diplomatic steps, includ-
ing aid to Britain, an undeclared naval war against Germany, and economic pressure on Japan, which lashed out by attacking Pearl Harbor. (p. 644 )
Turning the Tide Against the Axis
How did America and its allies halt the advances of Germany and Japan?
The United States formed an alliance with Britain and the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan. American and British forces fought the Germans in North Africa and
Italy, while Soviet forces beat back the Germans in Russia. American ships and planes defeated Japanese forces at the Coral Sea and Midway. (p. 647 )
The Home Front
How did American domestic life change during World War II?
During the war American industry churned out equip- ment at a rate unimagined before 1941. Record numbers of women and minorities entered the workforce. But 120,000
Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps. (p. 649 )
Victory
How did the war end, and what were its consequences?
The war in Europe ended in May 1945 after Allied and Soviet forces overran Germany. The war in the Pacific ended after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and left the
United States in undisputed control of Japan. (p. 654 )
Nagasak Aug. 9, 1945
Aug. 1945
Nanking
MONGOLIA
C H I N A KORE
Manchuku (Manchuria
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Study Resources
T I M E L I N E
1922 Washington Naval Conference limits tonnage 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlaws war (August); Clark
Memorandum repudiates Roosevelt Corollary (December)
1931 Japan occupies China’s Manchurian province 1933 FDR extends diplomatic recognition to USSR 1936 Hitler’s troops reoccupy Rhineland 1937 FDR signs permanent Neutrality Act (May); FDR
urges quarantine of aggressor nations (October); Japanese planes sink USS Panay in China (December)
1938 Munich Conference appeases Hitler (September)
1939 Germany invades Poland; World War II begins 1941 Germany invades USSR; Japan attacks Pearl Harbor;
United States enters World War II
1942 U.S. defeats Japanese at battle of Midway (June); Allies land in North Africa (November)
1943 Soviets smash Nazis at Stalingrad 1944 Allies land on Normandy beaches 1945 Big Three meet at Yalta (February); FDR dies, Harry
Truman becomes president (April); Germany sur- renders unconditionally (May); United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders (August)
y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 27 America and the World, 1921–1945 on MyHistoryLab
STUDY RESOURCES 663
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
Kellogg–Briand Pact Also called the Pact of Paris, this 1928 agree- ment was the brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French premier Aristide Briand. Its signatories, eventually including nearly all nations, pledged to shun war as an instrument of policy. It had little effect on the conduct of world affairs. p. 638
Axis Powers During World War II, the alliance between Italy, Germany, and Japan was known as the “Rome–Berlin–Tokyo axis,” and the three mem- bers were called the Axis Powers. They fought against the Allied Powers, led by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. p. 642
Neutrality Acts Laws in the 1930s that forbade selling munitions or lending money to belligerents. The 1937 act required that all other trade with countries at war be conducted on a cash-and-carry basis. p. 642
Lend-Lease In 1941, Congress gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the authority to sell, lend, lease, or transfer war materials to any country whose defense he declared vital to that of the United States. p. 644
Pearl Harbor On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack marked America’s entrance into World War II. p. 647
D-Day June 6, 1944, the day Allied troops crossed the English Channel and opened a second front in western Europe during World War II. The “D” stands for “disembarkation”: to leave a ship and go ashore. p. 654
Yalta Conference A wartime conference in February 1945 in which the Allies agreed to final plans for the defeat of Germany and the terms of its occupation. The Soviets agreed to allow free elections in Poland, but they were never held. p. 655
Manhattan Project The top-secret World War II program that produced the first atomic weapons. p. 657
Holocaust The slaughter of six million Jews and other persons by Hitler’s regime. p. 659
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. How did the memory of World War I affect the American approach to World War II?
2. How did Franklin Roosevelt aid Britain prior to American entry into World War II? Why did he have to be so careful in doing so?
3. What were some causes of tension within the American alliance during the war?
4. What happened to the civil rights movement during the war? 5. Was the atom bomb necessary to end the war? Why or why not?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The Home Front
World War II in the Pacific p. 650
The Road to War
Isolationism
World War II in Europe p. 643
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 27 on MyHistoryLab
Rosie the Riveter p. 651
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View the Map
Charles Lindbergh, Radio Address (1941) p. 645
Read the Document
View the Closer Look
View the Map
Watch the Video
Victory
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
D-Day Landing, June 6, 1944 p. 655
Japanese Relocation Order p. 653
◾
◾
◾
View the Closer Look
A. Philip Randolph, “Why Should We March” (1942) p. 652
Read the Document
The Big Three—Yalta Conference p. 657
Watch the Video
Complete the Assignment
Read the Document
The Japanese Raid on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 p. 646
The Face of the Holocaust p. 658
Contents and Learning Objectives
Small in stature, ungainly in build, he radiated a catlike quality as he waited behind his unassuming façade, ready to dazzle an opponent with his “brilliant, terrify- ing tactical mastery.” Truman, in contrast, personified traditional Wilsonian idealism. Lacking Roosevelt’s guile, the new president placed his faith in international cooperation. Like many Americans, he believed implic- itly in his country’s innate goodness. Self-assured to the point of cockiness, he came to Potsdam clothed in the armor of self-righteousness.
Truman and Stalin met for the first time on July 17, 1945. “I told Stalin that I am no diplomat,” the president recorded in his diary, “but usually said yes and no to questions after hearing all the argument.” The Russian dictator’s reaction to Truman remains a mystery, but Truman believed the first encounter went well. “I can deal with Stalin,” he wrote. “He is honest—but smart as hell.”
Together with Winston Churchill and his replace- ment, Clement Attlee, whose Labour party had just triumphed in British elections, Truman and Stalin clashed for the next ten days over such difficult issues as reparations, the Polish border, and the fate of eastern Europe. Truman presented the ideas and proposals formulated by his advisers; he saw his task as essentially procedural, and when he presided, he moved the agenda along in brisk fashion. After he
The Potsdam Summit “I am getting ready to go see Stalin and Churchill,” President Truman wrote to his mother in July 1945, “and it is a chore.” On board the cruiser Augusta , the new president continued to complain about the upcoming Potsdam Conference in his diary. “How I hate this trip!” he confided. “But I have to make it win, lose, or draw, and we must win. I am giving nothing away except to save starving people, and even then I hope we can only help them to help themselves.”
Halfway around the world, Joseph Stalin left Moscow a day late because of a slight heart attack. The Russian leader hated to fly, so he traveled by rail. Moreover, he ordered the heavily guarded train to detour around Poland for fear of an ambush, further delaying his arrival. When he made his entrance into Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin miraculously spared the total destruc- tion that his forces had created in the German capital, he was ready to claim the spoils of war.
These two men, one the veteran revolutionary who had been in power for two decades, the other an untested leader in office for barely three months, symbolized the enormous differences that now separated the wartime allies. Stalin was above all a realist. Brutal in securing total control at home, he was more flexible in his for- eign policy, bent on exploiting Russia’s victory in World War II rather than aiming at world domination. Cunning and caution were the hallmarks of his diplomatic style.
THE COLD WAR BEGINS PG. 666 How did the Cold War begin?
CONTAINMENT PG. 668 What was containment, and why was it adopted?
THE COLD WAR EXPANDS PG. 671 How did the Cold War expand from Europe to Asia?
THE COLD WAR AT HOME PG. 674 How did the Cold War affect life in America?
EISENHOWER WAGES THE COLD WAR PG. 680 How successful was Eisenhower at dealing with the foreign policy issues facing the United States?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY America Enters the Middle East
The Onset of the Cold War 28
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 28 The Onset of the Cold War
Churchill, Truman, and Stalin during the Potsdam Conference in July 1945. The conference revealed the growing divergence among the wartime allies that soon led to the onset of the Cold War.
666 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
The Division of Europe Th e fundamental disagreement was over who would control post- war Europe. In the east, the Red Army had swept over Poland and the Balkans, laying the basis for Soviet domination there. American and British forces had liberated western Europe from Scandinavia to Italy. Th e Russians, mindful of past invasions from the west across the plains of Poland, were intent on imposing communist govern- ments loyal to Moscow in the Soviet sphere. Th e United States, on the other hand, upheld the principle of national self-determination, insisting the people in each country should freely choose their post- war rulers. Th e Soviets saw the demand for free elections as sub- versive, since they knew that popularly chosen regimes would be unfriendly to Russia. Suspecting American duplicity, Stalin brought down an Iron Curtain (Churchill’s phrase) from the Baltic to the Adriatic as he created a series of satellite governments.
Germany was the key. The temporary zones of occupa- tion gradually hardened into permanent lines of division. Ignoring the Potsdam Conference agreement that the country be treated as an economic unit, the United States and Great Britain were, by 1946, refusing to permit the Russians to take reparations from the industrial western zones. The initial harsh occupation policy gave way to more humane treatment of the German people and a slow but steady economic recovery. The United States and England merged their zones and championed the idea of the unification of all Germany. Russia, fearing a resurgence of German military power, responded by intensify- ing the communization of its zone, which included the jointly occupied city of Berlin. By 1947, England, France, and the United States were laying plans to transfer their authority to an independent West Germany.
Th e Soviet Union consolidated its grip on eastern Europe in 1946 and 1947. One by one, communist regimes replaced coalition governments in Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Moving cautiously to avoid provoking the West, Stalin used communism as a means to dominate half of Europe, both to protect the security of the Soviet state and to advance its international power. Th e climax came in March 1948 when a coup in Czechoslovakia overthrew a democratic government and gave the Soviets a strategic foothold in central Europe.
The division of Europe was an inevitable aftereffect of World War II. Both sides were intent on imposing their values in the areas liberated by their troops. Th e Russians were no more likely to withdraw from eastern Europe than the United States and Britain were from Germany, France, and Italy. A frank recognition of competing spheres of influence might have avoided further escalation of tension. But the Western nations, remembering Hitler’s aggression in the 1930s, began to see Stalin as an equally danger- ous threat to their well-being. Instead of accepting him as a cautious leader bent on protecting Russian security, they perceived him as an aggressive dictator leading a communist drive for world domination.
Withholding Economic Aid World War II had infl icted enormous damage on Russia. Th e bru- tal fi ghting had taken between fi ft een and twenty million Russian lives, destroyed more than thirty thousand factories, and torn up forty thousand miles of railroad track. Th e industrialization
had “banged through” three items one day, he com- mented, “I am not going to stay around this terrible place all summer, just to listen to speeches. I’ll go home to the Senate for that.” In an indirect, roundabout way, he informed Stalin of the existence of the atomic bomb, tested successfully in the New Mexico desert just before the conference began. Truman offered no details, and the impassive Stalin asked for none, com- menting only that he hoped the United States would make “good use of it against the Japanese.”
Reparations proved to be the crucial issue at Potsdam. The Russians wanted to rebuild their war- ravaged economy with German industry; the United States feared it would be saddled with the entire cost of caring for the defeated Germans. A compromise was finally reached. Each side would take reparations primarily from its own occupation zone, a solution that foreshadowed the future division of Germany. “Because they could not agree on how to govern Europe,” wrote historian Daniel Yergin, “Truman and Stalin began to divide it.” The other issues were referred to the newly created Council of Foreign Ministers, which would meet in the fall in London.
The Potsdam Conference thus ended on an apparent note of harmony; beneath the surface, however, the bitter antago- nism of the Cold War was festering. A dozen years later, Truman reminisced to an old associate about Potsdam. “What a show that was!” Describing himself as “an innocent idealist” surrounded by wolves, he claimed that all the agreements reached there were “broken as soon as the unconscionable Russian Dictator returned to Moscow!” He added ruefully, “And I liked the little son of a bitch.”
Potsdam marked the end of the wartime alliance. America and Russia, each distrustful of the other, began to engage in a long and bitter confrontation. For the next decade, the two superpowers would vie for control of postwar Europe, and later clash over the spread of communism to Asia. By the time Truman’s and Stalin’s successors met for the next summit conference at Geneva in 1955, the Cold War was at its height.
The Cold War Begins
How did the Cold War begin?
Th e confl ict between the United States and the Soviet Union began gradually. For two years, the nations tried to adjust their differences over the division of Europe, postwar eco- nomic aid, and the atomic bomb through discussion and nego- tiation. Th e Council of Foreign Ministers provided the forum. Beginning in London during the fall of 1945 and meeting with their Russian counterparts in Paris, New York, and Moscow, American diplomats searched for a way to live in peace with a suspicious Soviet Union.
The Cold War Begins 667
Lend-Lease proved no more successful. In the spring of 1945, Congress instructed the administration not to use Lend-Lease for postwar reconstruction. President Truman went further, however, by signing an order on May 11, 1945, terminating all shipments to Russia, including those already at sea. Th e State Department saw the action as applying “leverage against the Soviet Union”; Stalin termed it “brutal.” Heeding Russian protests, Truman resumed Lend-Lease shipments, but only until the war was over in August. Aft er that, all Lend-Lease ended.
Deprived of American assistance, the Russians were forced to rebuild their economy through reparations. American and British resistance prevented them from taking reparations in western Germany, but the Soviets systematically removed factories and plants from other areas they controlled, including their zone of Germany, eastern Europe, and Manchuria. Slowly, the Russian economy recovered from the war, but the bitterness over the American refusal to extend aid convinced Stalin of Western hostil- ity and thus deepened the growing antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States.
that Stalin had achieved at such great sacrifi ce in the 1930s had been badly set back; even agricultural production had fallen by half during the war. Outside aid and assistance were vital for the reconstruction of the Soviet Union.
American leaders knew of Russia’s plight and hoped to use it to good advantage. Wartime ambassador Averell Harriman wrote in 1944 that economic aid was “one of the most eff ective weapons at our disposal” in dealing with Russia. President Truman was con- vinced that economically “we held all the cards and the Russians had to come to us.”
Th ere were two possible forms of postwar assistance: loans and Lend-Lease. In January 1945, the Soviets requested a $6 billion loan to fi nance postwar reconstruction. Despite initial American encouragement, President Roosevelt deferred action on this request; as relations with Russia cooled, the chances for action dimmed. “Our experience,” commented Harriman in April 1945, had “incontrovertibly proved it was not possible to bank good- will in Moscow.” By the war’s end, the loan request, though never formally turned down, was dead.
Cyprus
ATLANTIC OCEAN
North Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Blac k Sea
ICELAND
NORWAY SWEDEN
FINLAND
SOVIET UNION
POLAND
ROMANIA
TURKEY
GREECE
BULG.ITALY
CZECH.
HUN.AUS.
YUGOSLAVIA
ALB.
GERMANY
DEN.
NETH.
BELG.
LUX.
FRANCE SWITZ.
UNITED KINGDOM
IRELAND
SPAIN PORTUGAL
MOROCCO (Fr.)
ALGERIA (Fr.)
TUNISIA (Fr.)
SP. MOROCCO
British zone
American zone
French zone
Soviet zone
Berlin
Hamburg
Hanover
Frankfurt
BERLIN
French
British
American
Soviet
Berlin airlift, 1948–19490 100 kilometers50
0 50 100 miles
0 250 500 kilometers
0 250 500 miles
Western bloc
Communist bloc/ Soviet zone
Nonaligned nations
“Iron Curtain”
EUROPE AFTER WORLD WAR II The heavy red line splitting Germany shows in graphic form the division of Europe between the Western and Soviet spheres of infl uence. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” said Winston Churchill in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”
Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech (March 5, 1946) Read the Document
668 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
orderly of mind, Marshall had the capability—honed in World War II—to think in broad strategic terms. An extraordinarily good judge of ability, he relied on gift ed subordinates to handle the day-to-day implementation of his policies. In the months aft er taking offi ce, he came to rely on two men in particular: Dean Acheson and George Kennan.
Acheson, an experienced Washington lawyer and bureaucrat, was appointed undersecretary of state and given free rein by Marshall to conduct American diplomacy. In appearance, he seemed more British than American, with his impeccable Ivy League clothes and bushy mustache. A man of keen intelligence, he had a carefully cul- tivated reputation for arrogance and a low tolerance for mediocrity. As an ardent Anglophile, he wanted to see the United States take over a faltering Britain’s role as the supreme arbiter of world aff airs. Recalling the lesson of Munich, he opposed appeasement and advocated a policy of negotiating only from strength.
George Kennan, Marshall’s other mainstay, headed the newly created Policy Planning Staff . A career foreign service offi cer, Kennan had become a Soviet expert, mastering Russian history and culture as well as speaking the language fl uently. He served in Moscow aft er
The Atomic Dilemma Overshadowing all else was the atomic bomb. Used by the United States with deadly success at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the new weapon raised problems that would have been diffi cult for even friendly nations to resolve. Given the uneasy state of Soviet– American relations, the eff ect was disastrous.
Th e wartime policy followed by Roosevelt and Churchill ensured a postwar nuclear arms race. Instead of informing their major ally of the developing atomic bomb, they kept it a closely guarded secret. Stalin learned of the Manhattan Project through espionage and responded by starting a Soviet atomic program in 1943. By the time Truman informed Stalin of the weapon’s existence at Potsdam, the Russians, aided by a steady stream of information from spies in the United States, were well on the way to making their own bomb.
Aft er the war, the United States developed a disarmament plan that would turn control of fi ssionable material, then the processing plants, and ultimately the American stockpile of bombs over to an interna- tional agency. When President Truman appointed fi nancier Bernard Baruch to present this proposal to the United Nations, Baruch insisted on changing it in several important ways, adding sanctions against violators and exempting the international agency from the UN veto. Ignoring scientists who pleaded for a more cooperative position, Baruch followed instead the advice of Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower, who cited the rapid demobilization of the American armed forces (from nearly twelve million personnel in 1945 to fewer than two million in 1947) to argue that “we cannot at this time limit our capability to produce or use this weapon.” In eff ect, the Baruch Plan , with its multiple stages and emphasis on inspection, would pre- serve the American atomic monopoly for the indefi nite future.
Th e Soviets responded predictably. Diplomat Andrei Gromyko presented a simple plan calling for a total ban on the production and use of the new weapon as well as the destruction of all existing bombs. Th e Russian proposal was founded on the same percep- tion of national self-interest as the Baruch Plan. Although Russia had also demobilized rapidly, it still had nearly three million men under arms in 1947 and wanted to maximize its conventional strength by outlawing the atomic bomb.
No agreement was possible. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could abandon its position without surrendering a vital national interest. Wanting to preserve its monopoly, America stressed inspection and control; hoping to neutralize the U.S. advantage, Russia advocated immediate disarmament. Th e nuclear dilemma, inherent in the Soviet-American rivalry, blocked any negotiated settlement. Instead, the two superpowers agreed to disagree. Trusting neither each other nor any form of international cooperation, each concentrated on taking maximum advantage of its wartime gains. Th us the Russians exploited the territory they had conquered in Europe while the United States retained its economic and strategic advantages over the Soviet Union. Th e result was the Cold War.
Containment
What was containment, and why was it adopted?
A major departure in American foreign policy occurred in January 1947, when General George C. Marshall, the wartime army chief of staff , became secretary of state. Calm, mature, and
Read the Document
George F. Kennan (1904–2005) was an American political advisor, diplomat, political scientist, and historian. Kennan was instrumental in developing the policy of containment concerning the Soviet Union that dominated the immediate post–World War II era.
George F. Kennan, “The Long Telegram” (1946)
Containment 669
containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Such a policy of halting Soviet aggression would not lead to any immediate victory, Kennan warned. In the long run, however, he believed that the United States could force the Soviet Union to adopt more reasonable poli- cies and live in peace with the West.
The Truman Doctrine The initial step toward contain- ment came in response to an urgent British request. Since March 1946, England had been supporting the Greek government in a bitter civil war against Communist guerrillas. On February 21, 1947, the British informed the United States that they could no longer aff ord to aid Greece or Turkey, the latter under heavy pres- sure from the Soviets for access to the Mediterranean. Believing the Russians responsible for the strife in Greece (in fact, they were not), Marshall, Acheson, and Kennan quickly decided the United States would have to assume Britain’s role in the eastern Mediterranean.
Worried about congressional sup- port, especially since the Republicans had gained control of Congress in 1946, Marshall called a meeting with the leg- islative leadership in late February. He outlined the problem; then Acheson took over to warn that “a highly pos- sible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration.” Comparing the situation in Greece to one rotten apple spoiling an entire barrel, Acheson warned that “the cor- ruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry
infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France.” Claiming that the Soviets were “playing one of the greatest gambles in history,” Acheson concluded that “we and we alone were in a position to break up the play.”
The bipartisan group of congressional leaders was deeply impressed. Finally, Republican Senator Arthur M. Vandenberg spoke up, saying he would support the president, but adding that to ensure public backing, Truman would have to “scare hell” out of the American people.
Th e president followed the senator’s advice. On March 12, 1947, he asked Congress for $400 million for military and economic assis- tance to Greece and Turkey. In stating what would become known as the Truman Doctrine , he made clear that more was involved than just these two countries—the stakes, in fact, were far higher. “It must be the policy of the United States,” Truman told the Congress,
U.S. recognition in 1933 and again during World War II, developing there a profound distrust for the Soviet regime. In a crucial telegram in 1946, he warned that the Kremlin believed “that there can be no compromise with rival power” and advocated a policy of contain- ment, arguing that only strong and sustained resistance could halt the outward fl ow of Russian power. As self-assured as Acheson, Kennan believed that neither Congress nor public opinion should interfere with the conduct of foreign policy by the experts.
In the spring of 1947, a sense of crisis impelled Marshall, Acheson, and Kennan to set out on a new course in American diplomacy. Dubbed containment , aft er an article by Kennan in Foreign Aff airs , the new policy both consolidated the evolving postwar anticommunism and established guidelines that would shape America’s role in the world for more than two decades. What Kennan proposed was “a long-term, patient but fi rm, and vigilant
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George Marshall, The Marshall Plan (1947) Read the Document
MARSHALL PLAN AID TO EUROPE, 1948–1952 The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, provided aid totaling $13 billion to European countries following World War II. Most went to former allies Great Britain and France but former enemies Italy and West Germany also received substantial aid. To receive the grants, countries pledged to control infl ation and lower tariffs.
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Soviet expansion. It was the latter argument, however, that proved decisive. When the Czech coup touched off a war scare in March 1948, Congress quickly approved the Marshall Plan by heavy majorities. Over the next four years, the huge American investment paid rich dividends, generating a broad industrial revival in west- ern Europe that became self-sustaining by the 1950s. Th e threat of communist domination faded, and a prosperous Europe proved to be a bonanza for American farmers, miners, and manufacturers.
The Western Military Alliance Th e third and fi nal phase of containment came in 1949 with the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) . NATO grew out of European fears of Russian military aggression. Recalling Hitler’s tactics in the 1930s, the people of western Europe wanted assurance that the United States would protect them from attack as they began to achieve economic recovery. American diplomats were sympathetic. “People could not go ahead and make investments for the future,” commented Averell Harriman, “without some sense of security.”
England, France, and the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) began the process in March 1948 when they signed the Brussels Treaty, providing for collec- tive self-defense. In January 1949, President Truman called for a broader defense pact including the United States; ten European nations, from Norway in the north to Italy in the south, joined the United States and Canada in signing the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington on April 4, 1949. Th is historic departure from the tra- ditional policy of isolation—the United States had not signed such a treaty since the French alliance in the eighteenth century—caused extensive debate, but the Senate ratifi ed it in July by a vote of 82 to 13.
Th ere were two main features of NATO. First, the United States committed itself to the defense of Europe in the key clause, which stated that “an armed attack against one or more shall be considered an attack against them all.” In eff ect, the United States was extending its atomic shield over Europe. Th e second feature was designed to reassure worried Europeans that the United States would honor this commitment. In late 1950, President Truman appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower to the post of NATO supreme commander and authorized the stationing of four American divisions in Europe to serve as the nucleus of the NATO army. It was believed the threat of American troop involvement in any Russian assault would deter the Soviet Union from making such an attack.
Th e Western military alliance escalated the developing Cold War. Whatever its advantage in building a sense of security among worried Europeans, it represented an overreaction to the Soviet dan- ger. Americans and Europeans alike were attempting to apply the lesson of Munich to the Cold War. But Stalin was not Hitler, and the Soviets were not the Nazis. Th ere was no evidence of any Russian plan to invade western Europe, and in the face of the American atomic bomb, none was likely. NATO only intensifi ed Russian fears of the West and thus increased the level of international tension.
The Berlin Blockade Th e main Russian response to containment came in 1948 at the West’s most vulnerable point. American, British, French, and Soviet troops each occupied a sector of Berlin, but the city was
“to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure.” Aft er a brief debate, both the House and the Senate approved the program by margins of better than three to one.
Th e Truman Doctrine marked an informal declaration of cold war against the Soviet Union. Truman used the crisis in Greece to secure congressional approval and build a national consensus for the policy of containment. In less than two years, the civil war in Greece ended, but the American commitment to oppose communist expansion, whether by internal subversion or external aggression, placed the United States on a collision course with the Soviet Union around the globe.
The Marshall Plan Despite American interest in controlling Soviet expansion into Greece, western Europe was far more vital to U.S. interests than was the eastern Mediterranean. Yet by 1947, many Americans believed that western Europe was open to Soviet penetration. Th e problem was economic in nature. Despite $9 billion in piecemeal American loans, England, France, Italy, and the other European countries had great diffi culty in recovering from World War II. Food was scarce, with millions existing on less than fi ft een hundred calories a day; industrial machinery was broken down and obsolete; and workers were demoralized by years of depression and war. Th e cruel winter of 1947, the worst in fi ft y years, compounded the problem. Resentment and discontent led to grow- ing communist voting strength, especially in Italy and France. If the United States could not reverse the process, it seemed as though all of Europe might drift into the communist orbit.
In the weeks following proclamation of the Truman Doctrine, American officials dealt with this problem. Secretary of State Marshall, returning from a frustrating Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Moscow, warned that “the patient is sinking while the doctors deliberate.” Acheson believed that it was time to extend American “economic power” in Europe, both “to call an eff ective halt to the Soviet Union’s expansionism” and “to create a basis for political stability and economic well-being.” Th e experts drew up a plan for the massive infusion of American capital to fi nance the economic recovery of Europe. Speaking at a Harvard commence- ment on June 5, 1947, Marshall presented the broad outline. He off ered extensive economic aid to all the nations of Europe if they could reach agreement on ways to achieve “the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
Th e fate of the Marshall Plan depended on the reaction of the Soviet Union and the U.S. Congress. Marshall had taken, in the words of one American diplomat, “a hell of a gamble” by including Russia in his off er of aid. At a meeting of the European nations in Paris in July 1947, the Soviet foreign minister ended the suspense by abruptly withdrawing. Neither the Soviet Union nor its satel- lites would take part, apparently because Moscow saw the Marshall Plan as an American attempt to weaken Soviet control over eastern Europe. Th e other European countries then made a formal request for $17 billion in assistance over the next four years.
Congress responded cautiously to the proposal, appointing a special joint committee to investigate. Th e administration lob- bied vigorously, pointing out that the Marshall Plan would help the United States by stimulating trade with Europe as well as checking
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The Cold War Expands
How did the Cold War expand from Europe to Asia?
Th e rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union grew in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Both sides began to rebuild their military forces with new methods and new weapons. Equally signifi cant, the diplomatic competition spread from Europe to Asia as each of the superpowers sought to enhance its infl uence in the Far East. By the time Truman left offi ce in early 1953, the Cold War had taken on global proportions.
The Military Dimension Aft er World War II, American leaders were intent on reforming the nation’s military system in light of their wartime experience. Two goals were uppermost. First, nearly everyone agreed in the aft ermath of Pearl Harbor that the U.S. armed services should be unifi ed into an integrated military system. Th e developing Cold War reinforced this decision. Without unifi cation, declared George Marshall in 1945, “there can be little hope that we will be able to maintain through the years a military posture that will secure for us a lasting peace.” Equally important, planners realized, was the need for new institutions to coordinate military and diplomatic strategy so the nation could cope eff ectively with threats to its security.
In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act . It estab- lished a Department of Defense, headed by a civilian secretary of cabinet rank presiding over three separate services—the army, the navy, and the new air force. In addition, the act created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to coordinate the intelligence-gathering activities of various government agencies. Finally, the act provided for a National Security Council (NSC)—composed of the service secretaries, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of state—to advise the president on all matters regarding the nation’s security.
Despite the appearance of equality among the services, the air force quickly emerged as the dominant power in the atomic age, based on its capability both to deter an enemy from attacking and to wage war if deterrence failed. President Truman, intent on cutting back defense expenditures, favored the air force in his 1949 military budget, allotting this branch more than one-half the total sum. Aft er the Czech coup and the resulting war scare, Congress granted an additional $3 billion to the military. Th e appropriation included funds for a new B-36 to replace the B-29 as the nation’s primary stra- tegic bomber.
American military planners received even greater support in the fall of 1949 when the Soviet Union exploded its fi rst atomic bomb. President Truman appointed a high-level committee to explore mounting an all-out eff ort to build a hydrogen bomb to maintain American nuclear supremacy.
Some scientists had technical objections to the H-bomb, which was still far from being perfected, while others opposed the new weapon on moral grounds, claiming that its enormous destructive power (intended to be one thousand times greater than the atomic bomb) made it unthinkable. George Kennan sug- gested a new eff ort at international arms control with the Soviets, but Dean Acheson—who succeeded Marshall as secretary of state in early 1949—believed it was imperative that the United States develop the hydrogen bomb before the Soviet Union. When
located more than a hundred miles within the Russian zone of Germany (see the map of postwar Europe on p. 669 ). Stalin decided to test his opponents’ resolve by cutting off all rail and highway traffi c to Berlin on June 20, 1948.
Th e timing was very awkward for Harry Truman. He had his hands full resisting eff orts to force him off the Democratic ticket, and he faced a diffi cult reelection eff ort against a strong Republican candidate, Governor Th omas E. Dewey of New York. Immersed in election-year politics, Truman was caught unprepared by the Berlin blockade. Th e alternatives were not very appealing. Th e United States could withdraw its forces and lose not just a city, but the con- fi dence of all Europe; it could try to send in reinforcements and fi ght for Berlin; or it could sit tight and attempt to fi nd a diplomatic solution. Truman made the basic decision in characteristic fashion, telling the military that there would be no thought of pulling out. “We were going to stay, period,” an aide reported Truman as saying.
In the next few weeks, the president and his advisers devel- oped ways to implement the decision. Rejecting proposals for provoking a showdown by sending an armored column down the main highway, the administration adopted a two-phase policy. Th e fi rst part was a massive airlift of food, fuel, and supplies for the ten thousand troops and the two million civilians in Berlin. A fl eet of fi ft y-two C-54s and eighty C-47s began making two daily round-trip fl ights to Berlin, carrying 2,500 tons every twenty-four hours. Th en, to guard against Soviet interruption of the Berlin airlift , Truman transferred sixty American B-29s, planes capable of delivering atomic bombs, to bases in England. Th e president was bluffi ng; the B-29s were not equipped with atomic bombs, but at the time, the threat was eff ective.
For a few weeks, the world teetered on the edge of war. Stalin did not attempt to disrupt the fl ights to Berlin, but he rejected all American diplomatic initiatives. Although at any time the Russians could have halted it by jamming radar or shooting down the defenseless cargo planes, the airlift gradually increased to more than 4,000 tons a day. Governor Dewey patriotically supported the president’s policy, thus removing foreign policy from the presidential campaign. Yet for Truman, the tension was fi erce. In early September, he asked his advisers to brief him “on bases, bombs, Moscow, Leningrad, etc.” “I have a terrible feeling aft erward that we are very close to war,” he confi ded in his diary. “I hope not.”
Slowly, the tension eased. Th e Russians did not shoot down any planes, and the daily airlift climbed to nearly 7,000 tons. Truman, a decided underdog, won a surprising second term in November over a complacent Dewey, in part because the Berlin crisis had rallied the nation behind his leadership. In early 1949, the Soviets gave in, ending the blockade in return for another meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers on Germany—a conclave that proved as unproductive as all the earlier ones.
Th e Berlin crisis marked the end of the initial phase of the Cold War. Th e airlift had given the United States a striking political victory, showing the world the triumph of American ingenuity over Russian stubbornness. Yet it could not disguise the fact that the Cold War had cut Europe in two. Behind the Iron Curtain, the Russians had con- solidated control over the areas won by their troops in the war, while the United States had used the Marshall Plan to revitalize western Europe. But a divided continent was a far cry from the wartime hopes for a peaceful world. And the rivalry that began in Europe would soon spread into a worldwide contest among the super powers.
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stood as a symbol of the Truman administration’s determination to win the Cold War regardless of cost.
The Cold War in Asia Th e Soviet–American confl ict developed more slowly in Asia. At Yalta, the two superpowers had agreed to a Far Eastern balance of power, with the Russians dominating Northeast Asia and the Americans in control of the Pacifi c, including both Japan and its former island empire.
The United States moved quickly to consolidate its sphere of influence. General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of Japanese occupation, denied the Soviet Union any role in the reconstruction of Japan. Instead, he supervised the transition of the Japanese government into a constitutional democracy, shaped along Western lines, in which Communists were barred from all government posts. Th e Japanese willingly renounced war in their new constitution, relying instead
Acheson presented the committee’s favorable report to the presi- dent in January 1950, Truman took only seven minutes to decide to go ahead with the awesome new weapon.
At the same time, Acheson ordered the Policy Planning Staff (headed by Paul Nitze aft er Kennan resigned in protest) to draw up a new statement of national defense policy. NSC-68 , as the docu- ment eventually became known, was based on the premise that the Soviet Union sought “to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world” and thus “mortally challenged” the United States. Rejecting such options as appeasement or a return to isolation, Nitze advocated a massive expansion of American military power so the United States could halt and overcome the Soviet threat. Contending the nation could aff ord to spend “upward of 50 percent of its gross national product” for security, NSC-68 proposed increas- ing defense spending from $13 to $45 billion annually. Approved in principle by the National Security Council in April 1950, NSC-68
Berlin Airlift View the Closer Look
The Berlin airlift (June 1948–May 1949) was organized by the Truman administration and the Western Allies to overcome the rail, roadways, and canals blockade of West Berlin instituted by the Soviet Union. Over two hundred thousand American and British air force flights over West Berlin delivered approximately nearly five thousand tons of food and other necessities to West Berliners in order to break successfully the Soviet blockade.
The Cold War Expands 673
the Beijing regime “a colonial Russian government” and declared, “It is not the Government of China. It does not pass the fi rst test. It is not Chinese.” Th en, to compensate for the loss of China, the United States focused on Japan as its main ally in Asia. Th e State Department encouraged the buildup of Japanese industry, and the Pentagon expanded American bases on the Japanese home islands and Okinawa. A Japanese-American security pact led to the end of American occu- pation by 1952. Th e Cold War had now split east Asia in two.
The Korean War Th e showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union in Asia came in Korea. Traditionally the cockpit of interna- tional rivalry in Northeast Asia, Korea had been divided at the
on American forces to protect their security. American policy was equally nationalistic in the Pacifi c. A trusteeship arrangement with the United Nations merely disguised the fact that the United States held full control over the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline Islands. American scientists conducted atomic bomb tests at Bikini atoll in 1946, and by 1949, MacArthur was declaring that the entire Pacifi c “had become an Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of defense runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia.”
As defi ned at Yalta, China lay between the Soviet and American spheres. When World War II ended, the country was torn between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in the South and Mao Tse-tung’s Communists in the North. Chiang had many advantages, including American political and economic backing and offi cial Soviet recogni- tion. But corruption was widespread among the Nationalist leaders, and a raging infl ation that soon reached 100 percent a year devas- tated the Chinese middle classes and thus eroded Chiang’s base of power. Mao used tight discipline and patriotic appeals to strengthen his hold on the peasantry and extend his infl uence. When the Soviets abruptly vacated Manchuria in 1946, aft er stripping it of virtually all the industrial machinery Japan had installed, Mao inherited control of this rich northern province. Ignoring American advice, Chiang rushed north to occupy Manchurian cities, overextending his supply lines and exposing his forces to Communist counterattack.
American policy sought to prevent a Chinese civil war. Before he became secretary of state, George Marshall under- took the diffi cult task of forming a coalition government between Chiang and Mao. For a few months in early 1946, Marshall appeared to have succeeded, but Chiang’s attempts to gain control of Manchuria doomed the agreement. In reality, there was no basis for compromise. Chiang insisted he “was going to liquidate Communists,” while Mao was trying to play the United States against Russia in his bid for power. By 1947, as China plunged into full-scale civil war, the Truman administration had given up any meaningful eff ort to infl uence the outcome. Political mediation had failed, military intervention was out of the question so soon aft er World War II, and a policy of continued American economic aid served only to appease domestic supporters of Chiang Kai-shek; 80 percent of the military supplies ended up in Communist hands.
Th e Chinese confl ict climaxed at the end of the decade. Mao’s forces drove the Nationalists out of Manchuria in late 1948 and advanced across the Yangtze by mid-1949. Acheson released a lengthy report justifying American policy in China on the grounds that the civil war there “was beyond the control of the government of the United States.” An American military adviser concurred, telling Congress that the Nationalist defeat was due to “the world’s worst leadership” and “a complete loss of will to fi ght.” Republican senators, however, disagreed, blaming American diplomats for sabo- taging the Nationalists and terming Acheson’s report “a 1054-page white-wash of a wishful, do-nothing policy.” While the domestic debate raged over responsibility for the loss of China, Chiang’s forces fl ed the mainland for sanctuary on Formosa (Taiwan) in December 1949. Two months later, Mao and Stalin signed a Sino-Soviet treaty of mutual assistance that clearly placed China in the Russian orbit.
Th e American response to the Communist triumph in China was twofold. First, the State Department refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new regime in Beijing, maintaining instead formal diplomatic relations with the Nationalists on Formosa. Citing the Sino–Soviet alliance, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk called
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The Korean War (1950–1953) View the Map
THE KOREAN WAR, 1950–1953 After a year of rapid movement up and down the Korean peninsula, the fighting stalled just north of the 38th parallel. The resulting truce line has divided North and South Korea since the July 1953 armistice.
674 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
Rarely has an American president received worse advice. China was not a Soviet puppet. When UN forces crossed the 38th parallel and moved confi dently toward the Yalu, the Chinese launched a dev- astating counterattack in late November which caught MacArthur by surprise and drove his armies out of North Korea by the end of the year. MacArthur fi nally stabilized the fi ghting near the 38th parallel, but when Truman decided to give up his attempt to unify Korea, the general protested to Congress, calling for a renewed off ensive and proclaiming, “Th ere is no substitute for victory.”
Truman courageously relieved the popular hero of the Pacifi c of his command on April 11, 1951. At fi rst, MacArthur seemed likely to force the president to back down. Huge crowds came forward to wel- come him home and hear him call for victory over the Communists in Asia. At a special congressional hearing, the administration struck back eff ectively by warning that MacArthur’s strategy would expose all Europe to Soviet attack. General Omar Bradley, Truman’s chief military adviser, succinctly pointed out that a “showdown” with communism in Asia would be “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”
Congress and the American people came to accept MacArthur’s recall. Th e Korean War settled into a stalemate near the 38th paral- lel as truce talks with the communists bogged down. Th e president had achieved his primary goal, defense of South Korea and the principle of collective security. Yet by taking the gamble to unify Korea by force, he had confused the American people and embar- rassed the United States in the eyes of the world.
In the last analysis, the most signifi cant result of the Korean conflict was the massive American rearmament it brought about. Th e war led to the implementation of NSC-68—the army expanded to 3.5 million troops, the defense budget increased to $50 billion a year by 1952, and the United States acquired distant military bases from Saudi Arabia to Morocco. America was now committed to waging a global contest against the Soviet Union with arms as well as words.
The Cold War at Home
How did the Cold War affect life in America?
Th e Cold War cast a long shadow over American life in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Truman tried to carry on the New Deal reform tradition he had inherited from FDR, but the American people were more concerned about events abroad. Th e Republican Party used both growing dissatisfaction with postwar economic adjustment and fears of communist penetration of the United States to revive its sagging fortunes and regain control of the White House in 1952 for the fi rst time in twenty years.
Truman’s Troubles Matching his foreign policy successes with equal achievements at home was not easy for Harry S. Truman. As a loyal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs during his Senate career, Truman had earned a reputation for being a hardworking, reliable, and intensely partisan legislator. But he was relatively unknown to the general public, and his background as a Missouri county offi cial associated with Kansas City machine politics did little
38th parallel in 1945. Th e Russians occupied the industrial North, installing a communist government under the leadership of Kim Il-Sung. In the agrarian South, Syngman Rhee, a conservative nationalist, emerged as the American-sponsored ruler. Neither regime heeded a UN call for elections to unify the country. Th e two superpowers pulled out most of their occupation forces by 1949. Th e Russians, however, helped train a well-equipped army in the North, while the United States—fearful Rhee would seek unifi cation through armed conquest—gave much more limited military assistance to South Korea.
On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army suddenly crossed the 38th parallel in great strength. Stalin had approved this act of aggression in advance. In January 1950, the Soviet leader had told Mao Tse-tung that he was ready to overthrow the Yalta settlement in the Far East (“and to hell with it,” he exclaimed to Mao). In April, when Kim Il-Sung came to Moscow to gain approval for the assault on South Korea, Stalin gave it willingly, apparently in the belief that the United States was ready to aban- don Syngman Rhee. But the ever-cautious Stalin warned Kim not to count on Soviet assistance, saying, “If you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a fi nger. You have to ask Mao for all the help.” In May, despite expressing some reservations, Mao also approved the planned North Korean aggression.
Both Stalin and Mao had badly miscalculated the American response. President Truman saw the invasion as a clear-cut case of Soviet aggression reminiscent of the 1930s. “Communism was acting in Korea just as Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted ten, fi ft een, and twenty years earlier,” he commented in his memoirs. Following Acheson’s advice, the president convened the UN Security Council and, taking advantage of a temporary Soviet boycott, secured a resolution condemning North Korea as an aggressor and calling on the member nations to engage in a collective security action. Within a few days, American troops from Japan were in combat in South Korea. Th e confl ict, which would last for more than three years, was technically a police action fought under UN auspices; in reality, the United States was at war with a Soviet satellite in Asia.
In the beginning, the fi ghting went badly as the North Koreans continued to drive down the peninsula. But by August, American forces had halted the communist advance near Pusan. In September, General MacArthur changed the whole complexion of the war by carrying out a brilliant amphibious assault at Inchon, on the waist of Korea, cutting off and destroying most of the North Korean army in the South. Encouraged by this victory, Truman began to shift from his original goal of restoring the 38th parallel to a new one: the unifi cation of Korea by military force.
The administration ignored Beijing’s repeated warnings not to invade North Korea. “I should think it would be sheer madness for the Chinese to intervene,” commented Acheson. Despite CIA reports of a massive Chinese force assembling in Manchuria, President Truman and his advisers continued to believe that the Soviet Union, not ready for all-out war, would hold China in check. General MacArthur was equally certain that China would not attack his troops in Korea. “We are no longer fearful of their intervention,” he told Truman in October, adding that if they crossed the Yalu into Korea, “there would be the greatest slaughter.”
The Cold War at Home 675
overrode his veto of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. Designed to undo the prolabor tilt of the Wagner Act, the Taft -Hartley Act outlawed specifi c labor union activities—including the closed shop and secondary boycotts—and it permitted the president to invoke an eighty-day cooling-off period to delay strikes that might endanger national health or safety. Despite Truman’s claim that it was a “slave-labor” bill, unions were able to survive its provisions.
President Truman’s political fortunes reached their lowest ebb in early 1948. Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, claiming to represent the New Deal, announced his third-party (Progressive) candidacy in the presidential contest that year. Worried Democratic party leaders sought to persuade Truman to step aside and allow General Dwight D. Eisenhower to become the Democratic candidate. When Eisenhower turned down bids from both parties, the Democrats reluctantly nominated Truman. His prospects for victory in the fall, however, looked very dim—especially after disgruntled Southerners bolted from the Democratic party in protest over a progressive civil rights platform. Th e Dixiecrats, as they became known, nominated Strom Th urmond, the governor of South Carolina, on a States’ Rights party ticket.
Th e defection of the Dixiecrats in the South and Wallace’s liberal followers in the North led political experts to predict an almost certain Republican victory. Governor Th omas E. Dewey of New York, the GOP candidate, was so sure of winning that he waged a cautious and bland campaign designed to give him a free hand once he was in the White House. With nothing to lose, Truman
to inspire confi dence in his ability to lead the nation. Surprisingly well-read—especially in history and biography—Truman possessed sound judgment, the ability to reach decisions quickly, and a fi erce and uncompromising sense of right and wrong.
Two weaknesses marred his performance in the White House. One was a fondness for old friends, which resulted in the appoint- ment of many Missouri and Senate cronies to high offi ce. Men such as Attorney General Tom Clark, Secretary of the Treasury Charles Snyder, and White House military aide Harry Vaughn brought little credit to the Truman administration, while the loss of such eff ective public servants as Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins hurt it. Th e president’s other serious limi- tation was his lack of political vision. Failing to pursue a coherent legislative program of his own, he tried to perpetuate FDR’s New Deal and, as a result, engaged in a running battle with Congress.
Th e postwar mood was not conducive to an extension of New Deal reforms. Americans were weary of shortages and sacrifi ces; they wanted the chance to buy the consumer goods denied them under wartime conditions. But in the rush to convert industry from producing planes and tanks to cars and appliances, problems soon emerged. Prices and wages rose quickly as Congress voted to end wartime controls. With prices going up 25 percent in two years, workers demanded higher wages to off set the loss of overtime pay. A wave of labor unrest swept over the country in the spring of 1946, culminating in two critical strikes: a walkout by coal miners that threatened to close down much of American industry and a para- lyzing strike by railroad workers.
President Truman was caught in the middle. Sensitive to union demands, he permitted businesses to negotiate large pay increases for their workers and then pass on the cost to consumers in the form of higher prices. He criticized Congress for weakening wartime price controls, but he failed to offer anything else to curb infl ation. Homemakers blamed him for the rising price of food, while organized labor condemned Truman as the country’s “No. 1 Strikebreaker” when he asked Congress for power to draft striking railway workers into the army.
In the face of this rising discontent, Truman’s efforts to extend the New Deal met with little success. Congress ignored his September 1945 call for measures to ensure economic security and enacted only the Employment Act of 1946. Th is legislation created the Council of Economic Advisers to assist the president and asserted the principle that the government was responsible for the state of the economy, but it failed to address Truman’s original goal of mandatory federal planning to achieve full employment.
Th e Republicans took advantage of increasing public dissat- isfaction with postwar economic woes to attack the Democrats. “To err is Truman,” the GOP proclaimed and then adopted a very eff ective two-word slogan for the 1946 congressional elections: “Had enough?” Th e American people, weary of infl ation and labor unrest, responded by electing Republican majorities in both the House and Senate for the fi rst time since 1930.
Truman Vindicated Th e president’s relations with Congress became even stormier aft er the 1946 elections. Truman successfully vetoed two GOP measures to give large tax cuts to the wealthy, but Congress
11
28 13 25
35
5
3 16
8 4
164 3
15 8
47
10
12 19
6
25
11
3
8 8
6
6
23 10
9
11
9 11 12
8
8
14
11
8
4 4
4
4
4
3
4
4
10 1
Election of 1948
Electoral Vote by State
DEMOCRATIC Harry S Truman
Popular Vote
24,105,695303
REPUBLICAN Thomas E. Dewey 21,969,170189
STATES' RIGHTS Strom Thurmond 1,169,02139
MINOR PARTIES Henry Wallace et al.
1,296,898
48,537,784531
676 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
barnstormed around the country denouncing the “do-nothing” Republican Eightieth Congress. Th e president’s “give-’em hell” tactics reminded voters of how much they owed the Democrats for helping them survive the Great Depression. To the amaze- ment of the pollsters, Truman won a narrow but decisive victory in November. Th e old Roosevelt coalition—farmers, organized labor, urban ethnic groups, and blacks—had held together, enabling Truman to remain in the White House and the Democrats to regain control of Congress.
Th ere was one more reason for Truman’s win in 1948. During this election, held at the height of the Berlin crisis, the GOP failed to challenge Truman’s conduct of the Cold War. Locked in a tense rivalry with the Soviet Union, the American people saw no reason to reject a president who had countered aggression overseas with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Th e Republicans, committed to support the bipartisan policy of containment, had allowed the Democrats to preempt the foreign policy issue. Until they found a way to challenge Truman’s Cold War policies, GOP leaders had little chance to regain the White House.
The Loyalty Issue Despite Truman’s surprising victory in 1948, there was one area on which the Democrats were vulnerable. Th e fear of commu- nism abroad that had led to the bipartisan containment policy could be used against them at home by politicians who were more willing to exploit the public’s deep-seated anxiety.
Fear of radicalism had been a recurrent feature of American life since the early days of the republic. Federalists had tried to suppress dissent with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s; the Know- Nothings had campaigned against foreign- ers and Catholics in the 1850s; and the Red Scare aft er World War I had been directed against both aliens and radicals. Th e Cold War heightened the traditional belief that subversion from abroad endangered the republic. Bold rhetoric from members of the Truman administration, portraying the men in the Kremlin as inspired revolution- aries bent on world conquest, frightened the American people. Th ey viewed the Soviet Union as a successor to Nazi Germany—a totalitarian police state that threatened the basic liberties of a free people.
A series of revelations of Communist espi- onage activities reinforced these fears, sparking a second Red Scare. Canadian offi cials uncov- ered a Soviet spy ring in 1946, and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held hearings indicating that Communist agents had fl ourished in the Agriculture and Treasury Departments in the 1930s.
Although Truman tried to dismiss the loyalty issue as a “red herring,” he felt com- pelled to take protective measures, thus lending substance to the charges of subver- sion. In March 1947, he initiated a loyalty
program, ordering security checks of government employees in order to root out Communists. Originally intended to remove subversives for whom “reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal,” within four years the Loyalty Review Board was dismissing workers as security risks if there was “ reasonable doubt” of their loyalty. Th ousands of government workers lost their jobs, charged with guilt by association with radicals or with membership in left -wing organizations. Oft en those who were charged had no chance to face their accusers.
The most famous disclosure came in August 1948, when Whittaker Chambers, a repentant Communist, accused Alger Hiss of having been a Soviet spy in the 1930s. When Hiss, who had been a prominent State Department offi cial, denied the charges, Chambers led investigators to a hollowed-out pumpkin on his Maryland farm. Inside the pumpkin were microfi lms of confi - dential government documents. Chambers claimed that Hiss had passed the State Department materials to him in the late 1930s. Although the statute of limitations prevented a charge of treason against Hiss, he was convicted of perjury in January 1950 and sentenced to a fi ve-year prison term.
In 1948, the Justice Department further heightened fears of subversion. It charged eleven offi cials of the Communist Party with advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Aft er a long trial, the jury found them guilty, and the party offi cials received prison sentences and heavy fi nes; in 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions as constitutional.
Such repressive measures failed, however, to reassure the nation. Events abroad intensifi ed the sense of danger. Th e com- munist triumph in China in the fall of 1949 came as a shock; soon there were charges that “fellow travelers” in the State Department
A jubilant Harry Truman, on the morning after his 1948 election win, displays the headline blazoned on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune —a newspaper that believed the pollsters.
The Cold War at Home 677
national attention when he declared, “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the sec- retary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” Th e charge that there were Communists in the State Department on diff erent occasions with the num- ber changed to 57, then 81—was never substantiated. But McCarthy’s Wheeling speech triggered a four-and-a-half-year crusade to hunt down alleged Communists in government. Th e stridency and sensationalism of the senator’s accusations soon won the name McCarthyism .
McCarthy’s basic technique was the multiple untruth. He leveled a bevy of charges of treasonable activities in government. While offi cials were refuting his initial accusations, he brought forth a steady stream of new ones, so the corrections never caught up with the latest blast. He failed to unearth a single confi rmed Communist in government, but he kept the Truman administration in turmoil. Drawing on an army of informers, primarily disgruntled federal workers with grievances against their colleagues and superiors, McCarthy charged government agencies with harboring and protecting Communist agents and accused the State Department of deliberately losing the Cold War. His briefcase bulged with documents, but he did very little actual research, relying instead on reports (oft en outdated) from earlier congressional investigations. He exploited the press with great skill, combining current accusations with promises of future dis- closures to guarantee headlines.
The secret of McCarthy’s power was the fear he engendered among his Senate colleagues. In 1950, Maryland Senator Millard Tydings, who headed a committee critical of McCarthy’s activi- ties, failed to win reelection when McCarthy opposed him; after that, other senators ran scared. McCarthy delighted in making sweeping, startling charges of Communist sympathies against prominent public figures. A favorite target was patrician Secretary of State Dean Acheson, whom McCarthy ridiculed as the “Red Dean,” with his “cane, spats, and tea-sipping little fin- ger”; he even went after General George Marshall, claiming that the wartime army chief of staff was an agent of the Communist conspiracy. Nor were fellow Republicans immune. One GOP senator was described as “a living miracle in that he is with- out question the only man who has lived so long with neither brains nor guts.”
Th e attacks on the wealthy, famous, and privileged won McCarthy a devoted national following, though at the height of his infl uence in early 1954, he gained the approval of only 50 percent of the respondents in a Gallup poll. McCarthy drew a disproportionate backing from working-class Catholics and ethnic groups, especially the Irish, Poles, and Italians, who nor- mally voted Democratic. He off ered a simple solution to the complicated Cold War: Defeat the enemy at home rather than continue to engage in costly foreign aid programs and entangl- ing alliances abroad. Above all, McCarthy appealed to conser- vative Republicans in the Midwest who shared his right-wing views and felt cheated by Truman’s upset victory in 1948. Even GOP leaders who viewed McCarthy’s tactics with distaste, such as Robert A. Taft of Ohio, quietly encouraged him to attack the vulnerable Democrats.
were responsible for “the loss of China.” In September 1949, when the Truman administration announced that the Russians had detonated their fi rst atomic bomb, the end of America’s nuclear monopoly was blamed on Soviet espionage. In early 1950, Klaus Fuchs—a British scientist who had worked on the wartime Manhattan Project—admitted giving the Russians vital informa- tion about the A-bomb.
A few months later, the government charged American Communists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg with conspiracy to transmit atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. In 1951, a jury found the Rosenbergs guilty of espionage, and Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced them to die for what he termed their “loath- some off ense.” Despite their insistent claims of innocence and worldwide appeals on their behalf, the Rosenbergs were electro- cuted on June 19, 1953. Th us by the early 1950s, nearly all the ingredients were at hand for a new outburst of hysteria—fear of Russia, evidence of espionage, and a belief in a vast unseen con- spiracy. Th e only element missing was a leader to release the new outburst of intolerance.
McCarthyism in Action On February 12, 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin delivered a routine Lincoln’s Birthday speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. Th is little known Republican suddenly attracted
Ronald Reagan, Testimony Before HUAC (1947)
Read the Document
Alger Hiss, accused of being a Communist spy by Whittaker Chambers, takes an oath during his August 1948 hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hiss’s conviction on charges of perjury convinced many Americans that internal subversion threatened the nation’s survival.
678 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
the Communist and corruption issues, but he himself delivered the most telling blow of all on the Korean War. Speaking in Detroit in late October, just after the fighting had intensified again in Korea, Ike promised if elected he would go personally to the battlefield in an attempt “to bring the Korean War to an early and honorable end.”
THE ELECTION OF 1952
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Eisenhower Republican 33,778,963 442
Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 89
“Th at does it—Ike is in,” several reporters exclaimed aft er they heard this pledge. Th e hero of World War II had clinched his elec- tion by committing himself to end an unpopular war. Ten days later,
The Republicans in Power In 1952, the GOP capitalized on a growing sense of national frustration to capture the presidency. Th e stalemate in Korea and the second Red Scare created a desire for political change; revela- tions of scandals by several individuals close to Truman intensi- fi ed the feeling that someone needed to clean up “the mess in Washington.” In Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party found the perfect candidate to explore what one senator called K 1 C 2 —Korea, Communism, and corruption.
Immensely popular because of his amiable manner, winning smile, and heroic stature, Eisenhower alone appeared to have the ability to unite a divided nation. In the 1952 campaign, Ike displayed hidden gifts as a politician in running against Adlai Stevenson, the eloquent Illinois governor whose appeal was limited to diehard Democrats and liberal intellectuals. Eisenhower allowed his young running mate, Senator Richard M. Nixon of California, to hammer away at the Democrats on
McCarthyism and the Politics of Fear Watch the Video
In the early 1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican politician from Wisconsin, made a stream of sensational, unsubstantiated, and damaging accusations about alleged communists working in the State Department and other U.S. government agencies and institutions. Sen. McCarthy’s prominence suffered a fatal downfall when he maliciously attacked top officials and others in the U.S. Army in 1954, and he was subsequently censured by his colleagues in the U.S. Senate
The Cold War at Home 679
ferreting out Communists on the federal payroll. He made a series of charges against the foreign aff airs agencies and demanded that certain books be purged from American information libraries overseas. Eisenhower’s advisers urged the president to use his own great prestige to stop McCarthy. But Ike refused such a confron- tation, saying, “I will not get into a pissing contest with a skunk.” Eisenhower preferred to play for time, hoping the American people would eventually come to their senses.
Th e Wisconsin senator fi nally overreached himself. In early 1954, he uncovered an army dentist suspected of disloyalty and proceeded to attack the upper echelons of the U.S. Army, tell- ing one much decorated general that he was “not fi t to wear the uniform.” The controversy culminated in the televised Army– McCarthy hearings. For six weeks, the senator revealed his crude, bullying behavior to the American people. Viewers were repelled by his frequent outbursts that began with the insistent cry, “Point of order, Mr. Chairman, point of order,” and by his attempt to slur the reputation of a young lawyer associated with army counsel Joseph Welch. Th is last maneuver led Welch to condemn McCarthy for
he won the presidency handily, carrying thirty-nine states, includ- ing four in the formerly solid Democratic South. Th e Republican party, however, did not fare as well in Congress; it gained just a slight edge in the House and controlled the Senate by only one seat.
Once elected, Eisenhower moved quickly to fulfill his campaign pledge. He spent three days in early December tour- ing the battlefront in Korea, quickly ruling out the new off ensive the military favored. “Small attacks on small hills,” he later wrote, “would not end the war.” Instead he turned to diplomacy, relying on subtle hints to China on the possible use of nuclear weapons to break the stalemated peace talks. Th ese tactics, together with the death of Joseph Stalin in early March, fi nally led to the signing of an armistice on July 27, 1953, which ended the fi ghting but left Korea divided—as it had been before the war—near the 38th parallel.
Th e new president was less eff ective in dealing with the prob- lem raised by Senator McCarthy’s continuing witch-hunt. Instead of toning down his antiCommunist crusade aft er the Republican victory in 1952, McCarthy used his new position as chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations as a base for
Ike for President: Campaign Ad (1952) Watch the Video
In the 1952 presidential campaign, Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first presidential candidate to make effective use of television “spot,” advertising. Eisenhower’s televised ads help defeat his Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson, in the 1952 election.
680 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
he would settle for a relaxation of tensions with the Soviet Union. In part, he was motivated by a deeply held concern about the budget. Defense spending had increased from $13 billion to $50 billion under Truman; Ike was convinced the nation was in danger of going bankrupt unless military spending was reduced. As president, he inaugurated a “new look” for American defense, cutting back on the army and navy and relying even more heavily than Truman had on the air force and its nuclear striking power. As a result, the defense budget dropped below $40 billion annually. In 1954, Dulles announced reliance on massive retaliation—in fact a continuance of Truman’s policy of deterrence. Rather than becoming involved in limited wars such as Korea, the United States would consider the possibility of using nuclear weapons to halt any Communist aggression that threatened vital U.S. interests anywhere in the world.
While he permitted Dulles to make his veiled nuclear threats, Eisenhower’s fondest dream was to end the arms race. Sobered by the development of the hydrogen bomb, successfully tested by the United States in November 1952 and by the Soviet Union in August 1953, the president began a new eff ort at disarmament with the Russians. Yet before this initiative could take eff ect, Ike had to weather a series of crises around the world that tested his skill and patience to the utmost.
Entanglement in Indochina Th e fi rst crisis facing the new president came in Indochina. Since 1950, the United States had been giving France military and eco- nomic aid in a war in Indochina against Communist guerrillas led by Ho Chi Minh. Th e Chinese increased their support to Ho’s forces, known as the Vietminh, aft er the Korean War ended; by the spring of 1954, the French were on the brink of defeat. Th e Vietminh had surrounded nearly ten thousand French troops at Dien Bien Phu deep in the interior of northern Indochina; in desperation, France turned to the United States for help. Admiral Arthur Radford, chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , proposed an American air strike to lift the siege. Although the other Joint Chiefs had strong objections to involving American forces in another Asian war so soon aft er Korea, hawkish Republican senators were clamoring for action.
Eisenhower decided against Radford’s bold proposal, but he killed it in his typically indirect fashion. Fearful that an air attack would lead inevitably to the use of ground troops, Ike insisted that both Congress and American allies in Europe approve the strike in advance. Congressional leaders, recalling the recent Korean stale- mate, were reluctant to agree; the British were appalled and ruled out any joint action. Th e president used these objections to reject intervention in Indochina in 1954. Years later, he stated his reasons more candidly. “Th e jungles of Indochina would have swallowed up division aft er division of United States troops,” he explained. Equally important, he believed that U.S. involvement in France’s war would have compromised the American “tradition of anticolonialism.”
Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietminh in May 1954. At an interna- tional conference held in Geneva a few weeks later, Indochina was divided at the 17th parallel. Ho gained control of North Vietnam, while the French continued to rule in the South, with provision for a general election within two years to unify the country. Th e election was never held, largely because Eisenhower feared it would result in an overwhelming mandate for Ho. Instead, the United States gradu- ally took over from the French in South Vietnam, sponsoring a new government in Saigon headed by Ngo Dinh Diem, a Vietnamese
his “reckless cruelty” and ask rhetorically, as millions watched on television, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
Courageous Republicans, led by Senators Ralph Flanders of Vermont and Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, joined with Democrats to bring about the Senate’s censure of McCarthy in December 1954, by a vote of sixty-seven to twenty-two. Once rebuked, McCarthy fell quickly from prominence. He died three years later virtually unnoticed and unmourned.
Yet his influence was profound. Not only did he paralyze national life with what a Senate subcommittee described as “the most nefarious campaign of half-truth and untruth in the history of the Republic,” but he also helped impose a political and cultural confor- mity that froze dissent for the rest of the 1950s. Long aft er McCarthy’s passing, the nation tolerated loyalty oaths for teachers, the banning of left -wing books in public libraries, and the blacklisting of entertainers in radio, television, and fi lms. Freedom of expression was inhibited, and the opportunity to try out new ideas and approaches was lost as the United States settled into a sterile Cold War consensus.
While Dwight Eisenhower could claim that his policy of giving McCarthy enough rope to hang himself had worked, it is possible that a bolder and more forthright presidential attack on the senator might have spared the nation some of the excesses of the second Red Scare.
Eisenhower Wages the Cold War
How successful was Eisenhower at dealing with the foreign policy issues facing the United States?
Dwight D. Eisenhower came into the presidency in 1952 unusually well prepared to lead the nation at the height of the Cold War. His long years of military service had exposed him to a wide variety of inter- national issues, both in Asia and in Europe, and to an even broader array of world leaders, such as Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. He was not only an experienced military strategist but a gift ed politician and diplomat as well. He was blessed with a sharp, prag- matic mind and organizational genius that enabled him to plan and carry out large enterprises, grasping the precise relationship between the parts and the whole. Above all, he had a serene confi dence in his own ability. At the end of his fi rst day in the White House, he con- fi ded in his diary: “Plenty of worries and diffi cult problems. But such has been my portion for a long time—the result is that this just seems like a continuation of all I’ve been doing since July 1941.”
Eisenhower chose John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state. Th e myth soon developed that Ike had given Dulles free rein to conduct American diplomacy. Appearances were deceptive. Eisenhower preferred to work behind the scenes. He let Dulles make the public speeches and appearances before congressional committees, where the secretary’s hard-line views placated GOP extremists. But Dulles carefully consulted with the president before every appearance, meeting frequently with Eisenhower at the White House and telephoning him several times a day. Ike respected his secretary of state’s broad knowledge of foreign policy and skill in conducting American diplomacy, but he made all the major decisions himself. “Th ere’s only one man I know who has seen more of the world and talked with more people and knows more than he does,” Ike said of Dulles, “and that’s me.”
From the outset, Eisenhower was determined to bring the Cold War under control. Ideally, he wanted to end it, but as a realist,
Eisenhower Wages the Cold War 681
were an integral part of a larger Communist effort at world domination. Th us, Truman and Acheson had abandoned any hope of trying to exploit diff erences between Mao and Stalin by wooing China away from the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower and Dulles chose to accentuate the potential confl ict between Russia and China. By taking a strong line against China, the United States could make the Chinese realize that Russia was unable to protect their interests; at the same time, such a hawkish policy would please congressional conservatives such as Knowland. Ultimately, Eisenhower and Dulles hoped that a policy of fi rmness would not only contain communist Chinese expansion in Asia but also drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.
A crisis in the Formosa Straits provided the fi rst test of the new policy. In the fall of 1954, communist China threatened to seize coastal islands, notably Quemoy and Matsu, occupied by the Nationalists. Fearful that seizure of these off shore islands would be the fi rst step toward an invasion of Formosa, Eisenhower permitted Dulles to sign a security treaty with Chiang Kai-shek committing
nationalist from a northern Catholic family. While Eisenhower can be given credit for refusing to engage American forces on behalf of French colonialism in Indochina, his determination to resist communist expansion had committed the United States to a long and eventually futile struggle to prevent Ho Chi Minh from achieving his long-sought goal of a unifi ed, independent Vietnam.
Containing China Th e Communist government in Beijing posed a serious chal- lenge for the Eisenhower administration. Senate Republicans, led by William Knowland of California, blamed the Democrats for the “loss” of China. Th ey viewed Mao as a puppet of the Soviet Union and insisted the United States recognize the Nationalists on Formosa as the only legitimate government of China. While State Department experts realized there were underlying tensions between China and Russia, Mao’s intervention in the Korean War had convinced most Americans that the Chinese Communists
A French soldier stands guard over a truckload of Vietnamese nationalists captured in the fi ghting in Indochina. French efforts to quash the rebellion in Vietnam ended on May 7, 1954, when the Vietminh took the French stronghold at Dien Bien Phu.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letters on Dien Bien Phu (1954) Read the Document
682
Harry Truman never liked disagreeing with George Marshall. The secretary of state was, in Truman’s view, the “great- est living American,” and, as the architect of the American victory in World War II, Marshall possessed a stature no civilian—and certainly no accidental president, such as Truman remained in the spring of 1948—could hope to match.
Marshall adamantly opposed an action recommended by several of Truman’s closest advisers. The British government had decided to relinquish control of Palestine, the region on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean it had inherited from the Ottoman empire after World War I. The United Nations General Assembly in November 1947 proposed partitioning Palestine into two states, one controlled by the Arab inhabitants of the region, the other controlled by the Jewish inhabit- ants. The UN plan provoked violence between the Arabs and Jews, with each group struggling to position itself most favorably for the moment the British left.
The U.S. State Department advo- cated a cautious policy in the evolving situation. Robert Lovett, the American undersecretary of state, told Truman that hasty recognition of the new Jewish state, Israel, would constitute “buying a pig in a poke”—that the United States didn’t know what kind of government Israel would have, what the boundaries of the new Jewish state would be, or how Israel’s neigh- bors would respond to the creation of this novel entity.
George Marshall was even more adamant than Lovett. Marshall knew that Truman was being told by his polit- ical advisers that recognition of Israel
would help him and the Democrats in the upcoming 1948 elections, but the secretary of state thoroughly rejected the idea that politics should infl uence such a crucial foreign policy decision. “These considerations have nothing to do with the issue,” Marshall told the president. “I don’t think politics should play any part in this.” Clark Clifford was the adviser who made the strongest case for early recognition, and Marshall resented that Clifford was even pres- ent at the meetings regarding Israel. The secretary of state told Truman in the bluntest of terms, “If you follow Clifford’s advice and if I were to vote in the election, I would vote against you.”
“Well, that was rough as a cob,” Truman remarked after Marshall left the Oval Offi ce. “I never saw the general so furious.” But Truman had reasons for going ahead with recognition, and politics was only one. The Cold War was under way, and Truman feared that the Soviet Union would recognize Israel before the United States did, giving Moscow a potential advantage in the Middle East at a time when that oil-rich region was becoming critical in the bal- ance of international power. Moreover, the Jewish people had been promised a homeland by the British many years before, and Israel was the manifestation of that promise. To be sure, Britain’s promises didn’t bind the United States, but Britain was America’s ally, and Truman felt a certain obligation to follow through on Britain’s behalf. Finally, the Jews had suffered horribly during World War II, and although a Jewish state wouldn’t bring back the six million slaughtered in the Holocaust, it would provide the Jews of the world a refuge against future threats.
Truman gave Marshall time to cool off, confi dent that the general’s military training would incline him to
support—or at least not oppose—his commander in chief once the president made up his mind. And when Truman did choose in favor of early recognition of Israel, Marshall gritted his teeth but indeed held his tongue. On May 14, 1948, fi fteen minutes after the offi cial proclamation of the Jewish state of Israel, the United States announced its recognition.
This fi rst American step into the Middle East was followed by others. In 1951, the populist prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq, announced a plan to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, a giant fi rm that held exclusive rights to develop and exploit Iran’s richest oil fi elds. The British government was the principal share- holder in Anglo-Iranian, and the com- pany’s identity and presence reminded Iranians of the power Britain had long wielded over their country. Mossadeq’s nationalization plan was intended to break Britain’s hold forever.
The British government, not sur- prisingly, resisted the nationalization effort. The British approached the Truman administration about joining in a secret operation to overthrow Mossadeq. Truman had consented to the 1947 establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency, but he never lost his fear that the spy agency would become an “American Gestapo,” as he called it, and he rejected the British overture. But after Dwight Eisenhower succeeded Truman in the White House, the British repro- posed their plan. They argued that Mossadeq was either a Communist in disguise or the dupe of Communists, and that if he remained in power Iran and its oil would slip into the grasp of the neighboring Soviet Union.
Eisenhower took this possibility very seriously. He couldn’t know that
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America Enters the Middle East
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683
Yet the good feeling faded before long, and it only underscored the larger reality: that by the end of 1956 the United States had become the most important outside power in the Middle East. How America would play its new role remained to be seen, but henceforward nothing of substance would occur in the Middle East with- out requiring a signifi cant response from the United States.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why did Truman decide to recognize Israel in 1948?
2. Why did Eisenhower side with the British in Iran but against them when they invaded Egypt together with the French and Israelis during the Suez Crisis in 1956?
he didn’t think the Egyptian leader’s actions warranted a Middle Eastern war. He told the British—the ring- leaders of the Suez operation, in Eisenhower’s accurate assessment— that they must shut down the nascent war at once. When they hesitated, he threatened to use America’s trump cards against the British: oil and the dol- lar. The president prepared to block oil shipments from the Americas to Britain, and to let the British currency, the pound, decline against the dollar. A loss of American oil would squeeze British industry and transport; a collapse of the pound would ravage British fi nance.
The British had no choice but to acquiesce in Eisenhower’s ultimatum. The Suez war halted almost as soon as it began, causing much soul-searching in Britain, where the fi asco symbol- ized the end of Britain’s pretensions to great-power status. The American role in the war’s end momentarily belied the prevalent impression in the Middle East that Washington would always stand with the European imperialists and the Zionists—the label applied to the Israelis by the Arabs—in a crisis.
things would happen the way the British predicted, but neither could he know that they would not hap- pen that way. At a moment when the Cold War was spreading beyond Europe and becoming a global contest, Eisenhower didn’t want to risk letting the Soviets seize Iran.
Accordingly, he approved a joint British–American plan against Mossadeq. Operation Ajax, as it was labeled, called for the constitutional monarch of Iran, the Shah, to demand Mossadeq’s resignation. If Mossadeq resisted, as he was expected to do, the CIA and its British counterpart would mobilize mobs in Tehran to force the prime minister from offi ce. A pro-Shah general would send tanks into the streets and complete the coup.
The plan went off with only minor glitches, and the pro-American Shah assumed power. The Eisenhower administration brokered an agreement between the Iranian government and the British over the fate of the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company—an agreement that awarded American companies a share of Iranian production. To keep the Shah in power, the United States sent large amounts of economic and military aid to Tehran. The American aid helped the Shah suppress dissent in Iran but made him increas- ingly unpopular with the masses of the Iranian people—who over time transferred that animosity to the United States.
Washington won back a bit of credibility with the peoples of the Middle East three years later. The British government had a new enemy: Gamal Abdel Nasser, an Egyptian col- onel who seized power in Cairo and nationalized the Suez Canal Company, another vestige of Britain’s declining empire. The British talked France and Israel, who had their own reasons for disliking Nasser, into a tripartite opera- tion to overthrow the Egyptian leader. In October 1956 the three countries attacked Egypt near the Suez Canal, hoping the military pressure would result in Nasser’s downfall.
Eisenhower refused to back them. The president distrusted Nasser, but
President Harry Truman (left) listened to Secretary of State George Marshall (right) on most matters of foreign policy, but charted his own course regarding Israel.
684 CHAPTER 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
the United States to defend Formosa. When the Communists began shelling the off shore islands, Eisenhower persuaded Congress to pass a resolution authorizing him to use force to defend Formosa and “closely related localities.”
Despite repeated requests, however, the president refused to say whether he would use force to repel a Chinese attack on Quemoy or Matsu. Instead, he and Dulles hinted at the use of nuclear weap- ons, carefully stating that their action would depend on whether they considered an attack on the off shore islands part of a larger off ensive aimed at Formosa. Th e Chinese leaders, unsure whether Eisenhower was bluffi ng, decided not to test American resolve. Th e shelling ended in 1955, and when the Communists resumed it again in 1958, another fi rm but equally ambiguous American response forced them to desist. Th e apparent refusal of the Soviet Union to come to China’s aid in these crises with the United States contributed to a growing rift between the two communist nations by the end of the 1950s. Unfortunately, the Eisenhower administration failed to take full advantage of the opportunity that it had helped to create.
Covert Actions Amid these dangerous crises, the Eisenhower administration worked behind the scenes in the 1950s to expand the nation’s global infl uence. In 1953, the CIA was instrumental in overthrowing a popularly elected government in Iran and placing the shah in full control of that country. (See the Feature Essay: “America Enters the Middle East ,” pp. 682–683 .) Closer to home, in Latin America, Eisenhower once again relied on covert action. In 1954, the CIA masterminded the overthrow of a left ist regime in Guatemala. Th e immediate advantage was in denying the Soviets a possible foot- hold in the Western Hemisphere, but Latin Americans resented the thinly disguised interference of the United States in their inter- nal aff airs. More important, when Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba in 1959, the Eisenhower administration—aft er a brief eff ort at conciliation—adopted a hard line that helped drive Cuba into the Soviet orbit and led to new attempts at covert action.
Eisenhower’s record as a cold warrior was thus mixed. His successful ending of the Korean War and his peacekeeping eff orts in Indochina and Formosa and in the Suez crisis are all to his credit. Yet his reliance on coups and subversion directed by the CIA in Iran and Guatemala reveal Ike’s corrupting belief that the ends justifi ed the means. And despite the 1952 campaign call for the liberation of eastern Europe, Eisenhower accepted Soviet domination of this region, refusing to act on behalf of East German protesters in 1953 or Hungarian freedom fi ghters in 1956.
Nevertheless, Eisenhower did display an admirable ability to stay calm and unruffl ed in moments of great tension, reassuring the nation and the world. And above all, he could boast, as he did in 1962, of his ability to keep the peace. “In those eight years,” he reminded the nation, “we lost no inch of ground to tyranny. One war was ended and incipient wars were blocked.”
Waging Peace Eisenhower hoped to ease Cold War tensions by ending the nuclear arms race. The advent of the hydrogen bomb inten- sified his concern over nuclear warfare; by 1955, both the
United States and the Soviet Union had added this dread new weapon to their arsenals. With new long-range ballistic missiles being perfected, it was only a matter of time before Russia and the United States would be capable of destroying each other completely. Peace, as Winston Churchill noted, now depended on a balance of terror.
Th roughout the 1950s, Eisenhower sought a way out of the nuclear dilemma. In April 1953, shortly aft er Stalin’s death, he gave a speech in which he called on the Russians to join him in a new eff ort at disarmament, pointing out that “every warship launched, every rocket fi red signifi es, in the fi nal sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” When the Soviets ignored this appeal, the president tried again in December 1953. Addressing the UN General Assembly, he outlined an “atoms for peace” plan whereby the United States and the Soviet Union would donate fi ssionable material to a new UN agency to be used for peaceful purposes. Despite Ike’s appeal “to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind,” the Russians again rebuff ed him. Undaunted, Eisenhower tried once more. At a summit conference in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1955, Ike proposed to Nikita Khrushchev, just emerging as Stalin’s successor aft er a two-year struggle for power, a way to break the disarmament deadlock. “Open skies,” as reporters dubbed the plan, would overcome the traditional Russian objection to on-site inspection by having both superpowers open their territory to mutual aerial surveillance. Unfortunately, Khrushchev dismissed open skies as “a very transparent espionage device,” and the confer- ence ended without any signifi cant breakthrough in the Cold War.
Aft er his reelection in 1956, the president renewed his eff orts toward nuclear arms control. Concern over atmospheric fallout from nuclear testing had led presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson to propose a mutual ban on such experiments. At fi rst, Eisenhower rejected the test ban idea, arguing that it could be eff ective only as part of a comprehensive disarmament agreement, but the Russians supported it. Finally, in 1958, the president changed his mind aft er American and Soviet scientists developed a system to detect nuclear testing in the atmosphere without on-site inspection. In October 1958, Eisenhower and Khrushchev each voluntarily sus- pended further weapons tests pending the outcome of a conference held at Geneva to work out a test ban treaty. Although the Geneva Conference failed to make progress, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union resumed testing for the remainder of Ike’s term in offi ce.
Th e suspension of testing halted the nuclear pollution of the world’s atmosphere, but it did not lead to the improvement in Soviet–American relations that Eisenhower sought. Instead, the Soviet feat in launching Sputnik , the fi rst artifi cial satellite to orbit the Earth, intensifi ed the Cold War. (See the Feature Essay in Chapter 29 , “Th e Reaction to Sputnik ,” pp. 694–695 .) Fearful that the Russians were several years ahead of the United States in the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), Democrats criticized Eisenhower for not spending enough on defense and warned that a dangerous missile gap would open up by the early 1960s—a time when the Russians might have such a com- manding lead in ICBMs that they could launch a fi rst strike and destroy America. Despite the president’s belief that the American missile program was in good shape, he allowed increased defense spending to speed up the building of American ICBMs and the new Polaris submarine–launched intermediate range missile (IRBM).
Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War 685
Russians view the wreckage of the U-2 reconnaissance plane piloted by Francis Powers that was shot down over Soviet territory on May 1, 1960. Although Eisenhower originally disavowed any knowledge of Powers’s mission, Khrushchev produced photographs of Soviet military and industrial sites, which he said had been taken by the U-2 pilot. Powers was held in a Soviet prison for two years before he was released in exchange for a Russian spy.
Nikita Khrushchev took full advantage of the furor over Sputnik to put the United States on the defensive. “We will bury you,” he boasted, telling Americans, “Your grandchildren will live under communism.” Th e most serious threat of all came in November 1958, when the Russian leader declared that within six months he would sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany, calling for an end to American, British, and French occupation rights in Berlin.
Eisenhower met the second Berlin crisis as fi rmly as Truman had the fi rst. He refused to abandon the city but also tried to avoid a military showdown. Prudent diplomacy forced Khrushchev to extend his deadline indefi nitely. Aft er a trip to the United States, culminating in a personal meeting with Eisenhower at Camp David, the Russian leader agreed to attend a summit conference in Paris in May 1960.
Th is much heralded meeting never took place. On May 1, two weeks before the leaders were to convene in Paris, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. Th e United States had been fl ying over Russia since 1956 in the high-altitude spy planes, gaining vital information about the Soviet missile program that showed there was little basis for the public’s fear that the Russians had opened up a dangerous missile gap. Aft er initially denying any knowledge, Eisenhower took full responsibility for Powers’s overfl ight, and Khrushchev responded with a scathing personal denunciation and a refusal to meet with the American president.
Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War
Th e breakup of the Paris summit marked the end of Eisenhower’s attempts to moderate the Cold War. Th e disillusioned leader told an aide that “he saw nothing worthwhile left for him to do now until the end of his presidency.” But Eisenhower did make a fi nal eff ort for peace by delivering a somber warning about the danger of massive military spending in his farewell address to the American people. “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted infl uence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex,” he declared. “Th e potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Rarely has an American president been more prophetic. In the next few years, the level of defense spending would skyrocket as the Cold War escalated. Th e military-industrial complex reached its acme of power in the 1960s when the United States realized the full impli- cations of Truman’s doctrine of containment. Eisenhower had suc- ceeded in keeping the peace for eight years, but he had failed to halt the momentum of the Cold War he had inherited from Harry Truman. Ike’s eff orts to ease tension with the Soviet Union were dashed by his own distrust of communism and by Khrushchev’s belligerent rheto- ric and behavior. Still, he had begun to relax tensions, a process that would survive the troubled 1960s and, aft er several false starts, would fi nally begin to erode the Cold War by the end of the 1980s.
686 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER REVIEW
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
T I M E L I N E
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 28 The Onset of the Cold War on MyHistoryLab
1945 Truman meets Stalin at Potsdam Conference (July); World War II ends with Japanese surrender (August)
1946 Winston Churchill gives “Iron Curtain” speech 1947 Truman Doctrine announced to Congress (March);
Truman orders loyalty program for government employees (March); George Marshall outlines Marshall Plan (June); Truman signs National Security Act (July)
1948 Soviets begin blockade of Berlin (June); Truman scores upset victory in presidential election
1949 NATO treaty signed in Washington (April); Soviet Union tests its fi rst atomic bomb (August)
1950 Truman authorizes building of hydrogen bomb (January); Senator Joseph McCarthy claims Communists in government (February); North Korea invades South Korea (June)
1951 Truman recalls MacArthur from Korea 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for atomic-
secrets spying (June); Korean War truce signed at Panmunjom (July)
1954 Fall of Dien Bien Phu to Vietminh ends French control of Indochina
1956 England and France touch off Suez crisis 1957 Russia launches Sputnik satellite 1959 Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba 1960 American U-2 spy plane shot down over Russia
The Cold War Begins
How did the Cold War begin?
The Cold War began as the United States and the Soviet Union discovered that their interests in Europe conflicted. Each feared the other and, acting on its fears, took steps that heightened the other’s fears. Atomic weapons made the
mistakes of miscalculation far greater than in the past and everyone more fearful. (p. 666 )
Containment
What was containment, and why was it adopted?
Containment was the American policy of preventing Soviet power and influence from expanding. It was adopted to preserve American interests without excessively risking war. (p. 668 )
The Cold War Expands
How did the Cold War expand from Europe to Asia?
The United States and the Soviet Union took opposite sides in the Chinese civil war. Shortly after the Communist victory in China, Communist North Korea battled antiCommunist South Korea. The United States sided with South Korea. The
Soviet Union and Communist China backed North Korea. (p. 671 )
The Cold War at Home
How did the Cold War affect life in America?
The Cold War spawned fears of Communist subversion. It led to a campaign to ensure loyalty, and fostered McCarthyism, an exaggerated effort to find Communists in every corner of American life. Although McCarthyism eventually burned
itself out, it contributed to Eisenhower’s election in 1952, which ended twenty years of Democratic control of the White House. (p. 674 )
Eisenhower Wages the Cold War
How successful was Eisenhower at dealing with the foreign policy issues facing the United States?
When he became president in 1953, Eisenhower was deeply experienced in military and diplomatic affairs. While he failed to halt the momentum of the Cold War,
as president he kept the peace for eight years and began to relax tensions with the Soviet Union. (p. 680 )
ATLANTIC OCEAN
North Sea
Mediterranean Sea
Bla
ICELAND
NORWAY SWEDEN
FINLAND
SOVIE UNIO
POLAND
ROMANIA
TU
GREECE
BULG.ITALY
CZECH.
HUN.AUS.
YUGOSLAVIA
ALB.
GERMANY
DEN.
NETH.
BELG.
LUX.
FRANCE SWITZ.
UNITED KINGDOM
IRELAND
SPAIN PORTUGAL
MOROCCO (Fr.)
ALGERIA (Fr.)
TUNISIA (Fr.)
SP. MOROCCO
0 250 500 kilometers
0 250 500 miles
Western bloc
Communist bloc/ Soviet zone
Nonaligned nations
“Iron Curtain”
Truce Line 1953
Inchon Landing Sept. 15, 1950
Ya lu R
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Pyongyang
Panmunjom
Seoul
NORTH KOREA
C H I N A
STUDY RESOURCES 687
K E Y T E R M S & D E F I N I T I O N S
Potsdam Conference The final wartime meeting of the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union was held at Potsdam, outside Berlin, in July, 1945. Their failure to agree about the future of Europe led to the Cold War. p. 664
Iron Curtain Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” to refer to the boundary in Europe that divided Soviet dominated Eastern and Central Europe from Western Europe. p. 666
Baruch Plan In 1946, Bernard Baruch presented an American plan to control and eventually outlaw nuclear weapons. The plan called for UN control of nuclear weapons in three stages before the United States gave up its stockpile. Soviet insistence on immediate nuclear disarmament without inspection doomed the Baruch Plan and led to a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. p. 668
Containment First proposed by George Kennan in 1947, containment became the basic strategy of the United States throughout the Cold War. Kennan argued that firm American resistance would eventually compel Moscow to adopt more peaceful policies. p. 669
Truman Doctrine In 1947, President Truman asked Congress for money to aid the Greek and Turkish governments that were then threatened by communist rebels. Truman asserted that the United States was committed to support free people everywhere against Communist attack or rebellion. p. 669
Marshall Plan In 1947, A massive aid program to rebuild the war-torn economies of Western Europe. The plan was motivated by both humanitar- ian concerns and fear of communism. p. 670
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) In 1949, the United States, Canada, and ten European nations formed this military mutual- defense pact. p. 670
Berlin airlift In 1948, in response to a Soviet land blockade of Berlin, the United States carried out a massive effort to supply the 2 million Berlin citi- zens by air. The airlift forced the Soviets to end the blockade in 1949. p. 671
National Security Act Congress passed the National Security Act in 1947 in response to perceived threats from the Soviet Union after World War II. It established the Department of Defense and created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council. p. 671
NSC-68 National Security Council planning paper No. 68 redefined America’s national defense policy. Adopted in 1950, it committed the United States to a massive military buildup to meet the challenge posed by the Soviet Union. p. 672
Taft–Hartley Act This 1947 anti-union legislation outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts. It also authorized the president to seek injunctions to prevent strikes that threatened national security. p. 675
McCarthyism A sensationalist campaign by Senator Joseph McCarthy against supposed communists in government that began in 1950 and ended when the Senate censured him in 1954. p. 677
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why was the Soviet Union suspicious of the United States? 2 . In what ways did the Marshall Plan demonstrate American generosity?
In what ways did it reflect American self-interest?
3 . How was the Cold War in Asia similar to the Cold War in Europe? How was it different?
4. To what extent was McCarthyism justified?
The Cold War Begins
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Containment
The Cold War Expands
The Cold War at Home
Eisenhower Wages the Cold War
Read the Document Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech (March 5, 1946) p. 667
◾
◾
◾
George F. Kennan, “The Long Telegram” (1946) p. 668
Read the Document
Read the Document
View the Closer Look
View the Map
George Marshall, The Marshall Plan (1947) p. 669
Berlin Airlift p. 672
The Korean War (1950–1953) p. 673
Ronald Reagan, Testimony Before HUAC (1947) p. 677
McCarthyism and the Politics of Fear p. 678
Read the Document
Complete the Assignment
Read the Document
◾
◾
Watch the Video
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letters on Dien Bien Phu (1954) p. 681
America Enters the Middle East p. 682
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 28 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Watch the Video Ike for President: Campaign Ad (1952)| p. 679
Contents and Learning Objectives
one interior, but there were four different facades to break the monotony. The original house sold for $6,990 in 1948; even the improved model, a ranch-style house, sold for less than $10,000 in 1951.
Levitt’s houses were ideal for young people just starting out in life. They were cheap, comfortable, and efficient, and each home came with a refrigerator, cook- ing range, and washing machine. Despite the conformity of the houses, the three Levittowns were surprisingly diverse communities; residents had a wide variety of religious, ethnic, and occupational backgrounds. African Americans, however, were rigidly excluded. In time, as the more successful families moved on to larger homes in more expensive neighborhoods, the Levittowns became enclaves for lower-middle-class families.
L evittown symbolized the most signifi cant social trend of the postwar era in the United States—the fl ight to the suburbs. Th e residential areas surrounding cities such as New York and Chicago nearly doubled in the 1950s. While central cities remained rela- tively stagnant during the decade, suburbs grew by 46 percent; by 1960, some sixty million people, one-third of the nation, lived in suburban rings around the cities. Th is massive shift in population from the central city was accompanied by a baby boom that started during World War II. Young married couples began to have three, four, or even fi ve children (compared with only one or two children in American families during the 1930s). Th ese larger families led to a 19 percent growth in the nation’s population between 1950 and 1960, the highest growth rate since 1910.
Levittown: The Flight to the Suburbs
On May 7, 1947, William Levitt announced plans to build two thousand rental houses in a former potato field on Long Island, thirty miles from Midtown Manhattan. Using mass production techniques he had learned while erecting navy housing during the war, Levitt quickly built four thousand homes and rented them to young veterans eager to leave crowded city apartments or their parents’ homes to begin raising families. A change in government financing regulations led him to begin offering his houses for sale in 1948 for a small amount down and a low monthly payment. Young couples, many of them the original renters, quickly bought the first four thousand; by the time Levittown —as he called the new community—was completed in 1951, it contained more than seventeen thousand homes. So many babies were born in Levittown that it soon became known as “Fertility Valley” and “the Rabbit Hutch.”
Levitt eventually built two more Levittowns, one in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey; each contained the same curving streets, neighborhood parks and play- grounds, and community swimming pools characteris- tic of the first development. The secret of Levittown’s appeal was the basic house, a 720-square-foot Cape Cod design built on a concrete slab. It had a kitchen, two bedrooms and bath, a living room complete with a fireplace and 16-foot picture window, and an expansion attic with room for two more bedrooms. Levitt built only
THE POSTWAR BOOM PG. 690 How did the American economy evolve after World War II?
THE GOOD LIFE? PG. 692 How did American culture change after the war?
FAREWELL TO REFORM PG. 696 What was the primary justifi cation for the passage of the Interstate Highway Act of 1956?
THE STRUGGLE OVER CIVIL RIGHTS PG. 698 How did the civil rights movement develop in the 1940s and 1950s?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Reaction to Sputnik
Affluence and Anxiety 29
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 29 Affluence and Anxiety
The houses of Levittown spread over twelve hundred acres of former potato fields on Long Island, New York.
Th e economy boomed as residential construction soared. By 1960, one-fourth of all existing homes were less than ten years old, and factories were turning out large quantities of appliances and television sets for the new households. A multitude of new con- sumer products—ranging from frozen foods to fi lter cigarettes, from high-fi delity phonographs to cars equipped with automatic
transmissions and tubeless tires—appeared in stores and show- rooms. In the suburbs, the corner grocery gave way to the super- market carrying a vast array of items that enabled homemakers to provide their families with a more varied diet.
A new affl uence replaced the poverty and hunger of the Great Depression for most Americans, but many had haunting memories
690 CHAPTER 29 AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY
Events abroad added to the feeling of anxi- ety in the postwar years. Nuclear war became a frighteningly real possibility. Th e rivalry with the Soviet Union had led to the second Red Scare, with charges of treason and disloyalty being lev- eled at loyal Americans. Many Americans joined Senator Joseph McCarthy in searching for the communist enemy at home rather than abroad. Loyalty oaths and book burning revealed how insecure Americans had become in the era of the Cold War. Th e 1950s also witnessed a grow- ing demand by African Americans for equal opportunity in an age of abundance. Th e civil rights movement, along with strident criticism of the consumer culture, revealed that beneath the bland surface of suburban affl uence forces for change were at work.
The Postwar Boom
How did the American economy evolve after World War II?
For fi ft een years following World War II, the nation witnessed a period of unparalleled eco- nomic growth. A pent-up demand for consumer goods fueled a steady industrial expansion. Heavy government spending during the Cold War added an extra stimulus to the econ- omy, off setting brief recessions in 1949 and 1953 and moderating a steeper one in 1957–1958. By the end of the 1950s, the American people had achieved an affl uence that fi nally erased the lingering fears of the Great Depression.
Postwar Prosperity Th e economy began its upward surge as the result of two long- term factors. First, American consumers—aft er being held in check by depression and then by wartime scarcities—finally had a chance to indulge their suppressed appetites for material goods. At the war’s end, personal savings in the United States stood at more than $37 billion, providing a powerful stimulus to consumption. Initially, American factories could not turn out enough automobiles and appliances to satisfy the horde of buyers. By 1950, however, production lines had fi nally caught up with the demand. In that year, Americans bought more than six million cars, and the gross national product (GNP) reached $318 billion (50 percent higher than in 1940).
Th e Cold War provided the additional stimulus the econ- omy needed when postwar expansion slowed. Th e Marshall Plan and other foreign aid programs fi nanced a heavy export trade. Th e Korean War helped overturn a brief recession and ensured continued prosperity as the government spent massive amounts on guns, planes, and munitions. In 1952, the nation spent $44 billion, two-thirds of the federal budget, on national defense.
of the 1930s. Th e obsession with material goods took on an almost desperate quality, as if a profusion of houses, cars, and home appli- ances could guarantee that the nightmare of depression would never return. Critics were quick to disparage the quality of life in suburban society. Th ey condemned the conformity, charging the newly affl uent with forsaking traditional American individualism to live in identical houses, drive look-alike cars, and accumulate the same material possessions. Folksinger Malvina Reynolds caught the essence of postwar suburbia in a 1962 song:
Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same. Th ere’s a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made out of ticky tacky, And they all look just the same. 1
“Little Boxes” Listen to the Audio File
A photograph, for a Levittown house. The Levittown builders applied the principles of mass produc- tion used in auto manufacturing to house construction. One important difference was the fact that the product stood stationary while workers came to the site to perform their specialized tasks.
1 “Little Boxes,” words and music by Malvina Reynolds. Copyright © 1962 Schroder Music Co. [ASCAP]. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
The Postwar Boom 691
“upper middle” or simply as blue collar, white collar, and profes- sional. Doctors and lawyers oft en lived in the same developments as salesclerks and master plumbers. Th e traditional distinctions of ancestry, education, and size of residence no longer diff erenti- ated people as easily as they had in the past.
Yet suburbs could vary widely, from working-class communi- ties clustered near factories built in the countryside to old, elitist areas such as Scarsdale, New York, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. Most were almost exclusively white and Christian, but suburbs such as Great Neck on Long Island and Richmond Heights outside Miami enabled Jews and blacks to take part in the fl ight from the inner city.
Life in all the suburban communities depended on the auto- mobile. Highways and expressways allowed fathers to commute to jobs in the cities, oft en an hour or more away. Children might ride buses to and from school, but mothers had to drive them to piano lessons and Little League ballgames. Two cars became a necessity for almost every suburban family, thus helping spur the boom in automobile production. In 1948, only 59 percent of American fami- lies owned a car; just a few years later, nearly every suburban family had at least one vehicle, and many had several.
In the new drive-in culture, people shopped at the stores that grew up fi rst in “miracle miles” along the highways and later at the shopping centers that spread across the countryside in the 1950s. Th ere were only eight shopping centers in the entire country in 1946; hundreds appeared over the next fi ft een years, including Poplar Plaza in Memphis, with one large department store, thirty retail shops, and parking for more than fi ve hundred cars. In 1956, the fi rst enclosed air-conditioned mall, the Southdale Shopping Center, opened outside Minneapolis.
Despite the increased mobility provided by the car, the home became the focus for activities and aspirations. Th e postwar short- age of housing that oft en forced young couples to live with their parents or in-laws created an intense demand for new homes in the suburbs. When questioned, prospective buyers expressed a desire for “more space,” for “comfort and roominess,” and for “privacy and freedom of action” in their new residences. Men and women who moved to the suburbs prized the new kitchens with their built-in dishwashers, electric ovens, and gleaming counters; the extra bed- rooms that ensured privacy from and for the children; the large garages that could be converted into recreation rooms; and the small, neat lawns that gave them an area for outdoor activities as well as a new way to compete with their neighbors. “Togetherness” became the code word of the 1950s. Families did things together, whether gathering around the TV sets that dominated living rooms, attending community activities, or taking vacations in the huge station wagons of the era.
But there were some less attractive consequences of the new suburban lifestyle. Th e extended family, in which several genera- tions had lived in close proximity, was a casualty of the boom in small detached homes. As historian Kenneth Jackson noted, sub- urban life “ordained that most children would grow up in intimate contact only with their parents and siblings.” For many families, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and more distant relatives would become remote fi gures, seen only on special occasions.
Th e nuclear family, typical of the suburb, did little to encour- age the development of feminism. Th e end of the war saw many women who had entered the workforce return to the home, where
Although Eisenhower managed to bring about some modest reductions, defense spending continued at a level of $40 billion throughout the decade.
Th e nation achieved an affl uence in the 1950s that made the per- sisting fear of another Great Depression seem irrational. Th e baby boom and the spectacular growth of suburbia served as great stimu- lants to the consumer goods industries. Manufacturers turned out an ever-increasing number of refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers to equip the kitchens of Levittown and its many imita- tors across the country. Th e automobile industry thrived with subur- ban expansion as two-car families became more and more common. In 1955, in an era when oil was abundant and gasoline sold for less than 30 cents a gallon, Detroit sold a record eight million cars. Th e electronics industry boomed. Consumers were eager to acquire the latest marvel of home entertainment—the television set.
Commercial enterprises snapped up offi ce machines and the first generation of computers; industry installed electronic sen- sors and processors as it underwent extensive automation; and the military displayed an insatiable appetite for electronic devices for its planes and ships. As a result, American industry averaged more than $10 billion a year in capital investment, and the number of persons employed rose above the long-sought goal of sixty million nationwide.
Yet the economic abundance of the 1950s was not without its problems. While some sections of the nation (notably the emerging Sunbelt areas of the South and West) benefi ted enormously from the growth of the aircraft and electronics industries, older manu- facturing regions, such as New England, did not fare as well. Th e steel industry increased its capacity during the decade, but it began to fall behind the rate of national growth. Agriculture continued to experience bumper crops and low prices, so rural regions, like the vast areas of the Plains states, failed to share in the general affl u- ence. Unemployment persisted despite the boom, rising to more than 7 percent in a sharp recession that hit the country in the fall of 1957 and lasted through the summer of 1958. Th e rate of economic growth slowed in the second half of the decade, causing concern about the continuing vitality of the American economy.
None of these fl aws, however, could disguise the fact that the nation was prospering to an extent no one dreamed possible in the 1930s. Th e GNP grew to $440 billion by 1960, more than double the 1940 level. More important, workers now labored fewer than forty hours a week; they rarely worked on Saturdays, and nearly all enjoyed a two-week paid vacation each year. By the mid-1950s, the average American family had twice as much real income to spend as its coun- terpart had possessed in the boom years of the 1920s. From 1945 to 1960, per capita disposable income rose by $500—to $1,845—for every man, woman, and child in the country. Th e American people, in one generation, had moved from poverty and depression to the highest standard of living the world had ever known.
Life in the Suburbs Sociologists had diffi culty describing the nature of suburban soci- ety in the 1950s. Some saw it as classless, while others noted the absence of both the very rich and the very poor and consequently labeled it “middle class.” Rather than forming a homogeneous social group, though, the suburbs contained a surprising variety of people, whether classifi ed as “upper lower,” “lower middle,” and
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defense plants and military bases, but Eisenhower’s reluctance to unbalance the budget—along with traditional adherence to state control over public education—blocked further federal assistance prior to 1957, when the government reacted to Sputnik . (See the Feature Essay, “Th e Reaction to Sputnik ,” pp. 694–695 .)
Equally important, a controversy arose over the nature of education in the 1950s. Critics of “progressive” education called for sweeping educational reforms and a new emphasis on traditional academic subjects. Suburban communities oft en had bitter fi ghts; affl uent parents demanded kindergarten enrichment programs and grade school foreign language instruction while working- class people resisted such costly innovations. Th e one thing all seemed to agree on was the desirability of a college education. Th e number of young people attending colleges increased from 1.5 million in 1940 to 3.6 million in 1960.
Th e largest advances were made in the exciting new medium of television. From a shaky start just aft er the war, TV boomed in the 1950s, pushing radio aside and undermining many of the nation’s magazines. By 1957, three networks controlled the air- waves, reaching forty million sets over nearly fi ve hundred stations. Advertisers soon took charge of the new medium, using techniques fi rst pioneered in radio—including taped commercials, quiz shows, and soap operas.
At fi rst, the insatiable demand for programs encouraged a burst of creativity. Playwrights such as Reginald Rose, Rod Serling, and Paddy Chayefsky wrote a series of notable dramas for Playhouse 90 , Studio One , and the Goodyear Television Playhouse . Broadcast live from cramped studios, these productions thrived on tight dramatic structures, movable scenery, and frequent close-ups of the actors.
Advertisers, however, quickly became disillusioned with the live anthology programs, which usually dealt with controversial subjects or focused on ordinary people and events. In contrast, sponsors wanted shows that stressed excitement, glamour, and instant success. Aware that audiences were fascinated by contestants with unusual expertise (a shoemaker answering tough questions on operas, a grandmother stumping experts on baseball), producers began giving away huge cash prizes on Th e $64,000 Question and Twenty-one . In 1959, the nation was shocked when Charles Van Doren, a Columbia University professor, confessed he had been given the answers in advance to win $129,000 on Twenty-one . Th e three networks quickly dropped all the big-prize quiz programs, replacing them with comedy, action, and adventure shows such as Th e Untouchables and Bonanza . Despite its early promise of artistic innovation, television had become a technologically sophisticated but safe conveyor of the consumer culture.
Critics of the Consumer Society One striking feature of the 1950s was the abundance of self-criticism. A number of widely read books explored the fl aws in the new suburbia. John Keats’s Th e Crack in the Picture Window described the endless rows of tract houses “vomited up” by developers as “identical boxes spreading like gangrene.” Th eir occupants—whom he dubbed the Drones, the Amiables, and the Fecunds—lost any sense of individuality in their obsession with material goods.
Richard Gordon, Katherine Gordon, and Max Gunther were more concerned about the psychological toll of suburban life in
the role of wife and mother continued to be viewed as the ideal for women in the 1950s. Trends toward getting married earlier and having larger families reinforced the pattern of women devoting all their eff orts to housework and child raising rather than acquir- ing professional skills and pursuing careers outside the home. Adlai Stevenson, extolling “the humble role of housewife,” told Smith College graduates that there was much they could do “in the living room with a baby in your lap or in the kitchen with a can opener in your hand.” Dr. Benjamin Spock’s 1946 best-seller, Baby and Child Care , became a fi xture in millions of homes, while the tradi- tional women’s magazines such as McCall’s and Good Housekeeping thrived by featuring articles on natural childbirth and inspirational pieces such as “Homemaking Is My Vocation.”
Nonetheless, the number of working wives doubled between 1940 and 1960. By the end of the 1950s, 40 percent of American women, and nearly one-third of all married women, had jobs out- side the home. Th e heavy expenses involved in rearing and educat- ing children led wives and mothers to seek ways to augment the family income, inadvertently preparing the way for a new demand for equality in the 1960s.
The Good Life?
How did American culture change after the war?
Consumerism became the dominant social theme of the 1950s. Yet even with an abundance of creature comforts and added hours of leisure time, the quality of life left many Americans anxious and dissatisfi ed.
Areas of Greatest Growth Organized religion flourished in the climate of the 1950s. Ministers, priests, and rabbis all commented on the rise in church and synagogue attendance in the new communities. Will Herberg claimed that religious affi liation had become the primary identi- fying feature of modern American life, dividing the nation into three separate segments—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish.
Some observers condemned the bland, secular nature of suburban churches, which seemed to be an integral part of the consumer society. “On weekdays one shops for food,” wrote one critic, “on Saturdays one shops for recreation, and on Sundays one shops for the Holy Ghost.” But the popularity of religious writer Norman Vincent Peale, with his positive gospel that urged people to “start thinking faith, enthusiasm, and joy,” suggested that the new churches fi lled a genuine, if shallow, human need. At the same time, the emergence of neo-orthodoxy in Protestant seminaries (notably through the ideas of Reinhold Niebuhr) and the rapid spread of radical forms of fundamentalism (such as the Assemblies of God) indicated that millions of Americans still were searching for a more personal religious faith.
Schools provided an immediate problem for the growing new suburban communities. Th e increase in the number of school-age children, from twenty to thirty million in the fi rst eight grades, over- whelmed the resources of many local districts, leading to demands for federal aid. Congress granted limited help for areas aff ected by
The Good Life? 693
C. Wright Mills was a far more caustic commentator on American society in the 1950s. Anticipating government statistics that revealed white-collar workers (salesclerks, offi ce workers, bank tellers) now outnumbered blue-collar workers (miners, factory workers, mill hands), Mills described the new middle class in omi- nous terms in his books White Collar (1951) and Power Elite (1956). Th e corporation was the villain for Mills, depriving offi ce work- ers of their own identities and imposing an impersonal discipline through manipulation and propaganda. Th e industrial assembly line had given way to an even more dehumanizing workplace, the modern offi ce. “At rows of blank-looking counters sat rows of blank-looking girls with blank, white folders in their blank hands, all blankly folding blank papers.”
This disenchantment with the consumer culture reached its most eloquent expression with the beats , literary groups that rebelled against the materialistic society of the 1950s. Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road , published in 1957, set the tone for the new movement. Th e name came from the quest for beatitude, a state of inner grace sought in Zen Buddhism. Flouting the respectability of suburbia, the “beatniks”—as middle America termed them—were
their 1960 book Th e Split-Level Trap . Th ey labeled the new life- style “Disturbia” and bemoaned the “haggard” men, the “tense and anxious” women, and the “gimme” kids it produced. Th e most sweep- ing indictment came in William H. Whyte’s Th e Organization Man (1956), based on a study of the Chicago suburb of Park Forest. Whyte perceived a change from the old Protestant ethic, with its emphasis on hard work and personal responsibility, to a new social ethic cen- tered on “the team” with the ultimate goal of “belongingness.” Th e result was a stifl ing conformity and the loss of personal identity.
Th e most infl uential social critic of the 1950s was Harvard sociologist David Riesman. His book Th e Lonely Crowd appeared in 1950 and set the tone for intellectual commentary about suburbia for the rest of the decade. Riesman described the shift from the “inner- directed” Americans of the past who had relied on such traditional values as self-denial and frugality to the “other-directed” Americans of the consumer society who constantly adapted their behavior to conform to social pressures. Th e consequences—a decline in indi- vidualism and a tendency for people to become acutely sensitive to the expectations of others—produced a bland and tolerant society of consumers lacking creativity and a sense of adventure.
View the Closer Look A 1950s Family Watching I Love Lucy] View the Closer Look A 1950s Family Watching Television
I Love Lucy was one of the most popular television shows of the 1950s. Manufacturers designed television sets as living room furniture and marketed televisions as promoting family togetherness and facilitating domestic leisure time.
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Pearl Harbor and raised the fear that the Soviets, with a rocket powerful enough to send Sputnik into space, were ahead of the United States in the race for the ICBM. Even more important, many soon began to worry that the Soviets threatened the superiority of the United States in science and technology, areas in which Americans had long felt invincible. Thus Senator Henry Jackson, a Cold War Democrat, called the launch of Sputnik “a devastating blow to the prestige of the United
separate from the military’s quest for an intercontinental ballistic mis- sile (ICBM), was far behind sched- ule. All American scientists could do was offer their congratulations to the Soviets, while political lead- ers tried to downplay the feat, with one offi cial dismissing Sputnik as “a silly bauble.”
Critics of the Eisenhower admin- istration, however, reacted quite dif- ferently. A sense of panic gripped the nation. Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, spoke of a technological
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik , the world’s fi rst artifi cial satellite. Every 92 minutes, the 184-pound sphere orbited the globe, emitting its distinctive radio signal, “beep . . . beep . . . beep.” Americans were stunned. The United States had been planning to send up its own satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year established as July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. But the Vanguard program, kept
The Reaction to Sputnik Feature Essay
Complete the Assignment The Reaction to Sputnik on myhistorylab
Sputnik was launched into an elliptical low orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. The surprise success of the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union served as catalyst in the United States for major changes and initiatives in national security, education, and space exploration.
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math offerings as academic leaders helped design “new math” and “new physics” courses. The act also created a loan fund to assist needy students in meeting the costs of a college educa- tion, as well as establishing graduate fellowships in science, engineering, and foreign area studies. Sputnik had allowed those calling for educa- tional reform to break the logjam and upgrade and improve school curricu- lums as well as make higher education more affordable.
Another important congressional action came with the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Admin- istration (NASA) in 1958. Concerned by the interservice rivalry that ham- pered the missile program, its spon- sors insisted on a new civilian agency to oversee the nation’s space program. While dependent on the military for the rocket boosters, NASA was able to develop its own agenda for space exploration and started a program that would eventually place astronauts in orbit around the Earth and land them on the moon by the end of the next decade.
The reaction to Sputnik illus- trates the curious way that democ- racy often works. Advocates of space exploration, educational reform, and intercontinental ballistic missiles had made little headway before October 4, 1957. The Soviet feat in launching Sputnik helped arouse the nation, and despite the initial overre- action, led to important advances in all three areas. Sputnik thus proved to be like a fi re bell in the night, fi lling the American people with alarm but triggering a positive response that served the nation well.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How did the Cold War infl uence America’s decision to invest heavily in space exploration?
2. Why did NASA favor manned space fl ight over instrument probes?
successful launch, President Eisenhower expressed the sentiments of millions of Americans when he exclaimed, “I surely feel a lot better now.”
Sputnik served as a catalyst for change that led to many positive developments. The most signifi cant came in the area of national security. Democrats, led by Senator Lyndon Johnson, criticized Eisenhower for cutting defense spending in an effort to balance the budget and warned of a future missile gap, claiming that the powerful rocket that launched Sputnik into orbit showed the Soviets were ahead in developing the ICBM. The president responded by increasing the Pentagon budget by several billion dollars and speeding up the American missile program.
His most important action, however, was the appointment of MIT President James Killian to the new post of presi- dential science adviser. Killian quickly created a President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), composed of 17 leading scientists who met regularly to advise Eisenhower on technical issues. “Science,” commented Time magazine, “has never before been given that kind of attention at that level.” Killian and the PSAC persuaded Eisenhower to take a gamble on ICBMs that paid off handsomely. Instead of focusing on liquid-fuel missiles, which took hours to load and could not be placed in hardened sites, the president gave priority to development of solid- fuel missiles—the Minuteman and the Polaris—which could be fi red almost immediately and could be protected against attack in underground silos or underwater onboard submarines. By the 1960s, fears of a missile gap evapo- rated as America’s second generation of missiles made the original Soviet ICBMs obsolete.
In 1958, the nation moved quickly to address the other issues raised by Sputnik . With strong bipartisan support, Congress acted on long overdue edu- cational reform. The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) helped schools improve and broaden their science and
States as the leader in the scientifi c and technical world.”
In responding to Sputnik , Americans began to voice doubts about the vital- ity and quality of their own society. Critics warned of excessive devotion to material objects—cars, appliances, luxury goods—at the expense of tra- ditional American values such as hard work, dedication, and national pride. One senator proclaimed that it was time “to be less concerned with the depth of pile on the new broadloom rug or the height of the tail fi n on the car and to be more prepared to shed blood, sweat, and tears if this country and the Free World are to survive.” Others wor- ried over the realization that the Soviets were training more scientists and engi- neers than the United States and called for a complete overhaul of the American educational system. Sputnik gave new momentum to reformers who for years had been critical of the trend toward social adjustment in American schools and were crying out for more stress on the basics—reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Events in the fi rst few months fol- lowing the launch of Sputnik did little to calm the nation. In November 1957, the Soviets orbited a second satellite, one weighing over 1,000 pounds and carrying a dog into space. A month later, American scientists readied Vanguard for its fi rst launch at Cape Canaveral in Florida. The slim rocket, carrying a tiny 4-pound sphere as its payload, rose only a few inches off the ground and then toppled over in a cloud of smoke and fi re. Reporters covering the event quickly derided Vanguard, referring to it as “ Flopnik ” and “ Kaputnik .”
President Eisenhower then approved plans to let an army team, led by German scientist Wernher Von Braun, attempt to put a satellite into orbit using the reli- able intermediate range Jupiter rocket. On January 31, 1958, Explorer , the fi rst American satellite, successfully orbited the earth. Much smaller than the origi- nal Sputnik , Explorer did carry a more sophisticated set of instruments to send back data from space. Informed of the
696 CHAPTER 29 AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY
Despite the disapproval they evoked from mainstream Americans, the beat generation had some compassion for their detractors. “We love everything,” Kerouac proclaimed, “Billy Graham, the Big Ten, Rock and Roll, Zen, apple pie, Eisenhower— we dig it all.” Yet, as highly visible nonconformists in an era of stifl ing conformity, the beats demonstrated a style of social protest that would fl ower into the counterculture of the 1960s.
Farewell to Reform
What was the primary justifi cation for the passage of the Interstate Highway Act of 1956?
It is not surprising that the spirit of reform underlying the New Deal failed to fl ourish in the postwar years. Growing affl uence took away the sense of grievance and the cry for change that was so strong in the 1930s. Eager to enjoy the new prosperity aft er years of want and sacrifi ce, the American people turned away from federal regulation and welfare programs.
Truman and the Fair Deal Harry Truman was in a buoyant mood when he gave his State of the Union address on January 5, 1949. Heartened by his upset victory in 1948 and by the substantial Democratic majorities in Congress—54 to 42 in the Senate and 263 to 171 in the House— he looked forward to advancing a liberal legislative agenda. As expected, he emphasized traditional New Deal goals: expan- sion and reform of the farm price-support program, broadened Social Security, an increase in the minimum wage, and repeal of the antiunion Taft -Hartley Act. But he went further, advocat- ing new areas of reform when he declared, “Every segment of our population and every individual has a right to expect from our government a fair deal.”
Three reform measures stood out in Truman’s plan for a Fair Deal. Th e fi rst measure called for medical insurance for all Americans, designed to provide a comprehensive solution to the nation’s health problem. Equally controversial was the second mea- sure that proposed establishing a compulsory Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to open up employment oppor- tunities for African Americans. During World War II, President Roosevelt had created a voluntary Fair Employment Practices Committee, but Congress stopped funding, and it expired in 1946. Th e third measure called for federal aid to education in order to help the states and local school districts meet the demands created by the postwar baby boom. Taken together, these legislative pro- posals went far beyond the New Deal legacy in an eff ort to provide greater social justice for all citizens.
Truman’s ambitious Fair Deal met with defeat after defeat in Congress. Doctors, led by the American Medical Association, branded the administration’s health insurance plan as social- ized medicine and lobbied eff ectively against it. Southern senators threatened a fi libuster against the FEPC proposal, quickly ending any chance for action on civil rights. And despite the need for more funding for schools, those favoring local control, especially south- ern defenders of segregation, were able to defeat measures for federal
easily identifi ed by their long hair and bizarre clothing; they also had a penchant for sexual promiscuity and drug experimentation. Th ey were conspicuous dropouts from a society they found sense- less. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who held forth in the City Lights Bookshop in San Francisco (a favorite resort of the beats), summed it up this way: “I was a wind-up toy someone had dropped wound up into a world already running down.”
Th e social protest inherent in the books and poems of the beats found its artistic counterpart in the rise of abstract expressionism. Abstract expressionists worked in styles that emphasized individu- ality and freedom from the constraints of representational, realistic art. Painters Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, among others, chal- lenged mainstream America’s notions about the form and function of art. For Pollock, the act of creating a painting was as important as the painting itself. Rothko pioneered a style known as color fi eld painting; his works in this style are monumental pieces in which enormous areas of color lacking any distinct structure or central focus are used to create a mood.
Novelist Jack Kerouac and his fellow “beat” writers bemoaned the moral bankruptcy of popular culture. They sought not to improve conditions but to fi nd release from the moral and social confi nes constricting their lives and the literary conventions circumscribing their writing. This photograph of Jack Kerouac was taken by beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
Read the Document Pearson Profiles: Jack Kerouac
Farewell to Reform 697
staff . Adams’s skill at resolving problems at lower levels insulated Eisenhower from many of the nation’s pressing domestic concerns.
Republican losses in the midterm election of 1954 weak- ened Eisenhower’s relations with Congress. The Democrats regained control of both houses and kept it throughout the 1950s. Th e president had to rely on two Texas Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, for legislative action; at best, it was an awkward and uneasy relationship.
Th e result was a very modest legislative record. Eisenhower did continue the basic social measures of the New Deal. In 1954, he signed bills extending Social Security benefi ts to more than seven million Americans, raising the minimum wage to $1 an hour, and adding four million workers to those eligible for unemployment benefi ts. He consolidated the administration of welfare programs by creating the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953. Oveta Culp Hobby, the fi rst woman to hold a cabinet post in a Republican administration, headed the new department. But Ike steadfastly opposed Democratic plans for compulsory health insurance—which he condemned as the “socialization of medi- cine”—and comprehensive federal aid to education, preferring to leave everything except school construction in the hands of local and state authorities. Th is lack of presidential support and the con- tinuing grip of the conservative coalition in Congress blocked any further reform in the 1950s.
Th e one signifi cant legislative achievement of the Eisenhower years came with the passage of the Highway Act of 1956. Aft er a twelve-year delay, Congress appropriated funds for a 41,000-mile interstate highway system consisting of multilane divided express- ways that would connect the nation’s major cities. Justifi ed on grounds of national defense, the 1956 act pleased a variety of high- way users: the trucking industry, automobile clubs, organized labor (eager for construction jobs), farmers (needing to speed their crops to market), and state highway offi cials (anxious for the 90 percent funding contributed by the federal government). Eisenhower’s insistence that general revenue funds not be used to provide the federal share—estimated at $25 billion—of the total cost led to the creation of a highway trust fund raised by taxes on fuel, tires, and new cars and trucks. Built over the next twenty years, the inter- state highway system had a profound infl uence on American life. It stimulated the economy and shortened travel time dramatically, while at the same time intensifying the nation’s dependence on the automobile and distorting metropolitan growth patterns into long strips paralleling the new expressways.
THE ELECTION OF 1956
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Eisenhower Republican 35,575,420 457
Stevenson Democratic 26,033,066 73
Overall, the Eisenhower years marked an era of political moderation. Th e American people, enjoying the abundance of the 1950s, seemed quite content with legislative inaction. Th e presi- dent was sensitive to the nation’s economic health; when recessions
aid. Th us Congress failed to act on all three of the Fair Deal reforms; it also refused to repeal the Taft -Hartley Act or revise the farm pro- gram. Truman’s only successes came in expanding Social Security to cover 10 million more Americans and in raising the minimum wage to 75 cents an hour.
Th e president’s failure to enact his Fair Deal program stemmed primarily from political reality. Despite the nominal Democratic control of the House and Senate, a conservative coalition, in the making since 1938, blocked all eff orts at further reform. Southern Democrats and northern Republicans combined to defeat any eff ort to extend government regulation, especially into sensitive areas such as health care and civil rights. At the same time, Truman can be faulted for trying to do too much, too soon. Had he selected one of his proposed reforms, such as federal aid to education, and given it priority, he might have been successful. But attempting to pass such a sweeping program in face of the bipartisan conserva- tive coalition proved hopeless. Yet Truman must be given credit for defending and consolidating the New Deal legacy of the 1930s. By going on the off ensive, he blocked any eff ort by conservatives to undo reforms such as Social Security. Moreover, Truman suc- ceeded in expanding his party’s reform agenda. By calling for action on civil rights, health care, and federal aid to education, he was opening up discussion of vital issues that laid the groundwork for legislative action in the future.
Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism Th e American people found that moderation was the keynote of the Eisenhower presidency. His major goal from the outset was to restore calm and tranquility to a badly divided nation. Unlike FDR and Truman, Eisenhower had no commitment to social change or economic reform. Ike was a fi scal conservative who was intent on balancing the budget. Yet unlike some Republicans of the extreme right wing, he had no plans to dismantle the social programs of the New Deal. He sought instead to keep military spending in check, to encourage as much private initiative as possible, and to reduce fed- eral activities to the bare minimum. Defi ning his position as Modern Republicanism, he claimed that he was “conservative when it comes to money and liberal when it comes to human beings.”
On domestic issues, Eisenhower preferred to delegate authority and to play a passive role. He concentrated his own eff orts on the Cold War abroad. Th e men he chose to run the nation refl ected his prefer- ence for successful corporation executives. Th us George Humphrey, an Ohio industrialist, carried out a policy of fi scal stringency as sec- retary of the treasury, while Charles E. Wilson (the former head of General Motors) sought to keep the Pentagon budget under control as secretary of defense. Neither man was wholly successful, and both were guilty of tactless public statements. Humphrey warned that unless Congress showed budgetary restraint, “We’re gonna have a depression which will curl your hair,” and Wilson gained notoriety by proclaiming that “What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”
Eisenhower was equally reluctant to play an active role in dealing with Congress. A fervent believer in the separation of powers, Ike did not want to engage in intensive lobbying. He left congressional relations to aides such as Sherman Adams, a former New Hampshire governor who served as White House chief of
698 CHAPTER 29 AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY
to the nation’s black minority. In the midst of the Cold War, the contradiction between the denunciation of the Soviet Union for its human rights violations and the second-class status of African Americans began to arouse the national conscience. Fighting for freedom against communist tyranny abroad, Americans had to face the reality of the continued denial of freedom to a submerged minority at home.
African Americans had benefited economically from World War II, but they were still a seriously disadvantaged group. Th ose who had left the South for better opportunities in northern and western cities were concentrated in blighted and segregated neighborhoods, working at low-paying jobs, suff ering economic and social discrimination, and failing to share fully in the post- war prosperity. Th e rising expectations of African Americans in the postwar years led them to challenge the older patterns of racial segregation and inequality.
In the South, conditions were much worse. State laws forced blacks to live almost totally segregated from white society. Not only did African Americans attend separate (and almost always inferior) schools, but they also were rigidly segregated in all public facilities. Th ey were forced to use separate waiting rooms in train stations, separate seats on all forms of transportation, separate drinking
developed in 1953 and again in 1957 aft er his landslide reelection victory over Adlai Stevenson, he quickly abandoned his goal of a balanced budget in favor of a policy advocating government spend- ing to restore prosperity. Th ese steps, along with modest increases in New Deal welfare programs, led to a steady growth in the fed- eral budget from $29.5 billion in 1950 to $76.5 billion in 1960. Eisenhower was able to balance the budget in only three of his eight years in offi ce, and the $12 billion defi cit in 1959 was larger than any ever before recorded in peacetime. In this manner, Eisenhower was able to maintain the New Deal legacy of federal responsibility for social welfare and the state of the economy while at the same time successfully resisting demands for more extensive government involvement in American life.
The Struggle over Civil Rights
How did the civil rights movement develop in the 1940s and 1950s?
Despite President Eisenhower’s reluctance to champion the cause of reform, powerful pressures for change forced long-overdue action in one area of American life—the denial of basic rights
San Francisco
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Fargo
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Dallas Fort Worth
Houston San
Antonio New Orleans
Mobile
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Indianapolis Cincinnati
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Birmingham Atlanta
Jacksonville
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HAWAII
ALASKA (No interstate
highways)
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THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM The 1956 plan to create an interstate highway system drastically changed America’s landscape and culture. Today, the system covers about forty-fi ve thousand miles, only a few thousand more miles than called for in the original plan.
The Struggle over Civil Rights 699
in 1948 included some of these measures, notably the establish- ment of a permanent FEPC and a civil rights commission. But southern resistance had blocked any action by Congress, and the inclusion of a strong civil rights plank in the 1948 Democratic platform had led to the walkout of some southern delegations and a separate States’ Rights (Dixiecrat) ticket in several states of the South that fall.
African American voters in the North overwhelmingly backed Truman over Dewey in the 1948 election. Th e African American vote in key cities—Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Chicago—ensured the Democratic victory in California, Ohio, and Illinois. Truman responded by including civil rights legislation in his Fair Deal pro- gram in 1949. Once again, however, determined southern opposi- tion blocked congressional action on both a permanent FEPC and an antilynching measure.
Even though President Truman was unable to secure any signifi cant legislation, he did succeed in adding civil rights to the
fountains, and even separate telephone booths. “Segregation was enforced at all places of public entertainment, including libraries, auditoriums, and circuses,” Chief Justice Earl Warren noted. “Th ere was segregation in the hospitals, prisons, mental institutions, and nursing homes. Even ambulance service was segregated.”
Civil Rights as a Political Issue Truman was the fi rst president to attempt to alter the historic pattern of racial discrimination in the United States. In 1946, he appointed a presidential commission on civil rights. A year later, in a sweeping report titled To Secure Th ese Rights , the com- mission recommended the reinstatement of the wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), the establishment of a permanent civil rights commission, and the denial of federal aid to any state that condoned segregation in schools and public facilities. Th e president’s ten-point legislative program proposed
Justice for All: Civil Protest and Civil Rights Watch the Video
The firebombing of a Greyhound bus carrying white and black civil rights activists challenging illegal segregation on interstate bus routes in the South during 1961 was undertaken by a mob outside of Anniston, Alabama. These civil rights activists barely escaped with their lives from this violent attack on their passive resistance efforts.
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“by appealing to reason, by prayer, and by constantly working at it through our own eff orts” could change be enacted. Quietly and unobtrusively, he worked to achieve desegregation in federal facili- ties, particularly in veterans’ hospitals, navy yards, and the District of Columbia school system. Yet he refrained from endorsing the Brown decision, which he told an aide he believed had “ set back progress in the South at least fi ft een years .”
Southern leaders mistook Ike’s silence for tacit support of segregation. In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the national guard to prevent the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School on grounds of a threat to public order. Aft er 270 armed troops turned back nine young African American stu- dents, a federal judge ordered the guardsmen removed; but when
liberal agenda. From this time forward, it would be an integral part of the Democratic reform program. Also, Truman used his executive power to assist African Americans. He strengthened the civil rights division of the Justice Department, which aided black groups in their eff orts to challenge school segregation and restrictive housing covenants in the courts. Most important, in 1948 Truman issued an order calling for the desegregation of the armed forces. Th e navy and the air force quickly complied, but the army resisted until the personnel needs of the Korean War fi nally overcame the military’s objections. By the end of the 1950s, the armed forces had become far more integrated than American society at large.
Desegregating the Schools Th e nation’s schools soon became the primary target of civil rights advocates. Th e NAACP concentrated fi rst on universities, successfully waging an intensive legal battle to win admission for qualifi ed African Americans to graduate schools and profes- sional programs. Led by Th urgood Marshall, NAACP lawyers then took on the broader issue of segregation in the country’s public schools. Challenging the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of separate but equal public facilities (see “ Plessy v. Ferguson: Th e Shaping of Jim Crow,” pp. 460–463 ) , Marshall argued that even substantially equal but separate schools did profound psychological damage to African American children and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Th e Supreme Court was unanimous in its 1954 decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka . Chief Justice Earl Warren, recently appointed by President Eisenhower, wrote the landmark opinion fl atly declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” To divide grade school children “solely because of their race,” Warren argued, “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may aff ect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” Despite this sweeping language, Warren realized it would be diffi cult to change historic patterns of segregation quickly. Accordingly, in 1955, the Court ruled that desegregation of the schools should proceed “with all deliberate speed” and left the details to the lower federal courts.
“All deliberate speed” proved to be agonizingly slow. Offi cials in the border states quickly complied with the Court’s ruling, but states deeper in the South responded with a policy of massive resistance. Local white citizens’ councils organized to fi ght for retention of racial separation; 101 representatives and senators signed a Southern Manifesto in 1956 that denounced the Brown decision as “a clear abuse of judicial power.” School boards, encour- aged by this show of defi ance, found a variety of ways to evade the Court’s ruling. Th e most successful was the passage of pupil place- ment laws. Th ese laws enabled local offi cials to assign individual students to schools on the basis of scholastic aptitude, ability to adjust, and “morals, conduct, health, and personal standards.” Th ese stalling tactics led to long disputes in the federal courts; by the end of the decade, fewer than 1 percent of the black children in the Deep South attended school with whites.
A conspicuous lack of presidential support further weak- ened the desegregation eff ort. Dwight Eisenhower believed that people’s attitudes could not be altered by “cold lawmaking”—only
Demonstrators bearing signs in support of the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The ruling also sparked protests, many of them violent and destructive, from opponents of integration.
Read the Document Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)
The Struggle over Civil Rights 701
“securing and protecting the right to vote.” A second civil rights act in 1960 slightly strengthened the voting rights section.
Like the desegregation eff ort, the attempt to ensure African American voting rights in the South was still largely symbolic. Southern registrars used a variety of devices, ranging from intimi- dation to unfair tests, to deny African Americans suff rage. Yet the actions of Congress and the Supreme Court marked a vital turning point in national policy toward racial justice.
The Beginnings of Black Activism Th e most dynamic force for change came from African Americans themselves. Th e shift from legal struggles in the courts to protest in the streets began with an incident in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks—a black seamstress who had been active in the local NAACP chapter—violated a city ordi- nance by refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a local
the black students entered the school, a mob of fi ve hundred jeering whites surrounded the building. Eisenhower, who had told Faubus that “the Federal Constitution will be upheld by me by every legal means at my command,” sent in one thousand paratroop- ers to ensure the rights of the Little Rock Nine to attend Central High. Th e students fi nished the school year under armed guard. Th en Little Rock authorities closed Central High School for the next two years; when it reopened, there were only three African Americans in attendance.
Despite the snail’s pace of school desegregation, the Brown decision led to other advances. In 1957, the Eisenhower admin- istration proposed the fi rst general civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson over- came strong southern resistance to avoid a fi libuster, but at the expense of weakening the measure considerably. Th e fi nal act, how- ever, did create a permanent Commission for Civil Rights, one of Truman’s original goals. It also provided for federal eff orts aimed at
How did the Civil Rights Movement Change American Schools? Watch the Video
Clinton High School, located in a small town of 5,000 in eastern Tennessee, was the first public high school to desegregate. Clinton was also one of the first towns to witness the anger and hatred associated with school integration. On September 1, 1956, the National Guard and state troopers were called in to help control the violent crowds of protestors.
702 CHAPTER 29 AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY
voice became familiar to the entire nation. Unlike many African American preachers, he never shouted, yet he captured his audi- ence by presenting his ideas with both passion and a compel- ling cadence. “Th ough still a boy to many of his older listeners,” Branch noted, “he had the commanding air of a burning sage.”
Even more important, he had a strategy and message that fi t- ted perfectly with the plight of his followers. Drawing on sources as diverse as Gandhi and Henry David Th oreau, King came out of the bus boycott with the concept of passive resistance. “If cursed,” he had told protesters in Montgomery, “do not curse back. If struck, do not strike back, but evidence love and goodwill at all times.” Th e essence of his strategy was to use the apparent weakness of southern blacks—their lack of power—and turn it into a conquer- ing weapon. His message to southern whites was clear and unmis- takable: “We will match your capacity to infl ict suff ering with our capacity to endure suff ering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. We will not hate you, but we will not obey your evil laws. We will soon wear you down by pure capacity to suff er.”
His ultimate goal was to unite the broken community through bonds of Christian love. He hoped to use nonviolence to appeal to middle-class white America, “to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride or irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.” Th e result, King prophesied, would be to enable future historians to say of the eff ort, “Th ere lived
bus. Her action, oft en viewed as spontaneous, grew out of a long tradition of black protest against the rigid segregation of the races in the South. Rosa Parks herself had been ejected from a bus a decade earlier for refusing to obey the driver’s command, “Niggers move back.” In 1953, black church leaders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had mounted a weeklong boycott of that city’s bus system and succeeded in modifying the traditional segre- gated seating rules.
In Montgomery, the arrest of Rosa Parks sparked a massive protest movement. Black women played a particularly important role in the protest, printing and handing out fi ft y thousand leafl ets to rally the African American community behind Parks. Th e move- ment also led to the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an eloquent new spokesman for African Americans.
King agreed to lead the subsequent bus boycott. Th e son of a famous Atlanta preacher, he had recently taken his fi rst church in Montgomery aft er years of studying theology while earning a Ph.D. at Boston University. Now he would be able to combine his wide learning with his charismatic appeal in behalf of a practical goal—fair treatment for the African Americans who made up the bulk of the riders on the city’s buses.
Th e Montgomery bus boycott started out with a modest goal. Instead of challenging the legality of segregated seating, King simply asked that seats be taken on a fi rst-come, fi rst-served basis, with African Americans being seated from the back and the whites from the front of each bus. As the protest con- tinued, however, and as they endured both legal harass- ment and sporadic acts of violence, the protesters began to be more assertive. An eff ective system of car pools enabled them to avoid using the city buses. Soon they were insist- ing on a complete end to segregated seating as they sang their new song of protest:
Ain’t gonna ride them buses no more Ain’t gonna ride no more Why in the hell don’t the white folk know Th at I ain’t gonna ride no more.
Th e boycott ended in victory a year later when the Supreme Court ruled the Alabama segregated seat- ing law unconstitutional. Th e protest movement had triumphed, not only in denting the wall of southern segregation, but in featuring the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. He had emerged as the charismatic leader of a new civil rights movement—a man who won acclaim not only at home but around the world. A year aft er the successful bus boycott, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to direct the crusade against segregation. He visited Th ird World leaders in Africa and Asia and paid hom- age to India’s Mahatma Gandhi, who had infl uenced his reliance on civil disobedience. He led a triumphant Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington in 1957 on the third anniversary of the Brown decision, stirring the crowd of thirty thousand with his ringing demand for the right to vote. His cry “Give us the ballot” boomed in sal- vos that civil rights historian Taylor Branch likened to “cannon bursts in a diplomatic salute.” His remarkable
Civil Rights Movement View the Map
Rosa Parks’ refusal to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus led to a citywide bus boycott that brought Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to prominence as a leader of the civil rights movement. Parks remained active in the movement as well; she is shown here being fi ngerprinted in February 1956 after her arrest for violating an antiboycott law.
Conclusion: Restoring National Confi dence 703
a great people—a black people—who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.”
King was not alone in championing the cause of civil rights. JoAnn Robinson helped pave the way in Montgomery with the Woman’s Political Caucus, and leaders as diverse as Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker were advancing the cause at the grassroots level.
In February 1960, another spontaneous event sparked a further advance for passive resistance. Four African American students
from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at a dime-store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to move aft er being denied service. Other students, both whites and blacks, joined in similar “sit-ins” across the South, as well as “kneel-ins” at churches and “wade-ins” at swimming pools. By the end of the year, some fi ft y thousand young people had suc- ceeded in desegregating public facilities in more than a hundred southern cities. Several thousand of the demonstrators were arrested and put in jail, but the movement gained strength, leading to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960. From this time on, the SCLC and SNCC, with their tactic of direct, though peaceful confrontation, would replace the NAACP and its reliance on court action in the forefront of the civil rights movement. Th e change would eventually lead to dramatic success for the movement, but it also ushered in a period of heightened tension and social turmoil in the 1960s.
Conclusion: Restoring National Confi dence
In 1959, disturbed by the criticism of American society sparked by Sputnik , President Eisenhower appointed a Commission on National Goals “to develop a broad outline of national objectives for the next decade and longer.” Ten prominent citizens from all walks of life, led by Henry W. Wriston of Brown University, issued a report that called for increased military spending abroad, greater economic growth at home, broader educational opportunities, and more government support for both scientifi c research and the advancement of the arts. Th e consensus seemed to be that rather than a change of direction, all the United States needed was a renewed commitment to the pursuit of excellence.
Th e 1950s ended with the national mood less troubled than when the decade began amid the turmoil of the second Red Scare and the Korean War, yet hardly as tranquil or confi dent as Eisenhower had hoped it would be. Th e American people felt reas- sured about the state of the economy, no longer fearing a return to the grim years of the Great Depression. At the same time, however, they were aware that abundance alone did not guarantee the quality of everyday life and realized that there was still a huge gap between American ideals and the reality of race relations, in the North as well as the South.
Read the Document Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement
In February 1960, black students from North Carolina A&T College staged a sit-in at a “whites only” Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Their act of nonviolent protest spurred similar demonstrations in public spaces across the South in an effort to draw national attention to racial injustice, to demand desegregation of public facilities, and to prompt the federal government to take a more active role to end segregation.
704 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER REVIEW
1955 African Americans begin boycott of Montgomery, Alabama, bus company (December)
1956 Eisenhower signs legislation creating the interstate highway system
1957 Congress passes fi rst Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction
1958 Charles Van Doren confesses to cheating on television quiz show Twenty-One
1960 African American college students stage sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina
1946 Republicans win control of both houses of Congress in November elections
1947 William Levitt announces fi rst Levittown 1948 Truman orders end to segregation in armed forces 1949 Minimum wage raised from 40 to 75 cents an hour 1953 McDonald’s chooses golden arches design for its
hamburger shops
1954 Supreme Court orders schools desegregated in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 29 Affluence and Anxiety on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The Postwar Boom
How did the American economy evolve after World War II?
The American economy boomed after World War II, as the nation recovered from the Great Depression and the war. The GNP doubled between 1940 and 1960. Individuals spent
heavily on housing, automobiles, and consumer goods, and the government on defense. New communities emerged in the suburbs and the Sunbelt states of the West and South. (p. 690 )
The Good Life?
How did American culture change after the war?
American culture reflected both the promise of material prosperity and the failure of material goods to yield true hap- piness. More people went to church than ever; more young people went to college. Television provided endless informa-
tion and entertainment. But suburban life exhibited a shallow sameness that prompted critics to question if it was worthwhile. (p. 692 )
Farewell to Reform
What was the primary justifi cation for the pas- sage of the Interstate Highway Act of 1956?
The Highway Act appropriated funds to construct a 41,000-mile interstate highway system that would con- nect the nation’s major cities to each other. Although the
highways would benefit a variety of users, such as the trucking industry, organized labor, state transportation departments, and farmers, the primary justification for passing the law in Congress was national defense. (p. 696 )
The Struggle over Civil Rights
How did the civil rights movement develop in the 1940s and 1950s?
Civil rights became a major issue after World War II. Truman desegregated the military, and federal courts ordered the desegregation of schools. Black activists such as Rosa Parks
and Martin Luther King, Jr., led protests against segregation on buses and other public facilities. Students organized sit-ins. (p. 698 )
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Salt Lake City
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STUDY RESOURCES 705
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Levittown In 1947, William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive houses in suburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. Levittown became a symbol of the postwar move to the suburbs. p. 688
Baby boom The rise in births following World War II. Children born to this generation are referred to as “baby boomers.” p. 688
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka In 1954, the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), which established the “separate but equal” doctrine. The Brown decision found segregation in schools inherently unequal and initiated a long and difficult effort to integrate the nation’s public schools. p. 700
Montgomery bus boycott In late 1955, African Americans led by Martin Luther King, Jr., boycotted the buses in Montgomery, Alabama,
after seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus. The boycott, which ended when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the protesters, marked the beginning of a new, activist phase of the civil rights movement. p. 702
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) An orga- nization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., to fight segregation through passive resistance, nonviolence, and peaceful confrontation. p. 702
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) A group organized by students to work for equal rights for African Americans. It spearheaded peaceful sit-its and marches in the early 1960s, but later grew more radical and changed its name to the Student National Coordinating Committee. p. 703
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. What are some advantages of suburban life? What are some disadvantages?
2. Did television bring Americans together, or drive them apart?
3. Were the civil rights marchers justified in breaking Jim Crow Laws?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The Postwar Boom
The Good Life?
The Reaction to Sputnik p. 694 Complete the Assignment
Read the Document
Listen to the Audio “Little Boxes” p. 690
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 29 on MyHistoryLab
The Struggle over Civil Rights
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Watch the Video Justice for All: Civil Protest and Civil Rights p. 699
◾
◾
Read the Document Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement p. 703
How did the Civil Rights Movement Change American Schools? p. 701
Watch the Video ◾
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) p. 700
Read the Document
Civil Rights Movement p. 702 View the Map
View the Closer Look ◾
◾
Pearson Profiles: Jack Kerouac p. 696
A 1950s Family Watching Television p. 693
Contents and Learning Objectives
makeup. He also changed from a gray to a dark blue suit better adapted to the intense television lighting.
At 8:30 P.M. central time, moderator Howard K. Smith welcomed a viewing audience estimated at seventy-seven million. Kennedy led off, echoing Abraham Lincoln by saying that the nation faced the question of “whether the world will exist half slave and half free.” Although the ground rules limited the first debate to domestic issues, Kennedy argued that for- eign and domestic policy were inseparable. He accused the Republicans of letting the country drift at home and abroad. “I think it’s time America started moving again,” he concluded. Nixon, caught off guard, seemed to agree with Kennedy’s assessment of the nation’s problems, but he contended that he had better solu- tions. “Our disagreement,” the vice president pointed out, “is not about the goals for America but only about
the means to reach those goals.” For the rest of the hour, the two candidates answered
questions from a panel of journalists. Radiating confidence
Kennedy versus Nixon: The First Televised Presidential Candidate Debate On Monday evening, September 26, 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon faced each other in the nation’s first televised debate between two presi- dential candidates. Kennedy, the relatively unknown Democratic challenger, had proposed the debates; Nixon, confident of his mastery of television, had accepted even though, as Eisenhower’s vice president and the early front-runner in the election, he had more to lose and less to gain.
Richard Nixon arrived an hour early at the CBS stu- dio in Chicago, looking tired and ill at ease. He was still recovering from a knee injury that had slowed his cam- paign and left him pale and weak as he pursued a hec- tic catch-up schedule. Makeup experts offered to hide Nixon’s heavy beard and soften his prominent jowls, but the GOP candidate declined, preferring to let an aide apply a light coat of Max Factor’s “Lazy Shave,” a pancake cosmetic. John Kennedy, tanned from open- air campaigning in California and rested by a day spent nearly free of distracting activity, wore very light
KENNEDY INTENSIFIES THE COLD WAR PG. 708 How did the Cold War intensify under Kennedy?
THE NEW FRONTIER AT HOME PG. 713 What was the “New Frontier,” and what did it accomplish?
“LET US CONTINUE” PG. 717 What were Johnson’s domestic priorities and what were his achievements?
JOHNSON ESCALATES THE VIETNAM WAR PG. 721 How did Johnson’s Vietnam policy evolve?
YEARS OF TURMOIL PG. 726 Why were there protests during the 1960s?
THE RETURN OF RICHARD NIXON PG. 731 How did the Vietnam War infl uence American politics?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration
The Turbulent Sixties 30
Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab Chapter 30 The Turbulent Sixties
he seemed nervous and unsure of himself. The reac- tion shots of each candidate listening to the other’s remarks showed Kennedy calm and serene, Nixon tense and uncomfortable.
and self-assurance, Kennedy used a flow of statistics and details to create the image of a man deeply knowl- edgeable about all aspects of government. Nixon fought back with a defense of the Eisenhower record, but
Kennedy–Nixon Debate Watch the Video
Kennedy–Nixon Debate
708 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
Kennedy Intensifi es the Cold War
How did the Cold War intensify under Kennedy?
John F. Kennedy was determined to succeed where he believed Eisenhower had failed. Critical of his predecessor for holding down defense spending and apparently allowing the Soviet Union to open up a dangerous lead in ICBMs, Kennedy sought to warn the nation of its peril and lead it to victory in the Cold War.
In his inaugural address, the young president sounded the alarm. Ignoring the domestic issues aired during the campaign, he dealt exclusively with the world. “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe,” Kennedy declared, “to assure the survival and success of liberty. We will do all this and more.”
From the day he took offi ce, John F. Kennedy gave foreign policy top priority. In part, the decision refl ected the perilous world situa- tion, the immediate dangers ranging from the unresolved Berlin crisis to the emergence of Fidel Castro as a Soviet ally in Cuba. But it also corresponded to Kennedy’s personal priorities. As a congressman and senator, he had been an intense cold warrior. Bored by committee work and legislative details, he had focused on foreign policy in the Senate, gaining a seat on the Foreign Relations Committee and publishing a book of speeches, Th e Strategy of Peace , in early 1960.
His appointments refl ected his determination to win the Cold War. His choice of Dean Rusk, an experienced but unassertive diplomat, to head the State Department indicated that Kennedy
Polls taken during the following few weeks revealed a sharp swing to Kennedy. Many Democrats and independents who had thought him too young or too inexperienced were impressed by his per- formance. Nixon suffered more from his unattract- ive image than from what he said; those who heard the debate on radio thought the Republican candi- date more than held his own. In the three additional debates held during the campaign, Nixon improved his performance notably, wearing makeup to soften his appearance and taking the offensive from Kennedy on the issues. But the damage had been done. A post- election poll revealed that of four million voters who were influenced by the debates, three million voted for Kennedy.
The televised debates were only one of many factors influencing the outcome of the 1960 election. In essence, Kennedy won because he took full advantage of all his opportunities. Lightly regarded by Democratic leaders, he won the nomination by appealing to the rank and file in the primaries, but then he astutely chose Lyndon Johnson of Texas as his running mate to blunt Nixon’s southern strategy.
D uring the fall campaign, Kennedy exploited the national mood of frustration that had followed Sputnik . (See the Feature Essay in Chapter 29 , “Th e Reaction to Sputnik, ” pp. 694–695 .) At home, he promised to stimulate the lagging economy and carry forward long overdue reforms in education, health care, and civil rights under the banner of the New Frontier . Abroad, he pledged a renewed com- mitment to the Cold War, vowing he would lead the nation to vic- tory over the Soviet Union. He met the issue of his Catholicism head on, telling a group of Protestant ministers in Houston that as president he would always place country above religion. In the shrewdest move of all, he won over African American voters by helping to secure the release of Martin Luther King, Jr., from a Georgia jail where the civil rights leader was being held on a trumped-up charge.
Th e Democratic victory in 1960 was paper thin. Kennedy’s edge in the popular vote was only two-tenths of 1 percent, and his wide margin in the electoral college (303 to 219) was tainted by voting irregularities in several states—notably Illinois and Texas—which went Democratic by very slender majorities. Yet even though he had no mandate, Kennedy’s triumph did mark a sharp political shift . In contrast to the aging Eisenhower, Kennedy symbolized youth, energy, and ambition. His mastery of the new medium of television refl ected his sensitivity to the changes taking place in American life in the 1960s. He came to offi ce promising reform at home and advances abroad. Over the next eight years, he and Lyndon Johnson achieved many of their goals. Yet the nation also became engulfed in angry protests, violent demonstra- tions, and sweeping social change in one of the stormiest decades in American history.
10
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5
3 16
8 4
164 3
13 9
45
10
12 20
6
32
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3
8 8
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71
ALASKA
HAWAII
Election of 1960
Electoral Vote by State Popular Vote
34,227,096303
Harry F. Byrd
Richard M. Nixon
15
34,108,546219
MINOR PARTIES
REPUBLICAN
John F. Kennedy DEMOCRATIC
502,363
68,838,005537
Kennedy Intensifi es the Cold War 709
the control of East Germany. Th e steady fl ight of skilled workers to the West through the Berlin escape route weakened the East German regime dangerously, and the Soviets believed they had to resolve this issue quickly.
At a summit meeting in Vienna in June 1961, Kennedy and Khrushchev focused on Berlin as the key issue. Th e Russian leader called the current situation “intolerable” and announced the Soviet Union would proceed with an East German peace treaty. Kennedy was equally adamant, defending the American presence in Berlin and refusing to give up occupation rights that he considered crucial to the defense of western Europe. In their last session, the failure to reach agreement took on an ominous tone. “I want peace,” Khrushchev declared, “but, if you want war, that is your problem.” “It is you, not I,” the young president replied, “who wants to force a change.” When the Soviet leader said he would sign a German peace treaty by December, Kennedy added, “It will be a cold winter.”
Th e climax came sooner than either man expected. On July 25, Kennedy delivered an impassioned televised address to the American people in which he called the defense of Berlin “essential” to “the entire Free World.” Announcing a series of arms increases, including $3 billion more in defense spending, the president took the unprec- edented step of calling more than 150,000 reservists and national guardsmen to active duty.
Aware of superior American nuclear striking power, Khrushchev settled for a stalemate. On August 13, the Soviets sealed off their zone of the city. Th ey began the construction of the Berlin Wall to stop the fl ow of brains and talent to the West. For a brief time, Russian and American tanks maneuvered within sight of each other at Checkpoint Charlie (where the American and Soviet zones met), but by fall, the tension gradually eased. Th e Soviets signed a separate peace treaty that did not aff ect U.S. occupation rights; Berlin—like Germany and, indeed, all of Europe—remained divided between the East and the West. Neither side could claim a victory, but Kennedy believed that at least he had proved to the world America’s willingness to honor its commitments.
Containment in Southeast Asia Two weeks before Kennedy’s inauguration, Khrushchev gave a speech in Moscow in which he declared Soviet support for “wars of national liberation.” Th e Russian leader’s words were actually aimed more at China than the United States; the two powerful communist nations were now rivals for infl uence in the developing world. But the new American president, ignoring the growing Sino-Soviet split, concluded the United States and Russia were locked in a struggle for the hearts and minds of the uncommitted in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Calling for a new policy of nation building, Kennedy advocated fi nancial and technical assistance designed to help developing-world nations achieve economic modernization and stable pro-Western governments. Measures ranging from the formation of the idealis- tic Peace Corps to the ambitious Alliance for Progress—a massive economic aid program for Latin America—were part of this eff ort. Unfortunately, Kennedy relied even more on counterinsurgency and the Green Berets to beat back the communist challenge in the developing world.
Southeast Asia off ered the gravest test. Th e American decision to back Ngo Dinh Diem (see p. 710 ) had prevented the holding of
planned to be his own secretary of state. He surrounded him- self with young pragmatic advisers who prided themselves on toughness: McGeorge Bundy, dean of Harvard College, became national security adviser; Walt W. Rostow, an MIT economist, was Bundy’s deputy; and Robert McNamara, the youthful president of the Ford Motor Company, took over as secretary of defense.
These New Frontiersmen, later dubbed “the best and the brightest” by journalist David Halberstam, all shared a hard-line view of the Soviet Union and the belief that American security depended on superior force and the willingness to use it. Walt Rostow summed up their view of the contest with Russia best when he wrote, “Th e cold war comes down to this test of whether we and the democratic world are fundamentally tougher and more purposeful in the defense of our vital interests than they are in the pursuit of their global ambitions.”
Flexible Response Th e fi rst goal of the Kennedy administration was to build up the nation’s armed forces. During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had warned that the Soviets were opening a missile gap. In fact, due largely to Eisenhower’s foresight, the United States had a signifi - cant lead in nuclear striking power by early 1961, with a fl eet of more than 600 B-52 bombers, 2 Polaris submarines, and 16 Atlas ICBMs capable of delivering more than 2,000 warheads against Russian targets. Nevertheless, the new administration, intent on putting the Soviets on the defensive, authorized the construc- tion of an awesome nuclear arsenal that included 1,000 Minuteman solid-fuel ICBMs (fi ve times the number Eisenhower had believed necessary) and 32 Polaris submarines carrying 656 missiles. Th e United States thus opened a missile gap in reverse, creating the possibility of a successful American fi rst strike.
At the same time, the Kennedy administration augmented conventional military strength. Secretary of Defense McNamara developed plans to add fi ve combat-ready army divisions, three tactical air wings, and a ten-division strategic reserve. Th ese vast increases led to a $6 billion jump in the defense budget in 1961 alone. Th e president took a personal interest in counterinsurgency. He expanded the Special Forces unit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and insisted, over army objections, that it adopt a distinctive green beret as a symbol of its elite status.
Th e purpose of this buildup was to create an alternative to Eisenhower’s policy of massive retaliation. Instead of responding to communist moves with nuclear threats, the United States could now call on a wide spectrum of force—ranging from ICBMs to Green Berets. Th us, as Robert McNamara explained, the new strategy of fl exible response meant the United States could “choose among sev- eral operational plans. We shall be committed only to a system that gives us the ability to use our forces in a controlled and deliberate way.” Th e danger was that such a powerful arsenal might tempt the new administration to test its strength against the Soviet Union.
Crisis over Berlin Th e fi rst confrontation came in Germany. Since 1958, Soviet Premier Khrushchev had been threatening to sign a peace treaty that would put access to the isolated western zones of Berlin under
710 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
their war. Th ey are the ones who have to win it or lose it.” But at the same time, Kennedy was not prepared to accept the possible loss of all Southeast Asia. Saying it would be “a great mistake” to withdraw from South Vietnam, he told reporters, “Strongly on our mind is what happened in the case of China at the end of World War II, where China was lost. We don’t want that.” Although aides later claimed he planned to pull out aft er the 1964 election, Kennedy raised the stakes by tacitly approving a coup that led to Diem’s overthrow and death on November 1, 1963. Th e resulting power vacuum in Saigon made further American involvement in Vietnam almost certain.
Containing Castro: The Bay of Pigs Fiasco Kennedy’s determination to check global communist expansion reached a peak of intensity in Cuba. In the 1960 campaign, pointing to the growing ties between the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro’s regime, he had accused the Republicans of permitting a “communist satellite” to arise on “our very doorstep.” Kennedy had even issued a state- ment backing “anti-Castro forces in exile,” calling them “fi ghters for freedom” who held out hope for “overthrowing Castro.”
In reality, the Eisenhower administration had been training a group of Cuban exiles in Guatemala since March 1960 as part of a CIA plan to topple the Castro regime. Many of the new presi- dent’s advisers had doubts about the proposed invasion. Some saw little chance for success because the operation depended heavily on a broad uprising of the Cuban people. Others—notably Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee—viewed it as an immoral act that would discredit the United States. “Th e Castro regime is a thorn in the fl esh,” Fulbright argued, “but it is not a dagger in the heart.” Th e president, however, committed by his own campaign rhetoric and assured of success by the military, decided to proceed.
On April 17, 1961, fourteen hundred Cuban exiles moved ashore at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba. Even though the United States had masterminded the entire operation, Kennedy insisted on covert action, even canceling at the last minute a planned American air strike on the beachhead. With air superi- ority, Castro’s well-trained forces had no diffi culty in quashing the invasion. Th ey killed nearly fi ve hundred exiles and forced the rest to surrender within forty-eight hours.
Aghast at the swift ness of the defeat, President Kennedy took personal responsibility for the Bay of Pigs . In his address to the American people, however, he showed no remorse for arranging the violation of a neighboring country’s sovereignty, only regret at the outcome. Above all, he expressed renewed defi ance, warning the Soviets that “our restraint is not inexhaustible.” He went on to assert that the United States would resist “communist penetration” in the Western Hemisphere, terming it part of the “primary
elections throughout Vietnam in 1956, as called for in the Geneva accords. Instead, Diem sought to establish a separate government in the South with large-scale American economic and military assis- tance. By the time Kennedy entered the White House, however, the communist government in North Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, was directing the eff orts of Vietcong rebels in the South. As the guerrilla war intensifi ed in the fall of 1961, the president sent two trusted advis- ers, Walt Rostow and General Maxwell Taylor, to South Vietnam. Th ey returned favoring the dispatch of eight thousand American combat troops. “As an area for the operation of U.S. troops,” reported General Taylor, “SVN [South Vietnam] is not an excessively diffi cult or unpleasant place to operate. . . . Th e risks of backing into a major Asian war by way of SVN are present but are not impressive.”
Th e president decided against sending in combat troops in 1961, but he authorized substantial increases in economic aid to Diem and in the size of the military mission in Saigon. Th e number of American advisers in Vietnam grew from fewer than one thousand in 1961 to more than sixteen thousand by late 1963. Th e fl ow of supplies and the creation of “strategic hamlets,” fortifi ed villages designed to protect the peasantry from the Vietcong, slowed the communist momentum. American helicopters gave government forces mobility against the Vietcong, but by 1963, the situation had again become critical. Diem had failed to win the support of his own people; Buddhist monks set themselves afl ame in public protests against him; and even Diem’s own generals plotted his overthrow.
President Kennedy was in a quandary. He realized that the fate of South Vietnam would be determined not by America but by the Vietnamese. “In the fi nal analysis,” he said in September 1963, “it is
Flames engulf Buddhist monk, the Reverend Quang Duc, who set himself afire at an intersection in Saigon, Vietnam, to protest persecution of Buddhists by Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem and his government. Other monks placed themselves in front of the wheels of nearby fire trucks to prevent them from reaching Duc.
Kennedy Intensifi es the Cold War 711
In the Atlantic, some sixteen Soviet ships continued on course toward Cuba, while the American navy was deployed to intercept them fi ve hundred miles from the island. In Florida, nearly a quar- ter million men were being concentrated in the largest invasion force ever assembled in the continental United States.
The first break came at midweek when the Soviet ships suddenly halted to avert a confrontation at sea. “We’re eyeball to eyeball,” commented Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “and I think the other fellow just blinked.” On Friday, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a long, rambling letter off ering a face-saving way out: Russia would remove the missiles in return for an American promise never to invade Cuba. Th e president was ready to accept when a second Russian message raised the stakes by insisting that American Jupiter missiles be withdrawn from Turkey. Heeding the advice of his brother, attorney general Robert Kennedy, the president refused to bargain; Khrushchev had endangered world peace by putting the missiles in Cuba secretly, and he must take them out immediately. Nevertheless, while the military went ahead with plans for the invasion of Cuba, the president, heeding his brother’s advice, decided to make one last appeal for peace. Ignoring the second Russian message, he sent a cable to Khrushchev accepting his original off er.
On Saturday night, October 27, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to make clear it was the last chance to avert nuclear confrontation. “We had to have a commit- ment by tomorrow that those bases would be removed,” Robert Kennedy recalled telling him. “He should understand that if they did not remove those bases, we would remove them.” Th en the president’s brother calmly remarked that if Khrushchev did not back down, “there would be not only dead Americans but dead Russians as well.”
In reality, John F. Kennedy was not quite so ready to risk nuclear war. He instructed his brother to assure Dobrynin that the Jupiter missiles would soon be removed from Turkey. Th e president pre- ferred that the missile swap be done privately, but twenty-fi ve years later, Secretary of State Dean Rusk revealed that JFK had instructed him to arrange a deal through the United Nations involving “the removal of both the Jupiters and the missiles in Cuba.” In recently released transcripts of his meetings with his advisers, the president reaffi rmed his intention of making a missile trade with Khrushchev publicly as a last resort to avoid nuclear war. “We can’t very well invade Cuba with all its toil,” he commented, “when we could have gotten them out by making a deal on the same missiles in Turkey.”
President Kennedy never had to make this fi nal concession. At nine the next morning, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in return only for Kennedy’s promise not to invade Cuba. Th e crisis was over.
Th e world, however, had come perilously close to a nuclear conflict. We now know the Soviets had nuclear warheads in Cuba, not only for twenty of the medium-range missiles, but also for short-range tactical launchers designed to be used against an American invading force. If Kennedy had approved the military’s recommendations for an invasion of Cuba, the consequences might have been disastrous.
Th e peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis became a personal and political triumph for John F. Kennedy. His party successfully overcame the Republican challenge in the November elections, and his own popularity reached new heights.
obligations . . . to the security of our nation.” For the remainder of his presidency, Kennedy continued to harass the Castro regime, imposing an economic blockade on Cuba, supporting a continu- ing series of raids by exile groups operating out of Florida, and failing to stop the CIA from experimenting with bizarre plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.
Containing Castro: The Cuban Missile Crisis Th e climax of Kennedy’s crusade came in October 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis . Th roughout the summer and early fall, the Soviets engaged in a massive arms buildup in Cuba, ostensibly to protect Castro from an American invasion. In the United States, Republican candidates in the 1962 congressional elections called for a fi rm American response; Kennedy contented himself with a stern warning against the introduction of any off ensive weapons, believing their presence would directly threaten American security. Khrushchev publicly denied any such intent, but secretly he took a daring gamble, building sites for twenty-four medium-range (1,000-mile) and eighteen intermediate-range (2,000-mile) missiles in Cuba. Later he claimed his purpose was purely defensive, but most likely he was responding to the pressures from his own military to close the enormous strategic gap in nuclear striking power that Kennedy had opened.
Unfortunately, the Kennedy administration had stopped direct U-2 overfl ights of Cuba in August. Fearful that recently installed Soviet surface-to-air missiles could bring down the American spy plane and create an international incident similar to the 1960 U-2 episode (see p. 712 ) , the White House, over the objections of CIA Director John McCone, limited U-2 fl ights to the air space bordering the island. McCone fi nally prevailed on the president to resume direct overfl ights, and on October 14 the fi rst such mission brought back indisputable photographic evidence of the missile sites, which were nearing completion.
As soon as President Kennedy was informed of this devel- opment, he decided to keep it secret while he consulted with a hand-picked group of advisers to consider how to respond. In the ExComm, as this group became known, the initial preference for an immediate air strike gradually gave way to discussion of either a full-scale invasion of Cuba or a naval blockade of the island. Th e president and his advisers ruled out diplomacy, rejecting a proposal to off er the withdrawal of obsolete American Jupiter missiles from Turkey in return for a similar Russian pullout in Cuba. Kennedy fi nally agreed to a two-step procedure. He would proclaim a quar- antine of Cuba to prevent the arrival of new missiles and threaten a nuclear confrontation to force the removal of those already there. If the Russians did not cooperate, then the United States would invade Cuba and dismantle the missiles by force.
On the evening of October 22, the president informed the nation of the existence of the Soviet missiles and his plans to remove them. He blamed Khrushchev for “this clandestine, reck- less, and provocative threat to world peace,” and he made it clear that any missile attack from Cuba would lead to “a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”
For the next six days, the world hovered on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. Khrushchev replied defiantly, accusing Kennedy of pushing mankind “to the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.”
712 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
the atmosphere while still permitting them underground. Above all, Kennedy displayed a new maturity as a result of the crisis. In a speech at American University in June 1963, he shift ed from the rhetoric of confrontation to that of conciliation. Speaking of the Russians, he said, “Our most basic common link is the fact that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
Despite these hopeful words, the missile crisis also had an unfortunate consequence. Th ose who believed that the Russians understood only the language of force were confi rmed in their penchant for a hard line. Hawks who had backed Kennedy’s military buildup believed events had justifi ed a policy of nuclear superiority. Th e Russian leaders drew similar conclusions. Aware the United States had a four-to-one advantage in nuclear striking
Th e American people, on the defensive since Sputnik , suddenly felt that they had proved their superiority over the Russians. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Kennedy’s confidant and later his biographer, claimed that the Cuban crisis showed the “whole world . . . the ripening of an American leadership unsurpassed in the responsi- ble management of power . . . . It was this combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated, that dazzled the world.”
The Cuban missile crisis had more substantial results as well. Shaken by their close call, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed to install a “hot line” to speed direct communication between Washington and Moscow in an emergency. Long-stalled negotia- tions over the reduction of nuclear testing suddenly resumed, lead- ing to the limited test ban treaty of 1963, which outlawed tests in
Watch the Video President John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1962 when U.S. spy planes detected Soviets supplying nuclear warheads being delivered to Cuba.
The New Frontier at Home 713
had been stalled on Capitol Hill. Despite JFK’s victory, the elec- tion of 1960 clouded the outlook for his New Frontier program. Th e Democrats had lost twenty seats in the House and two in the Senate; even though they retained majorities in both branches, a conservative coalition of northern Republicans and southern Democrats opposed all eff orts at reform.
The situation was especially critical in the House, where 101 southern representatives held the balance of power between 160 northern Democrats and 174 Republicans. Aided by Speaker Sam Rayburn, Kennedy was able to enlarge the Rules Committee and overcome a traditional conservative roadblock, but the narrow- ness of the vote, 217 to 212, revealed how diffi cult it would be to enact reform measures. Th e president gave up the fi ght for health care in the Senate and settled instead for a modest increase in the minimum wage and the passage of manpower training and area- redevelopment legislation.
Kennedy had no more success in enacting his program in 1962 and 1963. Th e conservative coalition stood fi rmly against educa- tion and health-care proposals. Shift ing ground, the president did win approval for a trade expansion act in 1962 designed to lower tariff barriers, but no signifi cant reform legislation was passed. Although the composition of Congress was his main obstacle, Kennedy’s greater interest in foreign policy and his distaste for leg- islative infi ghting contributed to the outcome. JFK did not enjoy “blarneying with pompous congressmen and simply would not take the time to do it,” one observer noted. As a result, the New Frontier languished in Congress.
Economic Advance Kennedy gave a higher priority to the sluggish American economy. During the last years of Eisenhower’s administration, the rate of economic growth had slowed to just over 2 percent annually, while unemployment rose to new heights with each recession. JFK was determined to stimulate the economy to achieve a much higher rate of long-term growth. In part, he wanted to redeem his campaign pledge to get the nation moving again; he also believed the United States had to surpass the Soviet Union in economic vitality.
Kennedy received confl icting advice from the experts. Th ose who claimed the problem was essentially a technological one urged manpower training and area-redevelopment programs to mod- ernize American industry. Others called for federal spending to rebuild the nation’s public facilities—from parks and playgrounds to decaying bridges and urban courthouses. Kennedy sided with the fi rst group, largely because Congress was opposed to massive spending on public works.
Th e actual stimulation of the economy, however, came not from social programs but from greatly increased appropriations for defense and space. A $6 billion increase in the arms budget in 1961 gave the economy a great lift , and Kennedy’s decision to send an astronaut to the moon eventually cost $25 billion. By 1962, more than half the federal budget was devoted to space and defense; aircraft and computer companies in the South and West benefi ted, but unemployment remained uncomfortably high in the older industrial areas of the Northeast and Midwest.
Th e administration’s desire to keep the infl ation rate low led to a serious confrontation with the business community. Kennedy
power during the Cuban crisis, one Soviet offi cial told his American counterpart, “Never will we be caught like this again.” Aft er 1962, the Soviets embarked on a crash program to build up their navy and to overtake the American lead in nuclear missiles. Within fi ve years, they had the nucleus of a modern fl eet and had surpassed the United States in ICBMs. Kennedy’s fl eeting moment of triumph thus ensured the escalation of the arms race. His legacy was a bitter- sweet one of short-term success and long-term anxiety.
The New Frontier at Home
What was the “New Frontier,” and what did it accomplish?
Kennedy hoped to change the course of history at home as well as abroad. His election marked the arrival of a new generation of leadership. For the fi rst time, people born in the twentieth century who had entered political life aft er World War II were in charge of national aff airs. Kennedy’s inaugural call to get the nation mov- ing again was particularly attractive to young people who had shunned political involvement during the Eisenhower years.
Th e new administration refl ected Kennedy’s aura of youth and energy. Major cabinet appointments went to activists— notably Connecticut governor Abraham Ribicoff as secretary of health, education, and welfare; labor lawyer Arthur J. Goldberg as secretary of labor; and Arizona congressman Stuart Udall as secretary of the interior. Th e most controversial choice was Robert F. Kennedy, the president’s brother, as attorney general. Critics scoff ed at his lack of legal experience, leading JFK to note jokingly he wanted to give Bobby “a little experience before he goes out to practice law.” In fact, the president prized his brother’s loyalty and shrewd political advice.
Equally important were the members of the White House staff who handled domestic aff airs. Like their counterparts in foreign policy, these New Frontiersmen—Kenneth O’Donnell, Th eodore Sorensen, Richard Goodwin, and Walter Heller—prided themselves on being tough-minded and pragmatic. In contrast to Eisenhower, Kennedy relied heavily on academics and intellectuals to help him infuse the nation with energy and a new sense of direction.
Kennedy’s greatest asset was his own personality. A cool, attrac- tive, and intelligent man, he possessed a sense of style that endeared him to the American public. Encouraged by his wife, Jacqueline, the president invited artists and musicians as well as corporate execu- tives to White House functions, and he sprinkled his speeches with references to Emerson and Shakespeare. He seemed to be a new Lancelot, bent on calling forth the best in national life; admirers lik- ened his inner circle to King Arthur’s court at Camelot. Reporters loved him, both for his fact-fi lled and candid press conferences and for his witty comments. Aft er an embarrassing foreign policy failure, when his standing in the polls actually went up, he remarked, “It’s just like Eisenhower. Th e worse I do, the more popular I get.”
The Congressional Obstacle Neither Kennedy’s wit nor his charm proved strong enough to break the logjam in Congress. Since the late 1940s, a series of reform bills ranging from health care to federal aid to education
714 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
attack on segregation in the Deep South, but his fear of alienating the large bloc of southern Democrats forced him to downplay civil rights legislation.
Th e president’s solution was to defer congressional action in favor of executive leadership in this area. He directed his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to continue and expand the Eisenhower administration’s eff orts to achieve voting rights for southern blacks. To register previously disfranchised citizens, the Justice Department worked with the civil rights movement— notably the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—in the Deep South. In two years, the Kennedy administration increased the number of voting rights suits fi vefold. Yet the attorney general could not force the FBI to provide protection for the civil rights vol- unteers who risked their lives by encouraging African Americans to register. “SNCC’s only contact with federal authority,” noted one observer, “consisted of the FBI agents who stood by taking notes while local policemen beat up SNCC members.”
Other eff orts had equally mixed results. Vice President Lyndon Johnson headed a presidential Commission on Equal Employment Opportunities that worked with defense industries and other gov- ernment contractors to increase the number of jobs for African Americans. But a limited budget and a reliance on voluntary coop- eration prevented any dramatic gains; African American employ- ment improved only in direct proportion to economic growth in the early 1960s.
Kennedy did succeed in appointing a number of African Americans to high government positions: Robert Weaver became chief of the federal housing agency, and Th urgood Marshall, who pleaded the Brown v. Topeka school desegregation case before the Supreme Court, was named to the U.S. Circuit Court. On the other hand, among his judicial appointments, Kennedy included one Mississippi jurist who referred to African Americans in court as “niggers” and once compared them to “a bunch of chimpanzees.”
Th e civil rights movement refused to accept Kennedy’s indirect approach. In May 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored a freedom ride in which a biracial group attempted to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in all bus and train stations used in interstate commerce. When they arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, the freedom riders were attacked by a mob of angry whites. Th e attorney general quickly dispatched several hundred federal marshals to protect the freedom riders, but the president, deeply involved in the Berlin crisis, was more upset at the distraction the protesters created. Kennedy directed one of his aides to get in touch with the leaders of CORE. “Tell them to call it off ,” he demanded. “Stop them.”
In September, aft er the attorney general fi nally convinced the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue an order ban- ning segregation in interstate terminals and buses, the freedom rides ended. Th e Kennedy administration then sought to pre- vent further confrontations by involving civil rights activists in its voting drive.
A pattern of belated reaction to southern racism marked the basic approach of the Kennedys. When James Meredith coura- geously sought admission to the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962, the president and the attorney general worked closely with Mississippi governor Ross Barnett to avoid violence. A tran- script of Robert Kennedy’s conversation with Governor Barnett on
relied on informal wage and price guidelines to hold down the cost of living. But in April 1962, just aft er the president had per- suaded the steelworkers’ union to accept a new contract with no wage increases and only a few additional benefi ts, U.S. Steel head Roger Blough informed Kennedy that his company was raising steel prices by $6 a ton. Outraged, the president publicly called the increase “a wholly unjustifi able and irresponsible defi ance of the public interest” and accused Blough of displaying “contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.” Privately, Kennedy was even blunter. He confi ded to aides, “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed it till now.”
Roger Blough soon gave way. Th e president’s tongue-lashing, along with a cutoff in Pentagon steel orders and the threat of an antitrust suit, forced him to reconsider. When several smaller steel companies refused to raise their prices in hopes of expanding their share of the market, U.S. Steel rolled back its prices. Th e business community deeply resented the president’s action, and when the stock market, which had been rising steadily since 1960, suddenly fell sharply in late May 1962, analysts were quick to label the decline “the Kennedy market.”
Troubled by his strained relations with business and by the continued lag in economic growth, the president decided to adopt a more unorthodox approach in 1963. Walter Heller, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, had been arguing since 1961 for a major cut in taxes in the belief it would stimulate con- sumer spending and give the economy the jolt it needed. Th e idea of a tax cut and resulting defi cits during a period of prosperity went against economic orthodoxy, but Kennedy fi nally gave his approval. In January 1963, the president proposed a tax reduc- tion of $13.5 billion, asserting that “the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power” was the “largest single barrier to full employment.” When fi nally enacted by Congress in 1964, the massive tax cut led to sustained economic advance for the rest of the decade.
Kennedy’s economic policy was far more successful than his legislative eff orts. Although the rate of economic growth doubled to 4.5 percent by the end of 1963 and unemployment was reduced substantially, the cost of living rose only 1.3 percent a year. Personal income went up 13 percent in the early 1960s, but the greatest gains came in corporate profi ts—up 67 percent in the period. Critics pointed to the Kennedy administration’s failure to close the glaring loopholes in the tax laws that benefi ted the rich and its lack of eff ort to help those at the bottom by forcing redistribution of national wealth. Despite the overall economic growth, the public sector continued to be neglected. “I am not sure what the advantage is,” complained economist John Kenneth Galbraith, “in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the cities, the streets are fi lthy, and the schools so bad that the young, perhaps wisely, stay away.”
Moving Slowly on Civil Rights Kennedy faced a genuine dilemma over the issue of civil rights. Despite his own lack of a strong record while in the Senate, he had portrayed himself during the 1960 campaign as a crusader for African American rights. He had promised to launch an
The New Frontier at Home 715
Barnett: . . . I am going to treat you with every courtesy, but I won’t agree to let that boy get to Ole Miss. I will never agree to that. I would rather spend my whole life in a penitentiary than do that.
RFK: I have a responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States.
Barnett: I appreciate that. You have a responsibility. Why don’t you let the NAACP run their own aff airs and quit cooperating with that crowd?
September 25 indicates that the attorney general focused on the legal rather than the moral issues involved:
RFK: I think the problem is that the federal courts have acted and when there is a conflict between your state and the federal courts under arrangements made some years ago—
Barnett: Th e institution is supported by the taxpayers of this state and controlled by the Trustees.
RFK: Governor, you are a part of the United States.
Watch the Video Photographing the Civil Rights Movement
African American civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, encounter high-velocity fire hoses in response to their nonviolent demonstrations during the spring of 1963. This and other similar photographs of young African Americans being assaulted by the authorities in Birmingham rallied support for the civil rights protestors and their political and economic demands.
716 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
two African American students peacefully desegregated the state university.
“I Have a Dream” Martin Luther King, Jr., fi nally forced Kennedy to abandon his cautious tactics and come out openly in behalf of racial justice. In the spring of 1963, King began a massive protest in Birmingham, one of the South’s most segregated cities. Public marches and dem- onstrations aimed at integrating public facilities and opening up jobs for African Americans quickly led to police harassment and
Despite Barnett’s later promise of cooperation, the night before Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi, a mob attacked the federal marshals and national guard troops sent to protect him. Th e violence left 2 dead and 375 injured, including 166 marshals and 12 guardsmen, but Meredith attended the uni- versity and eventually graduated.
In 1963, Kennedy sent the deputy attorney general to face down Governor George C. Wallace, an avowed segregation- ist who had promised “to stand in the schoolhouse door” to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama. After a brief confrontation, Wallace yielded to federal authority, and
Watch the Video Civil Rights March on Washington
The March on Washington, organized by civil rights leaders to maintain political pressure on the Kennedy administration, was held on August 28, 1936. The rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial was highlighted by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
“Let Us Continue” 717
liberal judges—especially William O. Douglas, Hugo Black, and William J. Brennan, Jr.—argued for social reform, while advo- cates of judicial restraint (such as John Marshall Harlan and Felix Frankfurter) fought stubbornly against the new activism.
Th e resignation of Felix Frankfurter in 1962 enabled President Kennedy to appoint Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg, a com- mitted liberal, to the Supreme Court. With a clear majority now favoring judicial intervention, the Warren Court issued a series of landmark decisions designed to extend to state and local jurisdic- tions the traditional rights aff orded the accused in federal courts. Th us in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the majority decreed that defen- dants had to be provided lawyers, had to be informed of their constitutional rights, and could not be interrogated or induced to confess to a crime without defense counsel being present. In eff ect, the Court extended to the poor and the ignorant those constitu- tional guarantees that had always been available to the rich and to the legally informed—notably hardened criminals.
Th e most far-reaching Warren Court decisions came in the area of legislative reapportionment. In 1962, the Court ruled in Baker v. Carr that Tennessee had to redistribute its legislative seats to give citizens in Memphis equal representation. Subsequent deci- sions reinforced the ban on rural overrepresentation as the Court proclaimed that places in all legislative bodies, including the House of Representatives, had to be allocated on the basis of “people, not land or trees or pastures.” Th e principle of “one man, one vote” greatly increased the political power of cities at the expense of rural areas; it also involved the Court directly in the reapportionment process, frequently forcing judges to draw up new legislative and congressional districts.
Th e activism of the Supreme Court stirred up a storm of criticism. Th e rulings that extended protection to criminals and those accused of subversive activity led some Americans to charge that the Court was encouraging crime and weakening national security. Th e John Birch Society, an extreme anticommunist group, demanded the impeachment of Chief Justice Warren. Th e 1962 Engel v. Vitale decision banning school prayer incensed many con- servative Americans, who saw the Court as undermining moral values. Legal scholars worried more about the weakening of the Court’s prestige as it became more directly involved in the political process. On balance, however, the Warren Court helped achieve greater social justice by protecting the rights of the underprivi- leged and by permitting dissent and free expression to fl ourish.
“Let Us Continue”
What were Johnson’s domestic priorities and what were his achievements?
The New Frontier came to a sudden and violent end on November 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John F. Kennedy as the president rode in a motorcade in downtown Dallas. Th e shock of losing the young president, who had become a symbol of hope and promise for a whole generation, stunned the entire world. Th e American people were bewildered by the rapid sequence of events: the brutal killing of their young president; the televised slaying of Oswald by Jack Ruby in the basement of
many arrests, including that of King himself. Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor was determined to crush the civil rights movement; King was equally determined to prevail. Writing from his cell in Birmingham, he vowed an active campaign to bring the issue of racial injustice to national attention.
Bull Connor played directly into King’s hands. On May 3, as six thousand children marched in place of the jailed protesters, authorities broke up a demonstration with clubs, snarling police dogs, and high-pressure water hoses strong enough to take the bark off a tree. With a horrifi ed nation watching scene aft er scene of this brutality on television, the Kennedy administration quickly inter- vened to arrange a settlement with the Birmingham civic leaders that ended the violence and granted the protesters most of their demands.
More important, Kennedy fi nally ended his long hesitation and sounded the call for action. “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue,” he told the nation on June 11. “It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” Eight days later, the administration sponsored civil rights legislation providing equal access to all public accommodations as well as an extension of voting rights for African Americans.
Despite pleas from the government for an end to demon strations and protests, civil rights leaders kept pressure on the administration. Th ey scheduled a massive March on Washington for August 1963. On August 28, more than 200,000 marchers gathered for a daylong rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial where they listened to hymns, speeches, and prayers for racial justice. Th e climax of the event was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, eloquent “I Have A Dream” speech.
By the time of Kennedy’s death in November 1963, his civil rights legislation was well on its way to passage in Congress. Yet even this achievement did not fully satisfy his critics. For two years, they had waited for him to deliver on his campaign promise to wipe out housing discrimination “with a stroke of the pen.” Th e executive order on housing, fi nally issued in November 1962, proved disappointing; it ignored all past discrimination and applied only to houses and apartments fi nanced by the federal government. For many, Kennedy had raised hopes for racial equality that he never fulfi lled.
But unlike Eisenhower, he had provided presidential leadership for the civil rights movement. His emphasis on executive action gradually paid off , especially in extending voting rights. By early 1964, 40 percent of southern blacks had the franchise, com- pared to only 28 percent in 1960. Moreover, Kennedy’s sense of caution and restraint, painful and frustrating as it was to African American activists, had proved to be well-founded. Avoiding an early, and possibly fatal, defeat in Congress, he had waited until a national consensus emerged and then had carefully channeled it behind eff ective legislation. Behaving very much the way Franklin Roosevelt did in guiding the nation into World War II, Kennedy chose to be a fox rather than a lion on civil rights.
The Supreme Court and Reform Th e most active impulse for social change in the early 1960s came from a surprising source: the usually staid and conser- vative Supreme Court. Under the leadership of Earl Warren, a pragmatic jurist more noted for his political astuteness than his legal scholarship, the Court ventured into new areas. A group of
718 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
Above all, Johnson sought consensus. Indiff erent to ideology, he had moved easily from New Deal liberalism to oil-and-gas conservatism as his career advanced. He had carefully cultivated Richard Russell of Georgia, leader of the Dixie bloc, but he also had taken Hubert Humphrey, a Minnesota liberal, under his wing. He had performed a balancing act on civil rights, working with the Eisenhower administration on behalf of the 1957 Voting Rights Act, yet carefully weakening it to avoid alienating southern Democrats. When Kennedy dashed Johnson’s own intense presi- dential ambitions in 1960, LBJ had gracefully agreed to be his running mate and had endured the humiliation of the vice presi- dency loyally and silently. Suddenly thrust into power, Johnson used his gift s wisely. Citing his favorite scriptural passage from Isaiah, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord,” he concentrated on securing passage of Kennedy’s tax and civil rights bills in 1964.
Th e tax cut came fi rst. Aware of the power wielded by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Harry Byrd, a Virginia conserva- tive, Johnson astutely lowered Kennedy’s projected $101.5 billion budget for 1965 to $97.9 billion. Although Byrd voted against the tax cut, he let the measure out of his committee, telling Johnson, “I’ll be working for you behind the scenes.” In February, Congress reduced personal income taxes by more than $10 billion, touching off a sustained economic boom. Consumer spending increased by an impressive $43 billion during the next eighteen months, and new jobs opened up at the rate of one million a year.
Johnson was even more infl uential in passing the Kennedy civil rights measure. Staying in the background, he encouraged liberal amendments that strengthened the bill in the House. With Hubert Humphrey leading the fl oor fi ght in the Senate, Johnson refused all eff orts at compromise, counting on growing public pressure to force northern Republicans to abandon their traditional alliance with southern Democrats. Everett M. Dirksen of Illinois, the GOP leader in the Senate, met repeatedly with Johnson at the White House. When LBJ refused to yield, Dirksen fi nally led a Republican vote to end a 57-day fi libuster.
Th e 1964 Civil Rights Act, signed on July 2, made illegal the segregation of African Americans in public facilities, established an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to lessen racial discrimination in employment, and protected the voting rights of African Americans. An amendment sponsored by segregationists in an eff ort to weaken the bill added gender to the prohibition of discrimination in Title VII of the act; in the future, women’s groups would use the clause to secure government support for greater equality in employment and education.
The Election of 1964 Passage of two key Kennedy measures within six months did not satisfy Johnson who wanted now to win the presidency in his own right. Eager to surpass Kennedy’s narrow victory in 1960, he hoped to win by a great landslide.
Searching for a cause of his own, LBJ found one in the issue of poverty. Beginning in the late 1950s, economists had warned that the prevailing affl uence disguised a persistent and deep-seated problem of poverty. In 1962, Michael Harrington’s book Th e Other America attracted national attention. Writing with passion and
the Dallas police station; the composure and dignity of Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, at the ensuing state funeral; and the hurried Warren Commission report, which identifi ed Oswald as the lone assassin. Aft erward, critics would charge that Oswald had been part of a vast conspiracy, but at the time, the prevailing national reaction was a numbing sense of loss.
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson moved quickly to fi ll the vacuum left by Kennedy’s death. Sworn in on board Air Force One as he returned to Washington, Johnson soon met with a stream of world leaders to reassure them of American political stability. Five days aft er the tragedy in Dallas, Johnson spoke eloquently to a special joint session of Congress. Recalling JFK’s inaugural sum- mons, “Let us begin,” the new president declared, “Today in the moment of new resolve, I would say to all my fellow Americans, ‘Let us continue.”’ Asking Congress to enact Kennedy’s tax and civil rights bills as a tribute to the fallen leader, LBJ concluded, “Let us here highly resolve that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not live or die in vain.”
Johnson in Action Lyndon Johnson suff ered from the inevitable comparison with his young and stylish predecessor. LBJ was acutely aware of his own lack of polish; he sought to surround himself with Kennedy advisers and insiders, hoping their sophistication would rub off on him. Johnson’s assets were very real—he possessed an intimate knowledge of Congress, an incredible energy and determination to succeed, and a fi erce ego. When a young marine offi cer tried to direct him to the proper helicopter, saying, “Th is one is yours,” Johnson replied, “Son, they are all my helicopters.”
LBJ’s height and intensity gave him a powerful presence; he dominated any room he entered, and he delighted in using his physical power of persuasion. One Texas politician explained why he had given in to Johnson: “Lyndon got me by the lapels and put his face on top of mine and he talked and talked and talked. I fi gured it was either getting drowned or joining.”
Yet LBJ found it impossible to project his intelligence and vitality to large audiences. Unlike Kennedy, he wilted before the camera, turning his televised speeches into stilted and awkward performances. Trying to belie his reputation as a riverboat gam- bler, he came across like a foxy grandpa, clever, calculating, and not to be trusted. He lacked Kennedy’s wit and charm, and reporters delighted in describing the way he berated his aides or shocked the nation by baring his belly to show the scar from a recent operation.
Whatever his shortcomings in style, however, Johnson possessed far greater ability than Kennedy in dealing with Congress. He entered the White House with more than thirty years of experience in Washington as a legislative aide, con- gressman, and senator. His encyclopedic knowledge of the legislative process and his shrewd manipulation of individual senators had enabled him to become the most infl uential Senate majority leader in history. Famed for “the Johnson treatment,” a legendary ability to use personal persuasion to reach his goals, Johnson in fact relied more on his close ties with the Senate’s power brokers—or “whales,” as he called them—than on his exploitation of the “minnows.”
“Let Us Continue” 719
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Read the Document
President Johnson applies the “Johnson treatment” to Senator Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island. A shrewd politician and master of the legislative process, Johnson always knew which votes he could count on, those he couldn’t, and where and how to apply pressure to swing votes his way.
eloquence, Harrington claimed that nearly one-fi ft h of the nation, some thirty-fi ve million Americans, lived in poverty.
Three groups predominated among the poor—African Americans, the aged, and households headed by women. Th e problem, Harrington contended, was that the poor were invisi- ble, living in slums or depressed areas such as Appalachia. Th ey were cut off from the educational facilities, medical care, and employ- ment opportunities aff orded more affl uent Americans. Moreover, poverty was a vicious cycle. Th e children of the poor were trapped in the same culture of poverty as their parents, living without hope or knowledge of how to enter the mainstream of American life.
Johnson quickly took over proposals that Kennedy had been developing and made them his own. In his January 1964 State of the Union address, LBJ announced, “Th is administration, today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” During the next eight months, Johnson fashioned a comprehen- sive poverty program under the direction of R. Sargent Shriver, Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Th e president added $500 million to existing programs to come up with a $1 billion eff ort that Congress passed in August 1964.
Th e new Offi ce of Economic Opportunity (OEO) set up a wide variety of programs, ranging from Head Start for preschool- ers to the Job Corps for high school dropouts in need of vocational training. Th e emphasis was on self-help, with the government providing money and know-how so the poor could reap the benefi ts of neighborhood day care centers, consumer education classes, legal aid services, and adult remedial reading programs. Th e level of funding was never high enough to meet the OEO’s ambitious goals, and a controversial attempt to include represen- tatives of the poor in the Community Action Program led to bit- ter political feuding with city and state offi cials. Nonetheless, the war on poverty , along with the economic growth provided by the tax cut, helped reduce the ranks of the poor by nearly ten million between 1964 and 1967.
The new program established Johnson’s reputation as a reformer in an election year, but he still faced two challenges to his authority. Th e fi rst was Robert F. Kennedy, the late president’s brother, who continued as attorney general but who wanted to become vice president and Johnson’s eventual successor in the White House. Desperate to prove his ability to succeed without
720 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
more than $1 billion in federal aid, the largest share going to school districts with the highest percentage of impoverished pupils.
Civil rights proved to be the most diffi cult test of Johnson’s leadership. Martin Luther King, Jr., concerned that three million southern blacks were still denied the right to vote, in early 1965 chose Selma, Alabama, as the site for a test case. Th e white authori- ties in Selma, led by Sheriff James Clark, used cattle prods and bull- whips to break up the demonstrations. More than two thousand African Americans were jailed. Johnson intervened in March, aft er TV cameras showed Sheriff Clark’s deputies brutally halting a march from Selma to Montgomery. Th e president ordered the Alabama National Guard to federal duty to protect the demonstra- tors, had the Justice Department draw up a new voting rights bill, and personally addressed the Congress on civil rights. “I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy,” he began. Calling the denial of the right to vote “deadly wrong,” LBJ issued a compelling call to action. “Th eir cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.”
Five months later, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 . Once again Johnson had worked with Senate Republican leader Dirksen to break a southern fi libuster and assure passage of a measure. Th e act banned literacy tests in states and counties in which less than half the population had voted in 1964 and provided for federal registrars in these areas to assure African Americans the franchise.
Th e results were dramatic. In less than a year, 166,000 African Americans were added to the voting rolls in Alabama; African American registration went up 400 percent in Mississippi. By the end of the decade, the percentage of eligible African American vot- ers who had registered had risen from 40 to 65 percent. For the fi rst time since Reconstruction, African Americans had become active participants in southern politics.
Before the 89th Congress ended its fi rst session in the fall of 1965, it had passed eighty-nine bills. These included mea- sures to create two new cabinet departments (Transportation and Housing and Urban Aff airs); acts to provide for highway safety and to ensure clean air and water; large appropriations for higher education, public housing, and the continuing war on poverty; and sweeping immigration reform legislation. (See the Feature Essay, “Unintended Consequences: Th e Second Great Migration ,” pp. 722–723 .) In nine months, Johnson had enacted the entire Democratic reform agenda.
Th e man responsible for this great leap forward, however, had failed to win the public adulation he so deeply desired. His legis- lative skills had made the most of the opportunities off ered by the 1964 Democratic landslide, but the people did not respond to Johnson’s leadership with the warmth and praise they had show- ered on Kennedy. Reporters continued to portray him as a crude wheeler-dealer; as a maniac who drove around Texas back roads at 90 miles an hour, one hand on the wheel and the other holding a can of beer; or as a bully who picked up his dog by the ears. No one was more aware of this lack of aff ection than LBJ himself. His public support, he told an aide, is “like a Western river, broad but not deep.”
Johnson’s realization of the fl eeting nature of his popular- ity was all too accurate. Th e dilemmas of the Cold War began to divert his attention from domestic concerns and eventually, in the
Kennedy help, LBJ commented, “I don’t need that little runt to win” and chose Hubert Humphrey as his running mate.
Th e second challenge was the Republican candidate, Senator Barry Goldwater, an outspoken conservative from Arizona. An attractive and articulate man, Goldwater advocated a rejection of the welfare state and a return to unregulated free enterprise. To Johnson’s delight, Goldwater chose to place ideology ahead of political expediency. Th e senator spoke out boldly against the Tennessee Valley Authority, denounced Social Security, and advo- cated a hawkish foreign policy. “In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right,” read the Republican slogan, leading the Democrats to reply, “Yes, Far Right,” and in reference to a careless Goldwater comment about using nuclear weapons, Johnson backers punned, “In Your Heart, You Know He Might.”
Johnson stuck carefully to the middle of the road, embrac- ing the liberal reform program—which he now called the Great Society —while emphasizing his concern for balanced budgets and fi scal orthodoxy. Th e more Goldwater sagged in the polls, the harder Johnson campaigned, determined to achieve his treasured landslide. On election day, LBJ received 61.1 percent of the popu- lar vote and an overwhelming majority in the electoral college; Goldwater carried only Arizona and fi ve states of the Deep South. Equally important, the Democrats achieved huge gains in Congress, controlling the House by a margin of 295 to 140 and the Senate by 68 to 32. Kennedy’s legacy and Goldwater’s candor had enabled Johnson to break the conservative grip on Congress for the fi rst time in a quarter century.
THE ELECTION OF 1964
Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote Johnson Democratic 43,126,506 486
Goldwater Republican 27,176,799 52
The Triumph of Reform LBJ moved quickly to secure his legislative goals. Despite solid majorities in both Houses, including seventy fi rst-term Democrats who had ridden into offi ce on his coattails, Johnson knew he would have to enact the Great Society as swift ly as possible. “You’ve got to give it all you can, that fi rst year,” he told an aide. “Doesn’t matter what kind of majority you come in with. You’ve got just one year when they treat you right, and before they start worrying about themselves.”
Johnson gave two traditional Democratic reforms—health care and education—top priority. Aware of strong opposition to a com- prehensive medical program, LBJ settled for Medicare , which mandated health insurance under the Social Security program for Americans over age 65, and a supplementary Medicaid program for the indigent. To symbolize the end of a long struggle, Johnson fl ew to Independence, Missouri, so Truman could witness the ceremonial signing of the Medicare law, which had its origins in Truman’s 1949 health insurance proposal.
LBJ overcame the religious hurdle on education by support- ing a child-benefi t approach, allocating federal money to advance the education of students in parochial as well as public schools. Th e Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provided
Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War 721
he shared the same Cold War assumptions and convictions. And, feeling less confi dent about dealing with international issues, he tended to rely heavily on Kennedy’s advisers—notably Secretary of State Rusk, Secretary of Defense McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy (the national security adviser until he was replaced in 1966 by the even more hawkish Walt Rostow).
Johnson had broad exposure to national security aff airs. He had served on the Naval Aff airs Committee in the House before and during World War II, and as Senate majority leader he had been briefed and consulted regularly on the crises of the 1950s. A confi rmed cold warrior, he had also seen in the 1940s the devas- tating political impact on the Democratic party of the communist triumph in China. “I am not going to lose Vietnam,” he told the American ambassador to Saigon just aft er taking offi ce in 1963. “I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.”
Aware of the problem Castro had caused John Kennedy, LBJ moved fi rmly to contain communism in the Western Hemisphere. When a military junta overthrew a leftist regime in Brazil, Johnson off ered covert aid and open encouragement. He was equally forceful in compelling Panama to restrain rioting aimed at the continued American presence in the Canal Zone.
In 1965, to block the possible emergence of a Castro-type government, LBJ sent twenty thousand American troops to the
case of Vietnam, would overwhelm him. Yet his legislative achieve- ments were still remarkable. In one brief outburst of reform, he had accomplished more than any president since FDR.
Diffi culties abroad would dim the luster of the Johnson presi- dency, but they could not diminish the lasting impact of the Great Society on American life. Federal aid to education, the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, and, above all, the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965 changed the nation irrevocably. Th e aged and the poor now were guaranteed access to medical care; communities saw an infusion of federal funds to improve local education; and African Americans could now begin to attend integrated schools, enjoy public facilities, and gain political power by exercising the right to vote. But even at this moment of triumph for liberal reform, new currents of dissent and rebellion were brewing.
Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War
How did Johnson’s Vietnam policy evolve?
Lyndon Johnson emphasized continuity in foreign policy just as he had in enacting Kennedy’s domestic reforms. He not only inher- ited the policy of containment from his fallen predecessor, but
76.2%
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Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 View the Map
AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTER REGISTRATION BEFORE AND AFTER PASSAGE OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 The percentages shown on the map indicate the increase in African American voter registration between 1960 and 1966.
722
This is not a revolutionary bill,” President Lyndon Johnson declared when he signed the Immigration Act of 1965 into law. Rarely has a president been so wrong. The changes Congress made in American immigration policy led to a second great migra- tion, larger and even more diverse than the fi rst great migration that took place in the thirty years before World War I. By the end of the century, the second great wave of immigration had profoundly altered the ethnic composition of the United States.
The political leaders responsible for changing immigration policy in the 1960s had very different intentions. Focused on removing long-standing inequities in the law, they sought to replace the national origins system, adopted in the 1920s, which favored people from western Europe, with a new set of criteria designed to bring in newcomers with economic skills the United States needed and to reunite broken families. Above all, the archi- tects of change wanted to end the unfair race-based quotas for people of Asian extraction and the evident dis- crimination against applicants from eastern and southern Europe. Attorney General Robert Kennedy called the national origins quotas “a standing affront to many Americans and to many countries.” At the height of the Cold War, realism seemed to join with idealism in the effort to end a dis- criminatory immigration policy that smacked of racism.
The legislative process, however, often works in mysterious ways. The bill passed by Congress did end the national origins system, as its fram- ers desired, but reversed the new
priorities, giving highest preference to family reunifi cation, and less emphasis to job skills and asylum for refugees. As enacted and later amended, the 1965 Immigration Act set an annual limit of 170,000 for immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Africa, and 120,000 for those
from Western Hemisphere countries, with a ceiling of 20,000 for any one country. The total, 290,000, would be only slightly larger than the number admitted under the old system.
By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that the family preferences,
Unintended Consequences The Second Great Migration
Feature Essay
2 Becomes citizen after six years and sponsors one brother and one sister
2 After one year brother brings wife and one child
2 As citizen brings both parents
2 After seven years wife becomes citizen and brings two brothers
2 After two years brother brings wife and one child
3 Brother brings wife and two children
3 Immigrant now brings wife and two children
1 Student (nonimmigrant) comes for postgraduate studies. After two years completes education and gets job with Labor Certification, thus becoming an immigrant.
1 As citizen wife brings one parent
1 After two years sister brings husband
Complete the Assignment Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration on myhistorylab
THE SECOND GREAT MIGRATION: A THEORETICAL EXAMPLE
Note: Total is nineteen after original student arrived for postgraduate education ten years earlier. Source: Adapted from David M. Reimer, Still the Golden Door , 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1992), p. 95.
723
number, grew at a fast pace and had greater success economically than any other ethnic group.
By the end of the century, it was clear that the Immigration Act of 1965 had led to a major shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the United States. The effort to erase past discriminatory and race-based quotas resulted in an unexpected fl ow of people from Asia and Latin America that ensured the end of traditional European dominance. By 2050, according to Census Bureau projections, the country will be almost evenly divided between non-Hispanic whites and minorities. Social harmony in the twenty-fi rst century will depend on whether the melting pot contin- ues to melt, blending ethnic groups into mainstream America, or whether these groups, as their numbers grow, will shape the society into one that political leaders of the 1960s such as Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy could never have foreseen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. How did the 1965 Immigration Act change immigration policy?
2. Why did the Act lead to a major change in the nation’s ethnic and racial make-up?
newcomers entering the United States every year.
The other unintended consequence of the 1965 Immigration Act was a rapid shift in the source of the new immigrants. Europe, the traditional place of origin for immigrants, fell from providing 70 percent of newcomers in the 1950s to just 16 percent by the mid- 1990s. Latin American immigrants rose from 25 to 49 percent of the total, while Asia supplied 32 percent by the end of the century, up from just 6 percent in the 1950s. This change in the countries of origin was as striking as the similar shift from western to eastern Europe in the fi rst great migration. Where once Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland had furnished the majority of new- comers, by 1989 it was Mexico, the Philippines, and Vietnam that led the list, with no European country among the top ten.
The result was a growing diver- sity that promised to make the United States a truly multiethnic society in the twenty-fi rst century. By the 1990s, the number of foreign-born Americans had more than doubled to 10 percent of the population. Hispanic Americans were the most rapidly growing segment, replacing African Americans as the nation’s largest minority in 2001. Asian Americans, although much smaller in
which made up nearly 70 percent of the allotted visas, were allowing recent immigrants to bring in large numbers of relatives, instead of reuniting immi- grants who had been in the United States for years with their families. The fi gure, “The Second Great Migration: A Theoretical Example,” shows how one postgraduate student with a non- immigrant visa, by adroit use of the available family preferences, could easily gain the admission of eighteen relatives in just a decade. Moreover, once resident aliens became citizens, they could bring in relatives—spouses, children under 21, and parents—with- out regard to visa limits.
Two signifi cant developments fl owed directly from the Great Society’s immigration policy. First, annual immi- gration increased steadily from an aver- age of 250,000 in the 1950s to at least one million by the end of the century. In 1990, in an effort to place “immedi- ate relatives” under an effective limit, Congress approved an overall ceiling of just less than 700,000 immigrants a year, except for refugees. But other leg- islation allowing undocumented work- ers to gain legal status, as well as an estimated 300,000 illegal immigrants a year, swelled the actual total to more than one million. In effect, the 1965 legislation had led to a quadrupling of
724 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
without it. Later, critics charged that LBJ wanted a blank check from Congress to carry out the future escalation of the Vietnam War, but such a motive is unlikely. He had already rejected
Dominican Republic. Johnson’s flimsy justifications—ranging from the need to protect American tourists to a dubious list of sus- pected communists among the rebel leaders—served only to alien- ate liberal critics in the United States, particularly Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright, a former Johnson favorite. Th e intervention ended in 1966 with the elec- tion of a conservative government. Senator Fulbright, however, continued his criticism of Johnson’s foreign policy by publishing Th e Arrogance of Power, a biting analysis of the fallacies of con- tainment. Fulbright’s defection symbolized a growing gap between the president and liberal intellectuals; the more LBJ struggled to uphold the Cold War policies he had inherited from Kennedy, the more he found himself under attack from Congress, the media, and the universities.
The Vietnam Dilemma It was Vietnam rather than Latin America that became Lyndon Johnson’s obsession and led ultimately to his political downfall. Inheriting an American commitment that dated back to Eisenhower to support an independent South Vietnam, the new president believed he had little choice but to continue Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam. Th e crisis created by Diem’s overthrow only three weeks before Kennedy’s assassination led to a vacuum of power in Saigon that prevented Johnson from conducting a thorough review and reassessment of the strategic alternatives in Southeast Asia. In 1964, seven diff erent governments ruled South Vietnam; power changed hands three times within one month. According to an American offi cer, the atmosphere in Saigon “fairly smelled of dis- content,” with “workers on strike, students demonstrating, [and] the local press pursuing a persistent campaign of criticism of the new government.”
Resisting pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for direct American military involvement, LBJ continued Kennedy’s policy of economic and technical assistance. He sent in seven thousand more military advisers and an additional $50 million in aid. While he insisted it was still up to the Vietnamese themselves to win the war, he expanded American support for covert operations, includ- ing amphibious raids on the North.
Th ese undercover activities led directly to the Gulf of Tonkin affair. On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the Maddox , an American destroyer engaged in electronic intelligence gathering in the Gulf of Tonkin. The attack was prompted by the belief the American ship had been involved in a South Vietnamese raid nearby. Th e Maddox escaped unscathed, but to show American resolve, the navy sent in another destroyer, the C. Turner Joy . On the evening of August 4, the two destroyers, responding to sonar and radar contacts, opened fi re on North Vietnamese gunboats in the area. Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes on North Vietnamese naval bases. Later investigation indicated that the North Vietnamese gunboats had not launched a second attack on the American ships.
The next day, the president asked Congress to pass a resolution authorizing him to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” He did not in fact need this authority; he had already ordered the retaliatory air strike
SOUTHEAST ASIA AND THE VIETNAM WAR American combat forces in South Vietnam rose from sixteen thousand in 1963 to a half million in 1968, but a successful conclusion to the confl ict was no closer.
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Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War 725
be needed in 1966 and that American battle deaths could rise as high as fi ve hundred a month (by early 1968, they hit a peak of more than fi ve hundred a week).
At the same time, other advisers, most notably Undersecretary of State George Ball, spoke out against military escalation in favor of a political settlement. Warning that the United States was likely to suff er “national humiliation,” Ball told the president that he had “serious doubt that an army of westerners can successfully fi ght Orientals in an Asian jungle.”
Lyndon Johnson was genuinely torn, asking his advisers at one point, “Are we starting something that in two to three years we simply can’t fi nish?” But he fi nally decided he had no choice but to persevere in Vietnam. Although he insisted on paring down McNamara’s troop request, LBJ settled on a steady
U.S. TROOP LEVELS IN VIETNAM (AS OF DEC. 31 OF EACH YEAR)
1960
100,000
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900
1961
3,200
1962
11,300
1963
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1964
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1966
385,300
1967
485,600
1968
536,100
1969 1970
475,200
334,600
1971
156,800
1972
24,200
Source: U.S. Department of Defense
immediate military intervention. In part, he wanted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to demonstrate to North Vietnam the American determination to defend South Vietnam at any cost. “The challenge we face in Southeast Asia today,” he told Congress, “is the same challenge that we have faced with cour- age and that we have met with strength in Greece and Turkey, in Berlin and Korea.” He also wanted to preempt the Vietnam issue from his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, who had been advocating a tougher policy. By taking a firm stand on the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Johnson could both impress the North Vietnamese and outmaneuver a political rival at home.
Congress responded with alacrity. Th e House acted unani- mously, while only two senators voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Johnson appeared to have won a spectacular victory. His standing in the Gallup poll shot up from 42 to 72 percent, and he had eff ectively blocked Goldwater from exploiting Vietnam as a campaign issue.
In the long run, however, this easy victory proved costly. Having used force once against North Vietnam, LBJ was more likely to do so in the future. And although he apparently had no intention of widening the confl ict in August 1964, the congressional resolution was phrased broadly enough to enable him to use whatever level of force he wanted—including unlimited military intervention. Above all, when he did wage war in Vietnam, he left himself open to the charge of deliberately misleading Congress. Presidential credibility proved ultimately to be Johnson’s Achilles’ heel; his political downfall began with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
Escalation Full-scale American involvement in Vietnam began in 1965 in a series of steps designed primarily to prevent a North Vietnamese victory. With the political situation in Saigon grow- ing more hopeless every day, the president’s advisers urged the bombing of the North. American air attacks would serve several purposes: Th ey would block North Vietnamese infi ltra- tion routes, make Hanoi pay a heavy price for its role, and lift the sagging morale of the South Vietnamese. But most impor- tant, as McGeorge Bundy reported aft er a visit to Pleiku (site of a Vietcong attack on an American base that took nine lives), “Without new U.S. action defeat appears inevitable—probably not in a matter of weeks or perhaps even months, but within the next year or so.” In February 1965, Johnson cited the Pleiku attack in ordering a long-planned aerial bombardment of selected North Vietnamese targets.
Th e air strikes, aimed at impeding the communist supply line and damaging Hanoi’s economy, proved ineffective. In April, Johnson authorized the use of American combat troops in South Vietnam, restricting them to defensive operations intended to protect American air bases. Th e Joint Chiefs then pressed the president for both unlimited bombing of the North and the aggressive use of American ground forces in the South. In mid-July, Secretary of Defense McNamara recommended sending a hundred thousand combat troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the American forces there. He believed this esca- lation would lead to a “favorable outcome,” but he also told the president that an additional hundred thousand soldiers might
726 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
more than 500,000 by early 1968, the Vietcong still controlled much of the countryside. Th e search-and-destroy tactics employed by the American commander, General William Westmoreland, proved ill suited to the situation. Th e Vietcong, aided by North Vietnamese regulars, were waging a war of insurgency, avoiding fi xed positions and striking from ambush. In a vain eff ort to destroy the enemy, Westmoreland used superior American fi repower wantonly, devas- tating the countryside, causing many civilian casualties, and driving the peasantry into the arms of the guerrillas. Inevitably, these tactics led to the slaughter of innocent civilians, most notably at the hamlet of My Lai. In March 1968, an American company led by Lieutenant William Calley, Jr., killed more than two hundred unarmed villagers.
Th e main premise of Westmoreland’s strategy was to wage a war of attrition that would fi nally reach a “crossover point” when communist losses each month would be greater than the number of new troops they could recruit. He hoped to lure the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese regulars into pitched battles in which American fi repower would infl ict heavy casualties. But soon it was the communists who were deciding where and when the fi ghting would take place, provoking American attacks in remote areas of South Vietnam that favored the defenders and made Westmoreland pay heavily in American lives for the commu- nist losses. By the end of 1967, the nearly half million American troops Johnson had sent to Vietnam had failed to defeat the enemy. At best, LBJ had only achieved a bloody stalemate that gradually turned the American people against a war they had once eagerly embraced.
Years of Turmoil
Why were there protests during the 1960s?
Th e Vietnam War became the focal point for a growing move- ment of youthful protest that made the 1960s the most turbulent decade of the twentieth century. Disenchantment with conven- tional middle-class values, a rapid increase in college enroll- ments as a result of the post–World War II baby boom, a reaction against the crass materialism of the affl uent society—with its endless suburbs and shopping malls—all led American youth to embrace an alternative lifestyle based on the belief that people are “sensitive, searching, poetic, and capable of love.” Th ey were ready to create a counterculture.
Th e agitation of the 1960s was at its height between 1965 and 1968, the years that marked the escalation of the Vietnam War. Disturbances on college campuses refl ected growing discontent in other parts of society, from the urban ghettos to the lettuce fi elds of the Southwest. All who felt disadvantaged and dissatisfi ed— students, African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, women, hippies—took to the streets to give vent to their feelings.
The Student Revolt Th e fi rst sign of student rebellion came in the fall of 1964 at the prestigious University of California at Berkeley. A small group of radical students resisted university eff orts to deny them a place to solicit volunteers and funds for off -campus causes. Forming the Free Speech movement, they struck back by occupying
military escalation designed to compel Hanoi to accept a dip- lomatic solution. In late July, the president permitted a gradual increase in the bombing of North Vietnam and allowed American ground commanders to conduct offensive operations in the South. Most ominously, he approved the immediate dispatch of fi ft y thousand troops to Vietnam and the future commitment of fi ft y thousand more.
Th ese July decisions formed “an open-ended commitment to employ American military forces as the situation demanded,” wrote historian George Herring, and they were “the closest thing to a for- mal decision for war in Vietnam.” Convinced that withdrawal would destroy American credibility before the world and that an inva- sion of the North would lead to World War III, Johnson opted for large-scale but limited military intervention. Moreover, LBJ feared the domestic consequences of either extreme. A pullout could cause a massive political backlash at home, as conservatives condemned him for betraying South Vietnam to communism. All-out war, how- ever, would mean the end of his social programs. Once Congress focused on the confl ict, he explained to biographer Doris Kearns, “that bitch of a war” would destroy “the woman I really loved—the Great Society.” So he settled for a limited war, committing a half million American troops to battle in Southeast Asia, all the while pretending it was a minor engagement and refusing to ask the American people for the support and sacrifi ce required for victory.
Lyndon Johnson was not solely responsible for the Vietnam War. He inherited both a policy that assumed Vietnam was a vital national interest and a deteriorating situation in Saigon that demanded a more active American role. Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy had taken the United States deep into the Vietnam maze; it was Johnson’s fate to have to fi nd a way out. But LBJ bears full responsibility for the way he tried to resolve his dilemma. Th e fail- ure to confront the people with the stark choices the nation faced in Vietnam, the insistence on secrecy and deceit, and the refusal to acknowledge that he had committed the United States to a danger- ous military involvement were Johnson’s sins in Vietnam. His lack of self-confi dence in foreign policy and fear of domestic reaction led directly to his undoing.
Stalemate For the next three years, Americans waged an intensive war in Vietnam and succeeded only in preventing a communist victory. American bombing of the North proved ineff ective. Th e rural, undeveloped nature of the North Vietnamese economy meant there were few industrial targets; a political refusal to bomb the main port of Haiphong allowed Soviet and Chinese arms to fl ow freely into the country. Nor were the eff orts to destroy supply lines any more successful. American planes pounded the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran down through Laos and Cambodia, but the North Vietnamese used the jungle canopy eff ectively to hide their shipments and their massive eff orts to repair damaged roads and bridges. In fact, the American air attacks, with their inadvertent civilian casualties, gave North Vietnam a powerful propaganda weapon, which it used to sway world opinion against the United States.
The war in the South went no better. Despite the steady increase in American ground forces, from 184,000 in late 1965 to
Years of Turmoil 727
class. But like the fl appers of the 1920s, the protesters set the tone for an entire era and left a lasting impression on American society.
Protesting the Vietnam War The most dramatic aspect of the youthful rebellion came in opposing the Vietnam War. The first student “teach-ins” began at the University of Michigan in March 1965; soon they spread
administration buildings and blocking the arrest of a nonstudent protester. For the next two months the campus was in turmoil.
In the end, the protesters won the rights of free speech and association that they championed. Th eir hero was Mario Savio, a student who had eloquently summed up the cause by likening the university to a great machine and telling others, “You’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”
Th e Free Speech movement at Berkeley off ered many insights into the causes of campus unrest. It was fueled in part by student suspicion of an older, depression-born generation that viewed affl uence as the answer to all problems. Unable to exert much infl uence on the power structure that directed the consumer society, the students turned on the university. Th ey viewed higher education as the faithful servant of a corporate culture: Th e university trained hordes of technicians, harbored research laboratories that perfected dreadful weap- ons, and used IBM punch cards to regiment stu- dents. Th e feeling of powerlessness that underlay the Berkeley riots was best revealed by a protester carrying a sign that read, “I am a UC student. Please don’t bend, fold, spindle, or mutilate me.”
Student protest found its full expression in the explosive growth of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) . Founded in Port Huron, Michigan, in 1962, this radical organization wanted to rid American society of poverty, racism, and violence. Although the SDS embraced many traditional liberal reforms, such as expanded public housing and comprehensive health insurance, its found- ers advocated a new approach called participatory democracy. In contrast to both liberalism and old- style socialism, the SDS sought salvation through the individual rather than the group. Personal con- trol of one’s life and destiny, not the creation of new bureaucracies, was the hallmark of the New Left .
In the next few years, the SDS grew phenome- nally. Spurred on by the Vietnam War and massive campus unrest, the SDS could count more than a hundred thousand followers and was responsible for disruptions at nearly a thousand colleges in 1968. Yet its very emphasis on the individual and its fear of bureaucracy left it leaderless and subject to division and disunity. By 1970, a split between factions, some of which were given to violence, led to its complete demise.
Th e meteoric career of the SDS symbolized the turbulence of the 1960s. For a brief time, it seemed as though the nation’s youth had gone berserk, indulging in a wave of experimentation with drugs, sex, and rock music. Older Americans believed that all the nation’s traditional values, from the Puritan work ethic to the family, were under attack. Not all American youth joined in the cultural insurgency; the rebellion was generally limited to children of the upper-middle
Watch the Video Protests Against the Vietnam War
Antiwar demonstrators protest in Central Park, New York City on April 15, 1967. Four hundred thousand peace demonstrators, with Martin Luther King, Jr. leading the procession, marched from Central Park to the United Nations to demand a halt to the American bombing of North Vietnam.
728 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
to campuses across the nation. More than twenty thousand protesters, under SDS auspices, gathered in Washington in April to listen to entertainers Joan Baez and Judy Collins sing antiwar songs. “End the War in Vietnam Now, Stop the Killing” read the signs.
One of the great ironies of the Vietnam War was the system of student draft deferments, which enabled most of those enrolled in college to avoid military service. As a result, the children of the well-to-do, who were more likely to attend college, were able to escape the draft . One survey revealed that men from disadvantaged families, including a disproportion- ately large number of African and Hispanic Americans, were twice as likely to be draft ed and engage in combat in Vietnam as those from more privileged backgrounds. Consequently, a sense of guilt led many college activists who were safe from Vietnam because of their student status to take the lead in denouncing an unjust war.
As the fi ghting in Southeast Asia intensifi ed in 1966 and 1967, the protests grew larger and the slogans more extreme. “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” chanted students as they proclaimed, “Hell, no, we won’t go!” At the Pentagon in October 1967, more than a hundred thousand demonstrators—mainly male students but housewives, teachers, and young professionals as well—confronted a cordon of military policemen guarding the heart of the nation’s war machine.
Th e climax came in the spring of 1968. Driven by both opposi- tion to the war and concern for social justice, the SDS and African American radicals at Columbia University joined forces in April. Th ey seized fi ve buildings, eff ectively paralyzing one of the coun- try’s leading colleges. Aft er eight days of tension, the New York City police regained control. Th e brutal repression quickened the pace of protest elsewhere. Students held sit-ins and marches at more than one hundred colleges, from Cheyney State in Pennsylvania to Northwestern in Illinois.
Th e students failed to stop the war, but they did succeed in gaining a voice in their education. University administrations allowed undergraduates to sit on faculty curriculum-planning committees and gave up their once rigid control of dormitory and social life. But the students’ greatest impact lay outside politics and the campus. Th ey spawned a cultural uprising that transformed the manners and morals of America.
The Cultural Revolution In contrast to the elitist political revolt of the SDS, the cultural rebellion by youth in the 1960s was pervasive. Led by college students, young people challenged the prevailing adult values in clothing, hairstyles, sexual conduct, work habits, and music. Blue jeans and love beads took the place of business suits and wristwatches; long hair and unkempt beards for men, bare feet and bralessness for women became a new uniform of protest. Families gave way to communes for the “hippies” and “fl ower children” of the 1960s. A “summer of love” in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district in 1967 drew hundreds of thousands of young men and women from all across the country to sample free sex, free drugs, and free medical care (the last required to deal with the former two). Underground newspapers proliferated,
rejecting the values and opinions of the media establishment. Experimental art and fi lm smashed the models of highbrow art and Hollywood.
Music became the touchstone of the counterculture. Folksingers such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, popular for their songs of social protest in the mid-1960s, gave way first to rock groups such as the Beatles, whose lyrics were often suggestive of drug use, and then to “acid rock” as symbolized by the Grateful Dead. The climactic event of the countercul- ture during the decade came at the Woodstock concert at Bethel in upstate New York when 400,000 young people indulged in a three-day festival of rock music, drug experimentation, and public sexual activity.
Former Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary encouraged youth to join him in trying out the drug scene. Millions accepted his invitation to “tune in, turn on, drop out” literally, as they experimented with marijuana and with LSD, a new and dangerous chemical hallucinogen. Th e ultimate expres- sion of insurgency was the Yippie movement, led by Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoff man. Shrewd buff oons who mocked the consumer culture, they delighted in capitalizing on the mood of social pro- test to win attention. Once, when testifying before a congressional committee investigating internal subversion, Rubin dressed as a Revolutionary War soldier; Hoff man appeared in the gallery of the New York Stock Exchange in 1967, raining money down on the cheering brokers below.
“Black Power” Th e civil rights movement, which had spawned the mood of protest in the 1960s, fell on hard times later in the decade. Th e legislative triumphs of 1964 and 1965 were relatively easy vic- tories over southern bigotry; now the movement faced the far more complex problem of achieving economic equality in the cities of the North, where more than half of the nation’s African Americans lived in poverty. Th e civil rights movement had raised the expectations of urban African Americans for improvement; frustration mounted as they failed to experience any signifi cant economic gain.
Th e fi rst sign of trouble came in the summer of 1964, when African American teenagers in Harlem and Rochester, New York, rioted. Th e next summer, a massive outburst of rage and destruction swept over the Watts area of Los Angeles as the inhabitants burned buildings and looted stores. Riots in the summer of 1966 were less destructive, but in 1967 the worst ones yet took place in Newark and in Detroit, where forty-three were killed and thousands were injured. Th e mobs attacked the shops and stores, expressing a burn- ing grievance against a consumer society from which they were excluded by their poverty.
Th e civil rights coalition fell apart, a victim of both its legislative success and economic failure. Black militants took over the leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); they disdained white help and even reversed Martin Luther King’s insistence on nonviolence. Th e SNCC’s new leader, Stokely Carmichael, told blacks they should seize power in those parts of the South where they outnumbered whites. “I am not going to beg the white man for
Years of Turmoil 729
grape pickers and lettuce workers in California into the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA). Chávez appealed to ethnic nationalism in mobilizing Mexican American fi eld hands to strike against grape growers in the San Joaquin Valley in 1965. A national boycott of grapes by Mexican Americans and their sympathizers among the young people of the counterculture led to a series of hard-fought victories over the growers. Th e fi ve-year struggle resulted in a union victory in 1970, but at an enormous cost— 95 percent of the farmworkers involved had lost their homes and their cars. Nevertheless, Chávez succeeded in raising the hourly wage of farmworkers in California to $3.53 by 1977 (it had been $1.20 in 1965).
Chávez’s efforts helped spark an outburst of ethnic consciousness among Mexican Americans that swept through the urban barrios of the Southwest. Mexican American leaders campaigned for bilingual programs and improved educa- tional opportunities. Young activists began to call themselves Chicanos, which had previously been a derogatory term, and to take pride in their cultural heritage; in 1968, they succeeded in establishing the fi rst Mexican American studies program at California State College at Los Angeles. Campus leaders called for reform, urging high school students to insist on improve- ments. Heeding such appeals, nearly ten thousand students at East Los Angeles high schools walked out of class in March 1968. Th ese walkouts sparked similar movements in San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, and led to the introduction of
anything I deserve,” he said, “I’m going to take it.” Soon his calls for “black power” became a rallying cry for more militant blacks who advocated the need for African Americans to form “our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties” and even write “our own history.”
Others went further than calls for ethnic separation. H. Rap Brown, who replaced Carmichael as the leader of the SNCC in 1967, told an African American crowd in Cambridge, Maryland, to “get your guns” and “burn this town down”; Huey Newton, one of the founders of the militant Black Panther party, proclaimed, “We make the statement, quoting from Chairman Mao, that politi- cal power comes through the barrel of a gun.”
King suff ered the most from this extremism. His denunciation of the Vietnam War cost him the support of the Johnson adminis- tration and alienated him from the more conservative civil rights groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League. He fi nally seized on poverty as the proper enemy for attack, but before he could lead his Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968, he was assassi- nated in Memphis in early April.
Both blacks and whites realized the nation had lost its most eloquent voice for racial harmony. His tragic death elevated King to the status of a martyr, but it also led to one last outbreak of urban violence. African Americans exploded in angry riots in 125 cities across the nation; the worst rioting took place in Washington, D.C., where buildings were set on fi re within a few blocks of the White House. “It was as if the city were being aban- doned to an invading army,” wrote a British journalist. “Clouds of smoke hung over the Potomac, evoking memories of the London blitz.”
Yet there was a positive side to the emotions engendered by black nationalism. Leaders urged African Americans to take pride in their ethnic heritage, to embrace their blackness as a positive value. African Americans began to wear Afro hair- styles and dress in dashikis, emphasizing their African roots. Students began to demand new black studies programs in the colleges; the word Negro —identifi ed with white supremacy of the past—virtually disappeared from usage overnight, replaced by the favored Afro-American or black . Singer James Brown best expressed the sense of racial identity: “Say It Loud—I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
Ethnic Nationalism Other groups quickly emulated the African American phenomenon. Native Americans decried the callous use of their identity as foot- ball mascots; in response, universities such as Stanford changed their symbols. Puerto Ricans demanded their history be included in school and college texts. Polish, Italian, and Czech groups insisted on respect for their nationalities. Congress acknowledged these demands with passage of the Ethnic Heritage Studies Act of 1972. Instead of trying to melt all groups down into a standard American type, Congress now gave what one sponsor of the measure called “offi cial recognition to ethnicity as a positive constructive force in our society today.”
Mexican Americans were in the forefront of the ethnic groups that became active in the 1970s. Th e primary impulse came from the eff orts of César Chávez to organize the poorly paid
In March 1966, César Chávez, shown here talking with workers, led striking grape pickers on a 250-mile march from Delano, California, to the state capital at Sacramento to dramatize the plight of the migrant farmworkers. With the slogan “God is beside you on the picket line,” the march took on the character of a religious pilgrimage.
730 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
women to fix the food and type the commu- niqués while the men made the decisions. Understandably, women soon realized that they could only achieve respect and equality by mounting their own protest.
In some ways, the position of women in American society was worse in the 1960s than it had been in the 1920s. Aft er forty years, a lower percentage of women were enrolled in the nation’s colleges and professional schools. Women were still relegated to stereotyped occupations such as nursing and teaching; there were few female lawyers and even fewer women doctors. And gender roles, as por- trayed on television commercials, continued to call for the husband to be the breadwinner and the wife to be the homemaker.
Betty Friedan was one of the fi rst to seize on the sense of grievance and discrimination that developed among white middle-class women in the 1960s. Th e beginning of the eff ort to raise women’s consciousness was her 1963 book, Th e Feminine Mystique . Calling the American home “a comfortable concen- tration camp,” she attacked the prevailing view that women were completely contented with their housekeeping and child-rearing tasks, claiming that housewives had no self- esteem and no sense of identity. “I’m a server of food and putter on of pants and a bed- maker,” a mother of four told Friedan, “some- body who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?”
Th e 1964 Civil Rights Act helped women attack economic inequality head-on by making it illegal to discriminate in employ- ment on the basis of gender. Women fi led suit for equal wages, demanded that companies provide day care for their infants and pre- school children, and entered politics to lobby against laws that—in the guise of protection of a weaker gender—were unfair to women. As the women’s liberation movement grew, its advocates began to attack laws banning abor- tion and waged a campaign to toughen the enforcement of rape laws.
Th e women’s movement met with many of the same obstacles as other protest groups in the 1960s. The moderate leadership of the National Organization for Women
(NOW) , founded by Betty Friedan in 1966, soon was chal- lenged by those with more extreme views. Ti-Grace Atkinson and Susan Brownmiller attacked revered institutions—the fam- ily and the home—and denounced sexual intercourse with men, calling it a method of male domination. Many women were repelled by the harsh rhetoric of the extremists and expressed satisfaction with their lives. But despite these disagreements, most women supported the eff ort to achieve equal status with
bilingual programs in grade schools and the hiring of more Chicano teachers at all levels.
Women’s Liberation Active as they were in the civil rights and antiwar movements, women soon learned that the male leaders of these causes were little different from corporate executives—they expected
Read the Document National Organization for Women, Statement of Purpose (1966)
Betty Friedan was a writer and a major American feminist during the 1960s and 1970s. She was the founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and her book The Feminist Mystique helped ignite the “second wave” of American feminism in the 20th century.
The Return of Richard Nixon 731
as Dean Acheson and Omar Bradley, the president decided to limit the bombing of North Vietnam in an eff ort to open up peace negotiations with Hanoi. In a speech to the nation on Sunday evening, March 31, 1968, Johnson outlined his plans for a new eff ort at ending the war peacefully and then con- cluded by saying, as proof of his sincerity, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
In the fourteen years since the siege of Dien Bien Phu, American policy had gone full cycle in Vietnam. Even though Eisenhower had decided against using force to rescue the French, his commitment to the Diem regime in Saigon had led eventually to American military involvement on a massive scale. Th ree years of inconclusive fi ghting and a steadily mounting loss of American lives had disillusioned the American people and fi nally cost Lyndon Johnson the presidency. And the full price the nation would have to pay for its folly in Southeast Asia was still unknown—the Vietnam experience would continue to cast a shadow over American life for years to come.
The Democrats Divide Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal from the presidential race aft er the Tet off ensive set the tone for the 1968 election. LBJ’s decision had come in response to political as well as military realities. By 1966, the antiwar movement had spread from the college campuses to Capitol Hill. Chairman J. William Fulbright gave the protests a new respectability when his Senate Foreign Relations Committee held probing hearings on the war, broadcast on television to the entire country. Johnson began to feel like a prisoner in the White House, since in his infrequent public appearances he was hounded by larger and larger groups of antiwar demonstrators, whose taunts and jeers wounded him.
Th e essentially leaderless protest against the war had taken on a new quality on January 3, 1968, when Senator Eugene McCarthy, a Democrat from Minnesota, announced he would challenge LBJ for the party’s presidential nomination. Intellectual, cool, and aloof, McCarthy raised the banner of idealism, telling audiences, “Whatever is morally necessary must be made politically possible.” College students fl ocked to his campaign, shaving their beards and cutting their hair to be “clean for Gene.” In the New Hampshire primary in early March, the nation’s earliest political test, McCarthy shocked the political experts by coming within a few thousand votes of defeating President Johnson.
McCarthy’s strong showing in New Hampshire led Robert Kennedy, who had been weighing the risks in challenging Johnson, to enter the presidential race. Elected senator from New York in 1964, Bobby Kennedy had become an eff ective voice for the disadvantaged, as well as an increasingly severe critic of the Vietnam War. Unlike McCarthy, whose appeal was largely limited to upper- middle-class whites and college students, Kennedy attracted strong support among blue-collar workers, African Americans, Chicanos, and other minorities who formed the nucleus of the continuing New Deal coalition.
Lyndon Johnson’s dramatic withdrawal caused an uproar in the Democratic party. With Johnson’s tacit backing and strong support from party regulars and organized labor, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey immediately declared his candidacy.
men, and in 1972, Congress responded by voting to send the Equal Rights Amendment to the state legislatures for ratifi cation.
The Return of Richard Nixon
How did the Vietnam War infl uence American politics?
The turmoil of the 1960s reached a crescendo in 1968 as the American people responded to the two dominant events of the decade—the war in Vietnam and the cultural insurgency at home. In an election marked by a series of bizarre events, including riots and an assassination, Richard Nixon staged a remarkable comeback to win the post denied him in 1960.
Vietnam Undermines Lyndon Johnson A controversial Vietcong off ensive in early 1968 proved to be the decisive event in breaking the stalemate in Vietnam and driving Lyndon Johnson from offi ce. Using deceptive tactics, the North Vietnamese began a prolonged siege of an American marine base at Khe Sanh, deep in the northern interior. Fearing another Dien Bien Phu, Westmoreland rushed in reinforcements, sending more than 40 percent of all American infantry and armor battalions into the two northernmost provinces of South Vietnam.
Th e Vietcong then used the traditional lull in the fi ghting at Tet, the lunar New Year, to launch a surprise attack in the heavily popu- lated cities. Beginning on January 30, 1968, the Vietcong struck at thirty-six of the forty-four provincial capitals. Th e most daring raid came at the American embassy compound in Saigon. Although the guerrillas were unable to penetrate the embassy proper, for six hours television cameras caught the dramatic battle that ensued in the courtyard before military police fi nally overcame the attackers.
Although caught off guard, American and South Vietnamese forces succeeded in repulsing the Tet offensive quickly every- where except in Hue, the old imperial capital, which was retaken only aft er three weeks of heavy fi ghting that left this beautiful city, in the words of one observer, “a shattered, stinking hulk, its streets choked with rubble and rotting bodies.”
Tet proved to be the turning point of the Vietnam War. Although the communists failed to win control of the cities and suff ered heavy losses, they still held on to most of the rural areas and had scored an impressive political victory. For months, President Johnson had been telling the American people the war was almost over and victory was in sight; suddenly it appeared to be nearly lost. CBS-TV newscaster Walter Cronkite took a quick trip to Saigon to fi nd out what had happened. Horrifi ed at what he saw, he exclaimed to his guides, “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war.” He returned home to tell the American people, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.”
President Johnson reluctantly came to the same conclusion aft er the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested an additional 205,000 troops to achieve victory in Vietnam following the Tet off ensive. He began to listen to his new secretary of defense, Clark Cliff ord, who had replaced Robert McNamara in January 1968. In mid- March, aft er receiving advice from the “wise men,” a group of experienced cold warriors that included such illustrious fi gures
732 CHAPTER 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
Humphrey, a classic Cold War liberal who had worked equally hard for social reform at home and American expansion abroad, was totally unacceptable to the antiwar movement. Accordingly, he decided to avoid the primaries and work for the nomination within the framework of the party.
Kennedy and McCarthy, the two antiwar candidates, were thus left to compete in the spring primaries, requiring agonizing choices among those who desired change. Kennedy won everywhere except in Oregon, but his narrow victory in California ended in tragedy when a Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan Sirhan, assassinated him in a Los Angeles hotel.
With his strongest opponent struck down, Hubert Humphrey had little diffi culty at the Chicago convention. Backed by that city’s political boss, Mayor Richard Daley, the vice president relied on party leaders to defeat an antiwar resolution and win the nomina- tion on the fi rst ballot by a margin of more than two to one.
Humphrey’s triumph was marred by violence outside the heavily guarded convention hall. Radical groups had urged their members to come to Chicago to agitate; the turnout was relatively small but included many who were ready to provoke the authori- ties in their despair over the convention’s outcome. Epithets and cries of “pigs” brought on a savage response from Daley’s police. “Th e cops had one thing on their mind,” commented journalist Jimmy Breslin. “Club and then gas, club and then gas, club and then gas.”
Th e bitter fumes of tear gas hung in the streets for days aft er- ward; the battered heads and bodies of demonstrators and inno- cent bystanders alike fl ooded the city’s hospital emergency rooms. What an offi cial investigation later termed a “police riot” marred Humphrey’s nomination and made a sad mockery out of his call for “the politics of joy.” Th e Democratic party itself had become the next victim of the Vietnam War.
The Republican Resurgence Th e primary benefi ciary of the Democratic debacle was Richard Nixon. Written off as politically dead aft er his unsuccessful race for governor of California in 1962, Nixon had slowly rebuilt his place within the party by working loyally for Barry Goldwater in 1964 and for GOP congressional candidates two years later. Positioning himself squarely in the middle, he quickly became the front-runner for the Republican nomination. At the GOP convention in Miami Beach, Nixon won an easy first-ballot nomination and chose Maryland governor Spiro Agnew as his running mate. Agnew, little known on the national scene, had won the support of conservatives by taking a strong stand against African American rioters.
In the fall campaign, Nixon opened up a wide lead by avoiding controversy and reaping the benefi t of discontent with the Vietnam War. He played the peace issue shrewdly, appearing to advocate an end to the confl ict without ever taking a defi nite stand. Th e United States should “end the war and win the peace,” he declared, hinting he had a secret formula for peace but never revealing what it was. Above all, he chose the role of reconciler for a nation torn by emotion, a leader who promised to bring a divided country together again.
Humphrey, in contrast, found himself hounded by antiwar demonstrators who heckled him constantly. He walked a tightwire, desperate for the continued support of President Johnson but handicapped by LBJ’s stubborn refusal to end all bombing of North Vietnam. Only when he broke with Johnson in late September by announcing that if elected he would “stop the bombing of North Vietnam as an acceptable risk for peace” did his campaign begin to gain momentum.
Unfortunately for Humphrey, a third-party candidate cut deeply into the normal Democratic majority. George C. Wallace had fi rst gained national attention as the racist governor of Alabama whose motto was “Segregation now . . . segregation tomorrow … segregation forever.” In 1964, he had shown surprising strength in Democratic primaries in northern states. By attacking both black leaders and their liberal white allies, Wallace appealed to the sense of powerlessness among the urban working classes. “Liberals, intellectuals, and longhairs have run the country for too long,” Wallace told his followers. “When I get to Washington,” he promised, “I’ll throw all these phonies and their briefcases into the Potomac.”
Running on the ticket of the American Independent Party, Wallace was a close third in the September polls, gaining support from more than 20 percent of the electorate. But as the election neared, his following declined. Humphrey continued to gain, espe- cially aft er Johnson agreed in late October to end all bombing of North Vietnam. By the fi rst week in November, the outcome was too close for the experts to call.
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26 13 26
29
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3 17
8 4
144 3
12 10
43
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12 21
6
40
10
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7 76
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25 10
6
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ALASKA
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HAWAII
Election of 1968
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN Richard M. Nixon
Popular Vote
31,770,237301
DEMOCRATIC Hubert H. Humphrey 31,270,533191
AMERICAN INDEPENDENT George C. Wallace 9,906,14146
MINOR PARTIES 239,908
73,186,819538
Conclusion: The End of an Era 733
Nixon won the election with the smallest share of the popular vote of any winning candidate since 1916. But he swept a broad band of states from Virginia and the Carolinas through the Midwest to the Pacific for a clear-cut victory in the electoral college. Humphrey held on to the urban Northeast; Wallace took just five states in the Deep South, but his heavy inroads into blue-collar districts in the North shattered the New Deal coalition.
Conclusion: The End of an Era
Th e election of 1968 was a repudiation of the politics of protest and the cultural insurgency of the mid-1960s. Th e combined pop- ular vote for Nixon and Wallace, 56.5 percent of the electorate, signifi ed there was a silent majority that was fed up with violence and confrontation. A growing concern over psychedelic drugs,
rock music, long hair, and sexual permissiveness had off set the usual Democratic advantage on economic issues and led to the election of a Republican president.
Richard Nixon’s victory marked the end of an era with the passing of two concepts that had guided American life since the 1930s. First, the liberal reform impulse, which reached its zenith with the Great Society legislation in 1965, had clearly run its course. Civil rights, Medicare, and federal aid to education would continue in place, but Nixon’s election signaled a strong reaction against the growth of federal power. At the same time, the Vietnam fi asco spelled the end of an activist foreign policy that had begun with American entry into World War II. Containment, so suc- cessful in protecting western Europe against the Soviet threat, had proved a disastrous failure when applied on a global scale. Th e last three decades of the twentieth century would witness a struggle to replace outmoded liberal internationalism with new policies at home and abroad.
734 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER REVIEW
T I M E L I N E
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 30 The Turbulent Sixties on MyHistoryLab
1961 JFK establishes Peace Corps (March); U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion crushed by Cubans (April)
1962 President Kennedy forces U.S. Steel to roll back price hike (April); Cuban missile crisis takes world to brink of nuclear war (October)
1963 United States, Great Britain, and USSR sign Limited Nuclear Test Ban treaty (August); JFK assassinated; Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as president (November)
1964 President Johnson declares war on poverty (January); Congress overwhelmingly passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August); Johnson wins presidency in landslide (November)
1965 LBJ commits fi fty thousand American troops to com- bat in Vietnam (July); Congress enacts Medicare and Medicaid (July)
1966 National Organization for Women (NOW) formed 1967 Israel wins Six-Day War in Middle East (June); Riots
in Detroit kill forty-three, injure two thousand, leave fi ve thousand homeless (July)
1968 Vietcong launch the Tet offensive (January); Johnson announces he will not seek reelection (March); Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated in Memphis (April); Robert Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles (June)
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
Kennedy Intensifi es the Cold War
How did the Cold War intensify under Kennedy?
Kennedy increased American support to South Vietnam and pressured the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Kennedy raised troop levels in Vietnam and authorized the overthrow of Diem. He ordered a covert operation against
Castro at the Bay of Pigs (which failed) and delivered an ultimatum to the Soviets to pull their missiles out of Cuba (which succeeded). (p. 708 )
The New Frontier at Home
What was the “New Frontier,” and what did it accomplish?
The “New Frontier” was Kennedy’s domestic program, and on its most important issue, civil rights, it achieved mixed results. Kennedy supported civil rights, but hesitantly. Black
activists, especially Martin Luther King, Jr., pushed the cause of racial equality farther than Kennedy was prepared to take it. (p. 713 )
“Let Us Continue”
What were Johnson’s domestic priorities, and what were his achievements?
Johnson’s “Great Society” included the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Medicare, which pro- vided health insurance for the elderly; and federal aid to
education. (p. 717 )
Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War
How did Johnson’s Vietnam policy evolve?
Johnson seized upon an ambiguous incident in the Gulf of Tonkin to persuade Congress to grant him authority to escalate American involvement in Vietnam. He initiated a major troop buildup and air attacks against North Vietnam.
The escalation produced only a bloody stalemate. (p. 721 )
Years of Turmoil
Why were there protests in the 1960s?
During the 1960s, students protested the war in Vietnam. Many young people also rebelled against the values of their parents, experimenting with new kinds of music, clothing styles, and drugs. Black militants demanded faster progress
toward racial equality, and sometimes employed violence to achieve it. César Chávez improved the lot of Mexican American farmworkers. Feminists sought greater equality for women. (p. 726 )
The Return of Richard Nixon
How did the Vietnam War influence American politics?
Johnson’s failure in Vietnam discredited his administration and produced desire for change. He abandoned plans to run for reelection in 1968, opening the door to Richard
Nixon. (p. 731 )
17th Demarc
July
H o
C
Invasion of Laos Feb. 6–Mar. 1971
Hanoi U.S. air raids
1966–1968, 1972
Hue Tet offensive Jan. 30–Feb. 1968
Gulf of Tonkin Incident Aug. 4, 1964
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
Gulf of Tonkin
M ek
on g
R .
Vientiane
Haiphong harbor mined, 1972
C H I N A
LAOS
NORTH VIETNAM
HAILAND
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MINOR PARTIES 239,90
73,186,81538
STUDY RESOURCES 735
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S
New Frontier President John F. Kennedy’s program to revitalize the stagnant economy and enact reform legislation in education, health care, and civil rights. p. 708
Bay of Pigs In April 1961, a group of Cuban exiles, organized and supported by the CIA, landed on the southern coast of Cuba in an effort to overthrow Fidel Castro. When the invasion ended in disaster, President Kennedy took full responsibility for it. p. 710
Cuban missile crisis In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war when President John F. Kennedy insisted that Nikita Khrushchev remove the 42 missiles he had secretly deployed in Cuba. The Soviets eventually did so, and the crisis ended. p. 711
Freedom ride Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), freedom rides on buses by civil rights advocates in 1961 in the South were designed to test the enforcement of federal regulations that prohibited seg- regation in interstate public transportation. p. 714
March on Washington In August 1963, civil rights leaders organized a massive rally in Washington to urge passage of President John F. Kennedy’s civil rights bill. The high point was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. p. 717
War on poverty President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address. A new Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) oversaw programs to help the poor. p. 719
Great Society President Lyndon Johnson’s name for his version of the Demo cratic reform program. In 1965, Congress passed many Great Society
measures, including Medicare, civil rights legislation, and federal aid to educa- tion. p. 720
Medicare The 1965 Medicare Act provided Social Security funding for hospitalization insurance for people over age 65 and the disabled and a volun- tary plan to cover doctor bills paid in part by the federal government. p. 720
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The 1965 Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests for voting rights and provided for federal registrars to assure the franchise to minority voters. p. 720
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution After a North Vietnamese attack on an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, Congress gave President Lyndon authority in this resolution to use force in Vietnam. p. 725
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Founded in 1962, the SDS was a popular college student organization that protested shortcom- ings in American life, notably racial injustice and the Vietnam War. It led thousands of protests before it split apart in the late 1960s. p. 727
National Organization for Women (NOW) Founded in 1966, NOW called for equal employment opportunity and equal pay for women. It also championed the legalization of abortion and an equal rights amend- ment to the Constitution. p. 730
Tet offensive In February 1968, the Viet Cong launched a major offensive in the cities of South Vietnam. Although caught by surprise, American and South Vietnam forces quashed this attack. But the Tet offensive was a blow to American public opinion and led President Lyndon Johnson to seek a negoti- ated peace. p. 731
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S 1. How did American foreign policy in the 1960s reflect the personalities
of Kennedy and Johnson?
2. Why did MLK, Jr., command such respect?
3. How did the War on Poverty influence Johnson’s handling of the Vietnam War?
4. Why did Americans turn to Nixon in 1968?
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
Civil Rights March on Washington p. 716
Kennedy–Nixon Debate p. 707
President John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis p. 712
Kennedy Intensifies the Cold War
The New Frontier at Home
Photographing the Civil Rights Movement p. 715
“Let Us Continue” Read the Document
Read the Document The Civil Rights Act of 1964 p. 719
Watch the Video
Watch the Video
Watch the Video
Watch the Video
Watch the Video
Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 p. 721
Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War
Years of Turmoil
Protests Against the Vietnam War p. 727
National Organization for Women, Statement of Purpose (1966) p. 730
◾
◾
View the Map Vietnam War p. 724 ◾
Complete the Assignment Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration p. 722
◾
◾
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 30 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
View the Map
The Rise of a New Conservatism, 1969–1988
Contents and Learning Objectives
Reagan had become an effective television performer as host of The General Electric Theater. His political views, once liberal, moved steadily to the right as he became a spokesperson for a major American corporation. In 1965, a group of wealthy friends persuaded him, largely on the basis of the success of “the speech,” to run for the California governorship.
Reagan proved to be an attractive candidate. His approachable manner and his mastery of television enabled him to present his strongly conservative message without appearing to be a rigid ideologue of the right. He won handily by appealing effectively to rising middle- class suburban resentment over high taxes, expanding welfare programs, and bureaucratic regulation.
In his two terms as governor, Reagan displayed natural ability as a political leader. Instead of insist- ing on implementing all of his conservative beliefs, he proved surprisingly flexible. Faced with a Democratic legislature, he yielded on raising taxes and increasing state spending while managing to trim the welfare rolls. Symbolic victories were his specialty; in one example he managed to confront campus radicals and fire Clark Kerr, chancellor of the University of California, while at the same time generously funding higher education.
Reagan and America’s Shift to the Right
In October 1964, the Republican National Committee sponsored a televised address by Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan on behalf of Barry Goldwater’s presidential candi- dacy. Reagan’s speech had originally been aired on a Los Angeles station; the resulting outpouring of praise and campaign contributions led to its national rebroadcast.
In contrast to Goldwater’s strident rhetoric, Reagan used relaxed, confident, and persuasive terms to put forth the case for a return to individual freedom. Instead of the usual choice between increased govern- ment activity and less government involvement, often couched in terms of the left and the right, Reagan pre- sented the options of either going up or down—“up to the maximum of human freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.” Then, borrowing a phrase from FDR, he told his audi- ence: “You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We can preserve for our children this the last best hope of man on Earth, or we can sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.”
Although the speech did not rescue Goldwater’s unpopular candidacy, it marked the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s remarkable political career. A popular actor whose movie career had begun to fade in the 1950s,
THE TEMPTING OF RICHARD NIXON PG. 738 What were the major accomplishments and failures of the Nixon presidency?
THE ECONOMY OF STAGFLATION PG. 742 How were oil and infl ation linked during the 1970s?
PRIVATE LIVES, PUBLIC ISSUES PG. 745 How did private life change during this period?
POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY AFTER WATERGATE PG. 749 Why did the presidencies of Ford and Carter largely fail?
THE REAGAN REVOLUTION PG. 752 What was the “Reagan revolution”?
REAGAN AND THE WORLD PG. 755 How did Reagan reshape American foreign relations?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY The Christian Right
◾ LAW AND SOCIETY Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights
31
Chapter 31 The Rise of a New Conservatism, 1969–1988Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy wave to the crowd during the 1980 Republican convention in Detroit.
738 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
disadvantaged. Neoconservatives called for a reaffir- mation of capitalism and a new emphasis on what was right about America rather than an obsessive concern with social ills.
B y the end of the 1970s, a decade marked by military defeat in Vietnam, political scandal that destroyed the adminis- tration of Richard Nixon, economic ills that vexed the country under Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and unprecedented social strains on families and traditional institutions, millions of Americans had come to believe that Cold War liberalism had run its course. Ronald Reagan, as the acknowledged leader of the conservative resurgence, was ideally placed to capitalize on this discontent. His personal charm soft ened the hard edges of his right-wing call to arms, and his conviction that America could regain its traditional self-confi dence by reaffi rming basic ideals had a broad appeal to a nation facing new challenges at home and abroad. In 1976, Reagan had barely lost to President Ford at the Republican convention; four years later, he overcame an early upset by George Bush in Iowa to win the GOP presidential nomination handily.
In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Detroit, Reagan set forth the themes that endeared him to con- servatives: less government, a balanced budget, family values, and peace through greater military spending. Unlike Barry Goldwater, who frightened people with his rigid ideology, Reagan off ered reas- surance and hope for the future. He spoke of restoring to the federal government “the capacity to do the people’s work without domi- nating their lives.” As historian Robert Dallek pointed out, Reagan “assured his listeners that he was no radical idealist courting defeat, but a sensible, thoroughly likable American with a surefi re formula for success that would please everyone.” In Ronald Reagan, the Republicans had found the perfect fi gure to lead Americans into a new conservative era.
The Tempting of Richard Nixon
What were the major accomplishments and failures of the Nixon presidency?
Following the divisive campaign of 1968, Richard Nixon’s presi- dency proved to be one of the most controversial in American history. Nixon’s domestic policies had limited success, and though his diplomacy broke new ground in relations with China and the Soviet Union and ended American fi ghting in Vietnam, he was forced to resign the presidency under the dark cloud of the Watergate scandal.
Pragmatic Liberalism Nixon began his fi rst term on a hopeful note, promising the nation peace and respite from the chaos of the 1960s. Rejecting the divisions that had driven Americans apart, he pledged in his inaugural address to bring the country together. “We cannot learn from one another,” he said, “until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”
By the time Reagan left the governor’s office in 1974, many signs pointed to a growing conservative mood across the nation. In a popular rebellion against esca- lating property taxes in 1978, California’s voters passed Proposition 13, which slashed property taxes in half and resulted in a gradual reduction in social services. Religious leaders were especially outraged over the 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Engel v. Vitale outlawing school prayer on the grounds that it was “no part of the business of government to compose official prayers.” In the South, where daily prayers were the customary way of beginning the school day, the reaction was intense. One Alabama congressman denounced the Supreme Court justices, proclaiming, “They put the Negroes in the schools and now they’re driving God out.”
Concern over school prayer, along with rising abor- tion and divorce rates, impelled religious groups to engage in political activity to defend what they viewed as traditional family values. Jerry Falwell, a successful Virginia radio and television evangelist, founded the Moral Majority , a fundamentalist group dedicated to preserving the “American way of life.” (See the Feature Essay, “The Christian Right,” pp. 756–757 .)
The population shift of the 1970s, especially the rapid growth of the Sunbelt region in the South and West (see p. 774 ) , added momentum to the conservative upsurge. Those moving to the Sunbelt tended to be white, middle- and upper-class suburbanites—mainly skilled workers, young professionals, and business executives who were attracted both by economic opportunity and by a political climate emphasizing low taxes, less government regula- tion, and more reliance on the marketplace. The political impact of population shifts from east to west and north to south during the 1970s was reflected in the congres- sional gains (seventeen seats) by Sunbelt and far western states after the 1980 census.
Conservatives also succeeded, for the first time since World War II, in making their cause intellectually respectable. Scholars and academics on the right flour- ished in new “think tanks”; writer William Buckley and economist Milton Friedman proved to be effective advocates of conservative causes in print and on tele- vision. Neoconservatism , led by Norman Podhoretz’s magazine Commentary, became fashionable among many intellectuals who were former liberal stalwarts. They denounced liberals for being too soft on the Communist threat abroad and too willing to compro- mise high standards at home in the face of demands for equality from African Americans, women, and the
The Tempting of Richard Nixon 739
Th e upshot of Nixon’s domestic policies was to extend the welfare state in some areas, reshape it in others, and leave liberals and conservatives alike wondering just where Nixon stood.
Détente Nixon didn’t really care, because foreign policy—not domestic policy—was his pride and joy. Nixon had thought long about the state of the world, and he was determined to improve it. To assist him in this endeavor, he appointed Henry Kissinger to be national security adviser. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Kissinger had become a professor of government at Harvard, the author of sev- eral infl uential books, and an acknowledged authority on interna- tional aff airs. Nixon and Kissinger approached foreign policy from a practical, realistic perspective. Instead of viewing the Cold War as an ideological struggle for survival with Communism, they saw it as a traditional great-power rivalry, one to be managed and con- trolled rather than to be won.
Nixon and Kissinger had a grand design. Realizing that recent events, especially the Vietnam War and the rapid Soviet arms buildup of the 1960s, had eroded America’s position of primacy in the world, they planned a strategic retreat. Russia had great mili- tary strength, but its economy was weak, and it had a dangerous rival in China. Nixon planned to use American trade—notably grain and high technology—to induce Soviet cooperation, while at the same time improving U.S. relations with China.
Nixon and Kissinger shrewdly played the China card as their fi rst step toward achieving détente —a relaxation of tension—with the Soviet Union. In February 1972, accompanied by a planeload of reporters and television camera crews, Nixon visited China, meeting with the Communist leaders and ending more than two decades of Sino–American hostility. Nixon agreed to establish an American liaison mission in Beijing as a fi rst step toward diplo- matic recognition.
Th e Soviets, who viewed China as a dangerous adversary, responded by agreeing to an arms control pact with the United States. Th e Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) had been under way since 1969. During a visit to Moscow in May 1972, Nixon signed two vital documents with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Th e fi rst limited the two superpowers to two hundred antiballistic missiles (ABMs) apiece; the second froze the num- ber of off ensive ballistic missiles for a fi ve-year period. Th e SALT I agreements recognized the existing Soviet lead in missiles, but the American deployment of multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs) ensured a continuing strategic advan- tage for the United States.
Th e SALT I agreements were most important as a symbolic fi rst step toward control of the nuclear arms race. Th ey signifi ed that the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to achieve a settlement of their diff erences by peaceful means.
Ending the Vietnam War Vietnam remained the one foreign policy challenge that Nixon could not overcome. He had a three-part plan to end the conflict—gradual withdrawal of American troops, accompa- nied by training of South Vietnamese forces to take over the
Nixon’s moderate language appeared to herald a return to the politics of accommodation that had characterized the Eisenhower era. Faced with a Democratic Congress, Nixon, like Ike, reconciled himself to the broad outlines of the welfare state. Instead of trying to overthrow the Great Society, he focused on making the federal bureaucracy function more effi ciently. In some areas he actually expanded federal programs and responsibilities.
On civil rights, for example, Nixon was the fi rst president to adopt affi rmative action as an explicit policy. His labor secretary, George Shultz, applied the “Philadelphia plan,” which had evolved to ensure the hiring of minority contractors in Pennsylvania’s larg- est city, to other cities and eventually to all federal contracts worth more than $50,000. Nixon also expanded affi rmative action to include women, vastly increasing the scope of the policy. Th e goal, a Nixon executive order explained, was for the federal government to achieve “the prompt and full utilization of minorities and women at all levels in all segments of its work force.”
Nixon broke new ground in other areas associated with liberalism. He approved the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which assumed responsibility for reducing workplace injuries. He oversaw the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal watchdog on environmental aff airs. He signed the Clean Air Act, which provided the basis for tackling smog and other air pollutants. He supported automatic cost-of-living increases to Social Security, ensuring that the elderly not lose ground to the infl ation that increasingly vexed the American economy.
Many liberals suspected Nixon’s motives, and not without reason. Nixon’s liberalism was pragmatic, even opportunistic, rather than principled. In private conversations, he could be demeaning of African Americans, Jews, and other minorities. But, planning big changes in American foreign policy, he chose not to pick fi ghts with congressional Democrats or buck the liberal tide that was still fl ow- ing from the 1960s.
He did try to shape that tide. Under the label of the “new federalism,” he shift ed responsibility for many social programs from Washington to state and local authorities. He developed the concept of revenue sharing, by which federal funds were dispersed to state, county, and city agencies to meet local needs. In 1972, he signed a law that shared $30 billion with local governments over a fi ve-year period. An accompanying ceiling of $2.5 billion a year on federal welfare payments meant that much of the revenue-sharing payments had to be allocated by cities and states to programs previ- ously paid for by the federal government.
Nixon’s civil rights policy was similarly calculating. Action by Congress and the Johnson administration had ensured that mas- sive desegregation of southern schools, delayed for more than a decade by legal action, would begin just as Nixon took offi ce. Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell, decided to shift the responsibility for this process to the courts. In the summer of 1969, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to delay the integra- tion of thirty-three school districts in Mississippi. Th e Supreme Court quickly ruled against the Justice Department, declaring that “the obligation of every school district is to terminate dual school systems at once.” Th us, in the minds of southern white voters, it was the hated Supreme Court, not Richard Nixon, who had forced them to integrate their schools.
740 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
College in Mississippi; soon riots and protests raged on more than four hundred campuses across the country.
Nixon had little sympathy for the demonstrators, calling the students “bums” who were intent on “blowing up the campuses.” Th e “silent majority” to whom he appealed seemed to agree; one poll showed that most Americans blamed the students, not the national guard, for the deaths at Kent State. An “Honor America Day” program, held in Washington, D.C., on July 4, attracted 250,000 people who heard Billy Graham and Bob Hope endorse the president’s policies. Nixon’s Cambodian invasion did little to shorten the Vietnam War, but the public reaction reinforced the president’s resolve not to surrender.
The third tactic, negotiation with Hanoi, finally proved successful. Beginning in the summer of 1969, Kissinger held a series of secret meetings with North Vietnam’s foreign minister, Le Duc Th o. In the summer and fall of 1972, the two sides neared agreement, but South Vietnamese objections blocked a settle- ment before the 1972 election. When the North Vietnamese tried to make last-minute changes, Nixon ordered a series of heavy
combat role; renewed bombing; and a hard line in negotiations with Hanoi. Th e number of American soldiers in Vietnam fell from 540,000 in early 1969 to less than 30,000 by 1972; domestic opposition to the war declined sharply with the accompanying drop in casualties and reductions in the draft call.
Renewed bombing proved the most controversial part of the plan. As early as the spring of 1969, Nixon secretly ordered raids on Communist supply lines in neutral Cambodia. Th en in April 1970, he ordered both air and ground strikes into Cambodia, causing a massive outburst of antiwar protests at home. Students demonstrated against the invasion of Cambodia on campuses across the nation. Tragedy struck at Kent State University in Ohio in early May. Aft er rioters had fi rebombed an ROTC building, the governor sent in national guard troops who were taunted and harassed by irate students. Th e guardsmen then opened fi re, kill- ing four students and wounding eleven more. Th e victims were innocent bystanders; two were young women caught in the fusil- lade on their way between classes. A week later, two African American student demonstrators were killed at Jackson State
The photograph depicts the horror of the Kent State University shooting of thirteen unarmed college students by Ohio National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970. Some of the students who were shot were protesting President Nixon’s inva- sion of Cambodia. In response to the Kent State tragedy, hundreds of high schools, colleges, and universities across America closed due to a student strike.
The Tempting of Richard Nixon 741
Th e committee’s discovery of the existence of tape recordings of conversations in the Oval Offi ce, made regularly since 1970, proved the beginning of the end for Nixon. At fi rst, the president tried to invoke executive privilege to withhold the tapes. When Archibald Cox, appointed as Watergate special prosecutor, demanded the release of the tapes, Nixon fi red him. Yet the new Watergate pros- ecutor, Leon Jaworski, continued to press for the tapes. Nixon tried to release only a few of the less damaging ones, but the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in June 1974 that the tapes had to be turned over to Judge Sirica.
By this time, the House Judiciary Committee, acting on evi- dence compiled by the staff of the Senate committee, had voted three articles of impeachment, charging Nixon with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Faced with the release of tapes that directly implicated him in the cover-up, the president chose to resign on August 9, 1974.
Nixon’s resignation proved to be the culmination of the Watergate scandal. The entire episode revealed both the weaknesses and strengths of the American political system. Most regrettable was the abuse of presidential authority—a refl ection both of the growing power of the modern presidency and of fatal fl aws in Richard Nixon’s character. Unlike previous executive branch scandals such as the Whiskey Ring and Teapot Dome, Watergate involved a lust for power rather than for money. Realizing he had reached the White House almost by accident, Nixon did everything possible to retain his hold on his offi ce. He used the plumbers to maintain executive secrecy, and he directed the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department to punish his enemies and reward his friends.
B-52 raids on Hanoi that fi nally led to the signing of a truce on January 27, 1973. In return for the release of all American prisoners of war, the United States agreed to remove its troops from South Vietnam within sixty days. Th e political clauses allowed the North Vietnamese to keep their troops in the South, thus virtually guaran- teeing future control of all Vietnam by the Communists.
For two years after the accords the Communists waited, weighing, among other things, the willingness of Americans to continue to support South Vietnam. As Nixon became enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, his grip on foreign policy weakened, and by the time he was forced from offi ce in August 1974, most Americans simply wanted to forget Vietnam. Th e following spring the Communists mounted a major off ensive and in just weeks com- pleted their takeover of Vietnam. Ten years aft er the American esca- lation of the war, and aft er the loss of sixty thousand American lives, the American eff ort to preserve South Vietnam from Communism had proved a tragic failure.
The Watergate Scandal Nixon’s Vietnam problems and especially his formulation of détente made him sensitive to the unauthorized release of infor- mation about American foreign policy. He had good reason for fearing leaks, since they might tip the administration’s hand in sensitive negotiations with the Communists. When leaks did occur, Nixon grew outraged and demanded that they be stopped. Th e White House established an informal offi ce of covert surveillance— the “plumbers,” its operatives were called—which began by inves- tigating the national security breaches but, during the presidential campaign of 1972, branched out into spying on Nixon’s Democratic opponents and engaging in political dirty tricks.
Five of the “plumbers” were arrested in June 1972 during a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate offi ce complex in Washington. Th e Nixon White House took pains to conceal its connection to what its spokes- man dismissed as a “third-rate burglary attempt.” Nixon personally ordered the cover-up. “I want you to stonewall it, let them plead the Fift h Amendment, cover-up, or anything else,” Nixon told John Mitchell, his former attorney general, and then campaign director.
The cover-up succeeded long enough to ensure Nixon’s landslide reelection victory over Democrat George S. McGovern of South Dakota, but in the months aft er the election the cover-up began to unravel. James McCord, one of the Watergate burglars, was the fi rst to break the silence. Sentenced to a long jail term by Judge John Sirica, McCord asked for leniency, informing Sirica he had received money from the White House and had been prom- ised a presidential pardon in return for his silence. By April 1973, Nixon was compelled to fi re aide John Dean, who had directed the cover-up but who now refused to become a scapegoat. Two other aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, were forced to resign.
Th e Senate then appointed a special committee to investigate the unfolding Watergate scandal . In a week of dramatic testi- mony, Dean revealed the president’s personal involvement in the cover-up. Still, it was basically a matter of whose word was to be believed—the president’s or a discredited aide’s—and Nixon hoped to weather the storm.
9
26 13 25
27
4
3 17
8 4
144 3
12 10
41
8
11 21
6
45
10
3
7 6
7
5
26 10
6
10
7 9 12
17
8
13
111
9
6 4
4
4
4
3
3
4
8
3
4
3
ALASKA
WASH., D.C.
HAWAII
Election of 1972
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN Richard M. Nixon
Popular Vote
46,740,323520
DEMOCRATIC George S. McGovern 28,901,59817
MINOR PARTIES John Hospers 1,983,2311
77,625,152538
742 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
The Economy of Stagfl ation
How were oil and infl ation linked during the 1970s?
In the midst of Watergate, the outbreak of war in the Middle East threatened a vital national interest: the unimpeded and inexpen- sive fl ow of oil to the United States. Th e resulting energy crisis helped spark a raging price infl ation that had a profound impact on the national economy and on American society at large.
War and Oil On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel. Th e fi ghting followed decades of tension between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which had grown only worse upon the stun-
ning Israeli victory in the Six Days’ War of 1967. In that confl ict, the Israelis routed the Arabs, seizing the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. Th e Arabs ached for revenge, and in 1973 the Egyptians and Syrians attacked. Catching Israel off guard, they won early battles but eventually lost the initiative and were forced to give up the ground they had recovered. Th e Israelis would have deliv- ered another devastating defeat to the Arabs if not for the diplomatic intervention of Nixon and Kissinger, who, despite America’s previous strong support for Israel, believed a decisive Israeli victory would destabilize the Middle East even more.
Th e American diplomatic triumph, how- ever, was off set by an unforeseen consequence of the October War (also called the Yom Kippur War, as it started on the Jewish holy day). On October 17, the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced a 5 percent cut in oil production, and vowed additional cuts of 5 percent each month until Israel surrendered the lands it had taken in 1967. Th ree days later, following Nixon’s announcement of an emer- gency aid package for Israel, Saudi Arabia cut off oil shipments to the United States.
The Arab oil embargo had a disastrous impact on the American economy. With Arab producers cutting production by 25 percent from the September 1973 level, world supplies fell by 10 percent. For the United States, which imported one-third of its daily consumption, this meant a loss of nearly 2 million barrels a day. Long lines formed at gas stations as motor- ists who feared running out of fuel kept fi lling their tanks.
A dramatic increase in oil prices proved to be a far more signifi cant result of the embargo. After the Arab embargo began, OPEC, led by the shah of Iran, raised crude oil prices
But Watergate also demonstrated the vitality of a democratic society. Th e press showed how investigative reporting could unlock even the most closely guarded executive secrets. Judge Sirica proved that an independent judiciary was still the best bulwark for indi- vidual freedom. And Congress rose to the occasion, both by carry- ing out a successful investigation of executive misconduct and by following a scrupulous and nonpartisan impeachment process that left Nixon with no chance to escape his fate.
Th e nation survived the shock of Watergate with its institutions intact. John Mitchell and twenty-fi ve presidential aides were sen- tenced to jail terms. Congress, in decline since Lyndon Johnson’s exercise of executive dominance, was rejuvenated, with its mem- bers now intent on extending congressional authority into other areas of American life.
The Watergate cartoon by Boston Globe cartoonist, Paul Michael Szep, “I’ve decided not to tell you about the alleged shipwreck,” was published on July 11, 1973. The title illustrates the irony of a shipwrecked Attorney General John Mitchell and President Nixon floundering in political waters as a result of Mitchell’s and Nixon’s participation in the planning and cover-up of the break-in of Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Watergate Shipwreck View the Closer Look
The Economy of Stagfl ation 743
Other factors added to the trend of rising prices. Th e Vietnam War created federal budget defi cits that grew from $63 billion for the entire decade of the 1960s to a total of $420 billion in the 1970s. A worldwide shortage of food, resulting from both rapid population increases and poor harvests around the globe in the mid-1970s, triggered a 20 percent rise in American food prices in 1973 alone. But above all else, the primary source of the great infl a- tion of the 1970s was the six-fold increase in petroleum prices.
Th e impact on consumers was staggering. Th e price of an auto- mobile jumped 72 percent between 1973 and 1978. During the decade, the price of a hamburger doubled, milk went from 28 to 59 cents a quart, and a loaf of bread—the proverbial staff of life— rose from 24 to 89 cents. Corresponding wage increases failed to keep pace with infl ation; in 1980, the real income of the average American family fell by 5.5 percent.
Often inflation signals economic exuberance, and rising prices indicate a rapid rate of growth. Not so with the infl ation of the 1970s, which refl ected economic weakness. Th e great infl a- tion contributed to the worst recession in the United States since World War II. American GNP dropped by 6 percent in 1974, and unemployment rose to more than 9 percent, the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
President Gerald R. Ford, who followed Richard Nixon into the White House (see p. 749 ) , responded belatedly to the economic crisis by proposing a tax cut to stimulate consumer spending. Congress passed a $23 billion reduction in taxes in early 1975, which led to a gradual recovery by 1976. Th e resulting budget defi - cits, however, helped keep infl ation above 5 percent and prevented a return to full economic health.
Jimmy Carter of Georgia, who succeeded Ford (see pp. 749–751 ) , had little more success in reviving the economy. Continued federal defi cits and relatively high interest rates kept the economy sluggish throughout 1977 and 1978. Th en in 1979, the outbreak of the Iranian Revolution and the overthrow of the shah touched off another oil shock. Th e members of the OPEC cartel took advantage of the situ- ation to double prices over the next eighteen months. A barrel of crude oil now cost more than $30. Gasoline prices climbed to more
fourfold. In the United States, gasoline prices at the pumps nearly doubled in a few weeks’ time, while the cost of home heating fuel rose even more.
Nixon responded with a series of temporary measures, includ- ing pleas to Americans to turn down their thermostats in homes and offi ces and avoid driving simply for pleasure. When the Arab oil embargo ended in March, aft er Kissinger negotiated an Israeli pullback in the Sinai, the American public relaxed. Gasoline once again became plentiful, thermostats were raised, and people resumed their love aff air with the automobile.
Th e energy crisis, however, did not end with the lift ing of the embargo. Th e Arab action marked the beginning of a new era in American history. Th e United States, with only 6 percent of the world’s population, had been responsible for nearly 40 percent of the world’s energy consumption. In 1970, domestic oil production began to decline; the embargo served only to highlight the fact that the nation was now dependent on other countries, notably those in the Persian Gulf, for its economic well-being. A nation that based its way of life on abundance and expansion suddenly was faced with the reality of limited resources and economic stagnation.
The Great Infl ation Th e price spike from the October War was merely the fi rst of the “oil shocks” of the 1970s. Cheap energy had been a primary contrib- utor to the relentless growth of the American economy aft er World War II. Th e GNP had more than doubled between 1950 and 1973; the American people had come to base their standard of living on oil prices that yielded gas at about 35 cents a gallon. Large cars, sprawling suburbs, detached houses heated by fuel oil and natural gas and cooled by central air-conditioning produced a dependence on inexpensive energy that Americans took for granted.
Th e quadrupling of oil prices in 1973–1974 suddenly put all this at risk. Because oil or its equivalent in energy is required for the production and transportation of manufactured goods, the rising oil prices caused the prices of nearly everything else to increase as well. Most services require energy; they went up as well.
1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985
$35
30
25
20
15
10
5
Average price per barrel
1973 1975 1977 1979 1981 1983 1985
$1.40
1.20
1.00
.80
.60
.40
.20
Price per gallon of regular
OPEC oil embargo
Crude Oil Gasoline
THE OIL SHOCKS: PRICE INCREASES OF CRUDE OIL AND GASOLINE, 1973–1985
744 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
Th e multinationals that had emerged in the boom years of the 1960s continued to thrive. IBM sold computers all over the globe. Th e growth of conglomerates—huge corporations that combined many dissimilar industrial concerns— accelerated as companies such as Gulf & Western and the Transamerica Corporation diversifi ed by buying up Hollywood studios, insurance companies, and recre- ational equipment manufacturers. Th e growth of high-technology industries proved to be the most profi table new trend of the 1970s. Computer companies and electronics fi rms grew at a rapid rate, especially aft er the development of the silicon chip, a small, wafer- thin microprocessor capable of performing complex calculations almost instantly.
Th e result was a geographic shift of American industry from the East and Midwest to the Sunbelt. Electronics manufacturers fl ourished in California, Texas, and North Carolina, where they grew up around major universities. Th e absence of entrenched labor unions, the availability of skilled labor, and the warm and attractive climate of the southern and western states lured many new concerns to the Sunbelt. At the same time, the decline of the steel and auto industries was leading to massive unemployment and economic stagnation in the northern industrial heartland.
Th e overall pattern was one of an economy in transition. Th e oil shocks had caused serious problems of infl ation, slower economic growth, and rising unemployment rates. But American business still displayed the enterprise and the ability to develop new tech- nologies that gave promise of renewed economic vitality.
A New Environmentalism Th e oil shocks had another eff ect: Th ey injected new life into the environmental movement. Th e high price of gasoline made pocketbook conservationists of millions of Americans who hadn’t thought twice about their country’s heavy dependence on foreign oil; it also spurred Congress to press automakers to improve the fuel effi ciency of the cars they built. Th e 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act set corporate standards for gas mileage; manu- facturers who failed to achieve the mandated averages faced stiff fi nes and other sanctions. Between the high prices and the federal requirements, American drivers began squeezing more miles out of each tank of gas.
Environmentalists and consumers meanwhile began search- ing for alternative sources of energy. Solar power appealed to some as being clean and endlessly renewable. But it was also expensive (solar panels and related technologies remained underdeveloped) and intermittent (clouds cut off the power). Hydropower— electricity generated by falling water—was bet- ter proven and more reliable, but most of the suitable dam sites had already been built upon. Wind power worked in some areas (where the wind blew frequently and without obstruction), but those were precisely the areas where few people lived. Coal power was reliable, proven, and cheap, but it was also dirty (the gases emitted by coal plants fouled the air) and dangerous (to the men and women who mined the coal).
Nuclear power had its advocates. It had been in use in America since the 1950s, and its characteristics were well known. Its fuel— uranium—was essentially inexhaustible, and nuclear reactors, in normal operations, produced no noxious gases. Nor did they
than $1 a gallon at American service stations, leading to an even greater wave of infl ation than in 1973.
Finally, in late 1979, the Federal Reserve Board, led by Carter appointee Paul Volcker, began a sustained eff ort to halt infl ation by mandating increased bank reserves to curtail the supply of money in circulation. Th e new tight-money policy served only to heighten infl ation in the short run by driving interest rates up to record levels. By the spring of 1980, the prime interest rate reached 20 percent.
The Shifting American Economy Infl ation and the oil shocks helped bring about signifi cant changes in American business and industry in the 1970s. Th e most obvi- ous result was the slowing of the rate of economic growth, with the GNP advancing only 3.2 percent for the decade, compared to 3.7 percent in the 1960s. More important, American industry began to lose its position of primacy in world markets. In 1959, U.S. fi rms had been the leaders in eleven of thirteen major indus- trial sectors, ranging from manufacturing to banking. By 1976, American companies led in only seven areas, and in all but one category—aerospace—U.S. corporations had declined in relation to Japanese and western European competitors.
Th e most serious losses came in the heavy industries in which the United States had once led the world. New steel producers in western Europe, Japan, and the developing world, using more advanced technology and aided by government subsidies, were producing steel far more effi ciently than their American counter- parts. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, American fi rms were closing down their obsolete mills in the East and Midwest, idling thousands of workers.
The foreign competition did even more damage in the automobile industry. Th e oil shocks led to a consumer demand for small, effi cient cars. German and Japanese automakers seized the opportunity to expand their once low volume of sales in the United States. By 1977, imported cars had captured nearly a fi ft h of the American market, with Japan leading the way. In response, Detroit spent $70 billion retooling to produce a new fl eet of smaller, lighter front-wheel-drive cars, but American manufacturers barely survived the foreign invasion. Only government-backed loans helped the Chrysler Corporation stave off bankruptcy.
The decline in manufacturing led to significant shifts in the labor movement. Th e industrial unions such as the United Automobile Workers (UAW) lost members steadily in the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, public employee unions enjoyed rapid growth and acceptance. Th e Great Society legislation, the baby boom with the resulting need for many more teachers, and the growth of social agencies on the state and local level opened up new jobs for social workers, teachers, and government employees. By the end of the 1980s, members of public employee unions made up over 20 percent of the AFL-CIO ranks, while the separate National Education Association (NEA) became the nation’s largest single union with two million members—600,000 more than the Teamsters. Th e rise of public employee unions also opened the way for greater participation by African Americans and women than in the older trade and industrial unions.
Just as public employee unions prospered from the shift s in the American economy in the 1970s, so did many American corporations.
Private Lives, Public Issues 745
Th e traditional nuclear family of the 1950s no longer prevailed in America by the end of the twentieth century. Th e number of mar- ried couple households with children dropped from 30 percent in the 1970s to 23 percent by 2000. Th e number of unmarried couples doubled in the 1990s, while adults living alone surpassed the num- ber of married couples with children for the fi rst time in American history. “Being married is great,” commented demographer William H. Frey, “but being married with kids is tougher in today’s society with spouses in diff erent jobs and expensive day care and schools.”
Th e divorce rate, which doubled between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s, leveled off for the rest of the century. Nevertheless, half of all fi rst marriages still ended in divorce. Aft er a sharp fall in the 1970s, the birthrate climbed again as the baby boom genera- tion began to mature. Th ere was a marked increase in the number of births to women over age 30, as well as a very high propor- tion of children born to single mothers, who composed 7 percent of all households by 2000, a 25 percent increase since 1990. Conservatives, alarmed by the decline of the nuclear family, called for change. “We need to discourage people from living together out- side of marriage,” observed Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, “and encourage them to have children within marriage.”
For better or worse, the American family structure changed signifi cantly in the last three decades of the twentieth century, with a large number of people either never marrying or postponing mar- riage until late in the childbearing period. Th e traditional family unit, with the working father and the mother rearing the children at home, rapidly declined. Most mothers worked outside the home, and many were the sole support for their children. Th e proportion of children living with only one parent doubled in twenty years. Women without partners headed more than one-third of all impov- erished families, and children made up 40 percent of the nation’s poor. Although politicians, especially Republicans, refer to family values during campaigns, the fact remains that the American family underwent great stress due to social changes in the last third of the twentieth century, and children suff ered disproportionately.
Gains and Setbacks for Women American women experienced signifi cant changes in their way of life and their place in society in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Th e prevailing theme concerned the increasing percent- age of working women. Th ere was a rapid movement of women into the labor force in the 1970s; six million more married women held jobs by the end of the decade as two incomes became increasingly necessary to keep up with infl ation. Th e trend continued through the 1980s. Fully 61 percent of the nearly nineteen million new jobs created during the decade were fi lled by women; many of these new jobs, however, were entry-level or low-paying service positions.
Women scored some impressive breakthroughs. Th ey began to enter corporation boardrooms, became presidents of major universities, and were admitted to the nation’s military academies. Women entered blue-collar, professional, and small-business fi elds traditionally dominated by men. Ronald Reagan’s appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981 marked a historic fi rst; Bill Clinton doubled the number of women on the Court with his selection of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
produce any “greenhouse gases”—carbon dioxide and other heat- trapping gases—that contribute to global warming, a rise in average temperatures that was just beginning to worry some Earth scien- tists (and would worry them much more in coming decades).
But nuclear power made many environmentalists nervous. Th e waste products of the reactors were radioactive, and would remain so for thousands of years. Guaranteeing that the wastes would not contaminate water supplies—for fi ft y generations into the future—was a daunting challenge. And occasionally nuclear reactors malfunctioned in terrifying ways. In March 1979, a reactor at Th ree Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, nearly melted down when cooling systems failed. Tens of thousands of people living in the vicinity fl ed, and though the reactor didn’t explode, as authorities had feared it might, the close call inspired grave second thoughts about nuclear power. A more severe accident at Chernobyl, in the Soviet Ukraine in 1986, released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere and caused many deaths, reinforcing the fears.
Th e debate over alternative energy sources was part of a larger debate on the environment. Earth Day, fi rst celebrated in April 1970, became an annual event at which participants considered the eff ect of human actions on their natural surroundings. Groups such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth lobbied to reinforce antipollution laws, to clean up toxic wastes, and to increase gas mileage standards further. Business associations typically resisted the measures as too restrictive and expensive.
The results were mixed. Congress strengthened the Clean Air Act, and in 1980 it created the federal “Superfund” for toxic cleanups. But oil imports continued to rise, by some 50 percent between 1973 and 1979, to nine million barrels a day, or half what the country consumed.
Private Lives, Public Issues
How did private life change during this period?
Sweeping changes in the private lives of the American people began in the 1970s and continued for the rest of the century. Th e traditional American family, with the husband as wage earner and the wife as homemaker, gave way to much more diverse living arrangements. Th e number of working women, including wives and mothers, increased sharply; the wage gap between the sexes narrowed, but women still lagged noticeably behind men in earn- ings. Th en, in the years following 1970, came the emergence of an active gay rights movement as more and more gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans began to disclose their sexual identities and demand an end to discrimination.
The Changing American Family Family life underwent a number of signifi cant shift s aft er 1970. Th e most notable was a decline in the number of families with two par- ents and one or more children under 18. By the end of the 1980s, in only one two-parent family out of fi ve was the mother solely engaged in child rearing. A few fathers stayed at home with the children, but in the great majority of these families, both parents worked outside the home.
746 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
prosperity, claiming that “the American economy has been revital- ized in good measure because of the participation of and contribu- tions of women business owners.”
Beyond economic opportunity, the women’s movement had two goals. The first was ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) . Approved by Congress in 1972, the ERA stated simply, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” Within a year, twenty-two states had approved the amendment, but the eff orts gradually faltered just three states short of ratifi cation. Th e opposition came in part from working-class women who feared, as one union leader explained, that those employed as “maids, laundry workers, hospital cleaners, or dishwashers” would lose the protection of state laws that regulated wages and hours of work for women. Right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafl y led an organized eff ort to defeat the ERA, claiming the amendment would lead to unisex toilets, homosexual marriages, and the draft ing of women. Th e National Organization of Women (NOW) fought back, persuading Congress to extend the time for ratifi cation by three years and waging intense campaigns for approval in Florida and Illinois. But the deadline for ratifi cation fi nally passed on June 30, 1982, with the ERA forces still three states short. NOW leader Eleanor Smeal vowed a continuing struggle: “Th e crusade is not over. We know that we are the wave of the future.”
The women’s movement focused even more of its ener- gies in protecting a major victory it had won in Roe v. Wade in 1973. (See the Law and Society essay, “ Roe v. Wade: Th e Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights,” pp. 760–763 .) Right-to-life groups, consisting mainly of orthodox Catholics, fundamentalist Protestants, and conservatives, fought back. In 1978, with strong support from President Carter, Congress passed the Hyde amend- ment, which denied the use of federal funds to pay for abortions for poor women. Nevertheless, prochoice groups organized privately funded family planning agencies and abortion clinics to give more women a chance to exercise their constitutional right to abortion.
As Presidents Reagan and Bush appointed more conservative judges to the Court, however, prochoice groups began to fear the future overturn of Roe v. Wade . Th e Court avoided a direct challenge, contenting itself with lesser actions that upheld the rights of states to regulate abortion clinics, impose a 24-hour waiting period, and require the approval of one parent or a judge before a minor could have an abortion. Abortion became an issue in presidential contests, with the Republicans upholding a prolife position and the Democrats taking a prochoice stand. Bill Clinton’s election and appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Court appeared to end the danger to Roe v. Wade , but in 2000 the Court margin in rejecting a Nebraska law forbidding certain late-term abortions fell to a bare majority, 5–4. And even the exercise of the right to abortion proved diffi cult and sometimes dangerous in view of the oft en violent protests of prolife groups outside abortion clinics. For many women, abortion was a hard-won right they still had to struggle to protect.
The Gay Liberation Movement On the night of June 27, 1969, a squad of New York policemen raided the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village bar frequented by “drag queens” and lesbians. As the patrons were being herded into
Yet at the same time, women encountered a great deal of resis- tance. Most women continued to work in female-dominated fi elds— as nurses, secretaries, teachers, and waitresses. Th ose who entered such “male” areas as management and administration soon encoun- tered the so-called glass ceiling, which kept them from advancing beyond midlevel executive status. In 1990, only 4.3 percent of corpo- rate offi cers were women. Most in business worked at the middle and lower rungs of management with staff jobs in personnel and public relations, not key operational positions in sales and marketing that would lead to the boardroom; women held fewer than 3 percent of the top jobs in Fortune 500 companies. Th e economic boom of the 1990s, however, led to a steady increase in the number of women executives; in 1998, there was an increase of 514,000.
Even with these gains, however, by 2004 women’s wages still aver- aged only 76.5 percent of men’s earnings. A college education helped close the gap, but a woman with a degree made only $600 a year more on the average than a man with a high school diploma. Younger women did best; those between 16 and 24 earned almost 90 cents for every dollar paid to a male in the same age group. Older women, who oft en had no other source of support, fared poorly; those over the age of 50 earned only 64 percent as much as men their age. Feminists had once hoped to close the gender gap by the year 2000, but experts predicted women would not reach pay equity with men until 2018.
The most encouraging development for women came in business ownership. Oft en blocked by the glass ceiling and seek- ing fl exible schedules, more and more women went into business for themselves. Th e number of female business owners increased 40 percent between 1987 and 1992, twice the national rate of business growth. A women’s trade group estimated that in 1996 women owned almost eight million businesses, employing more than eighteen million workers—one out of four American workers. A speaker at the fi rst National Women’s Economic Summit in 1996 exaggerated only slightly in crediting her group with restoring
TEXAS
N. MEX.ARIZ.
ALASKA
HAWAII
CALIF.
NEV.
OREG.
WASH.
IDAHO
MONT.
WYO.
UTAH COLO.
OKLA.
KANS.
NEBR.
S. DAK.
N. DAK. MINN.
IOWA
MO.
ARK.
LA.
MISS. ALA.
FLA.
GA.
S.C.
N.C. TENN.
KY.
ILL. IND. OHIO
WIS. MICH.
VA.W.VA.
MD. DEL.
PA.
N.J.
N.Y.
CONN. R.I.
MASS.
N.H.
VT. MAINE
States ratifying
States not ratifying
VOTING ON THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT By the end of 1974, thirty-four states had ratified the ERA; Indiana finally approved the amendment in 1977, but the remaining fifteen states held out, leaving ratification three states short of the required three-fourths majority.
Private Lives, Public Issues 747
thousand local clubs and organizations and won a series of notable victories. In 1974, the American Psychiatric Association stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental disorder, and by the end of the decade, half the states had repealed their sodomy statutes. Gays fought hard in cities and states for laws forbidding discrimi- nation against homosexuals in housing and employment, and in 1980, they fi nally succeeded in getting a gay rights plank in the Democratic National Platform.
In the 1980s, the onset of the AIDS epidemic (see pp. 748–749 ) forced the gay liberation movement onto the defensive. Stung by the accusation that AIDS was a “gay disease,” male homosexuals faced new public condemnation at a time when they were trying desper- ately to care for the growing number of victims of the disease within their ranks. Th e gay organizations formed in the 1970s to win new rights now were channeling their energies into caring for the ill, pro- moting safe sex practices, and fi ghting for more public funding to help conquer AIDS. In 1986, ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) began a series of violent demonstrations in an eff ort to shock the nation into doing more about AIDS. ACT UP members disrupted public meetings, chained themselves to a New York Stock Exchange balcony, and spray-painted outlines of corpses on the streets of San Francisco to call attention to those who had died of AIDS.
vans, a crowd of gay onlookers began to jeer and taunt the police. A riot quickly broke out. “Beer cans and bottles were heaved at the windows and a rain of coins descended on the cops,” reported the Village Voice . “Almost by signal the crowd erupted into cobblestone and bottle heaving.” Th e next night, more than four hundred police offi cers battled two thousand gay demonstrators through the streets of Greenwich Village. Th e two-day Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the modern gay liberation move- ment. Refusing to play the role of victims any longer, gays and lesbians decided to affi rm their sexual orientation and demand an end to discrimination against homosexuals.
Within a few days, two new organizations were formed in New York, the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance, with branches and off shoots quickly appearing in cities across the country. Th e basic theme of gay liberation was to urge all homosexuals to “come out of the closet” and affi rm with pride their sexual identity; instead of shame, they would fi nd freedom and self-respect in the very act of coming out. “Come out for freedom! Come out now!” proclaimed the Gay Liberation Front’s newspaper. “Come out of the closet before the door is nailed shut!”
In the course of the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of gays and lesbians responded to this call. Th ey formed more than a
Roe v. Wade exerted a tremendous impact throughout the country, as only four states had enacted laws guaranteeing a woman widespread access to an abortion at the time of the ruling. The abortion issue continues to be a major source of controversy within U.S. politics and society.
Read the Document Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973)
748 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
same-sex couples. While nearly one-quarter were in California and New York, there was at least one gay or lesbian couple living in 99 percent of the nation’s counties.
The AIDS Epidemic Th e outbreak of AIDS (acquired immune defi ciency syndrome) in the early 1980s took most Americans by surprise. Even health experts had diffi culty grasping the nature and extent of the new public health threat. Doctors fi rst noticed a few cases of a rare form of pneumonia and an unusual type of skin cancer in male patients in New York City and San Francisco in 1981. Th e Centers for Disease Control noted the phenomenon in a June 1981 bulletin, but it was several years before researchers fi nally identifi ed it as a hitherto unknown human immunodefi ciency virus (HIV). HIV apparently originated in Central Africa and spread to the United States, where it found its fi rst victims primarily among gay men.
Initially, AIDS was perceived as a threat only to gay men. With a growing sense of urgency as the death toll mounted, gay men began to practice safer sex, using condoms and confi ning themselves to trusted partners. It soon became clear, however, that AIDS could not be so easily contained. It began to appear among intravenous (IV) drug users who shared the same needles and eventually among hemophili- acs and others receiving frequent blood transfusions. Th e threat of a contaminated national blood supply terrifi ed middle-class America, as did the possibility of the spread of AIDS to heterosexuals.
Scientists tried to reassure the public by explaining that the virus could be spread only by the exchange of bodily fl uids, pri- marily blood and semen, and not by casual contact. Th e death of former movie star Rock Hudson from AIDS in the summer of 1985, however, intensifi ed the sense of national panic. Controversy soon developed over proposals for mandatory blood tests for sus- pected HIV carriers and for the quarantine of AIDS victims. Th e integrity of hospital blood supplies caused the most realistic con- cern; in 1985, a new test fi nally gave reassurance that transfusions could be performed safely.
Th e Reagan administration proved slow and halting in its approach to the AIDS epidemic. Th e lack of sympathy for gays and a need to reduce the defi cit worked against any large increase in health spending; what little money was devoted to AIDS went almost entirely for research rather than for educational measures to slow its spread. Th e only real leadership came from Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, who surprised his conservative backers in 1986 by coming out boldly with proposals for sex education, the use of condoms to ensure “safer sex,” and confi dential blood test- ing to help contain the disease.
While the administration dallied, the grim toll mounted. Because the average time between the initial HIV infection and the fi rst symptoms of AIDS was fi ve years and the delay could be as long as fourteen years, eff orts at prevention had little immedi- ate impact. In November 1983, there were 2,803 known cases and 1,416 deaths; by the time Hollywood fi lm actor Rock Hudson died from complications of HIV/AIDS in mid-1985, more than 12,000 cases and more than 6,000 deaths had been reported.
Growing public concern fi nally led to action. In 1987, Reagan appointed a special presidential commission headed by Admiral James Watkins, a former chief of naval operations, to study the
Th e movement also continued to stimulate gay conscious- ness in the 1980s. In 1987, an estimated six hundred thousand gays and lesbians took part in a march on Washington on behalf of gay rights. Every year aft erward, gay groups held a National Coming Out Day in October to encourage homosexuals to pro- claim proudly their sexual identity. In a more controversial move, some gay leaders encouraged “outing”—releasing the names of prominent homosexuals, primarily politicians and movie stars— in an eff ort to make the nation aware of how many Americans were gay or lesbian. Gay leaders claimed there were more than twenty million gays and lesbians in the nation, basing this esti- mate on a Kinsey report which had stated in the late 1940s that one in ten American males had engaged in homosexual behav- ior. A sociological survey released in the spring of 1993 contra- dicted those numbers, fi nding only 1.1 percent of American males exclusively homosexual. Whatever the actual number, it was clear by the 1990s that gays and lesbians formed a signifi cant minority that had succeeded in forcing the nation, however grudgingly, to respect its rights.
Th ere was one battle, however, in which victory eluded the gay liberation movement. In the 1992 election, gays and lesbians strongly backed Democratic candidate Bill Clinton, who prom- ised, if elected, to end the ban on homosexuals in the military. In his fi rst days in offi ce, however, President Clinton stirred up great resistance in the Pentagon and Congress when he tried to issue an executive order forbidding such discrimination. Th e Joint Chiefs of Staff and many Democrats, led by Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, warned that acceptance of gays and lesbians would destroy morale and seriously weaken the armed forces. Clinton fi nally settled for the Pentagon’s compromise “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that would permit homosexuals to continue serving in the military as they had in the past as long as they did not reveal their sexual preference and refrained from homo- sexual conduct. However disappointed gays and lesbians were in Clinton’s retreat, their leaders understood that the real problem was the resistance of mainstream America to full acceptance of homosexuality.
Public attitudes toward gays and lesbians seemed to be changing in the 1990s, but the growing tolerance had definite limits. In a 1996 poll, 85 percent of those questioned believed that gays should be treated equally in the workplace, up from 76 percent in 1992. Violence against gays, however, continued, most notably in the 1998 fatal beating of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student, in Wyoming. Th e brutal attack spurred calls for hate-crime legislation, and the judge in the case, banning a so-called gay-panic defense, sentenced Shepard’s assailant to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Th e issue of same-sex marriage came to a head at the end of the century. In 1996, President Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which decreed that states did not have to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. But in 2000, following a state supreme court ruling, the Vermont legislature legalized civil unions between individuals of the same sex, enabling gays and les- bians to receive all the legal benefi ts available to married couples. Whether sanctioned by law or not, the number of gay and lesbian households steadily increased; the 2000 census revealed that there were nearly six hundred thousand homes in America headed by
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate 749
who had been forced to resign in order to avoid prosecution for accepting bribes while he was governor of Maryland. Ford, an amiable and unpretentious Michigan congressman who had risen to the post of House minority leader, seemed ready to restore public confi dence in the presidency when he replaced Nixon in August 1974.
Ford’s honeymoon lasted only a month. On September 8, 1974, he shocked the nation by announcing he had granted Richard Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for all federal crimes he may have committed. Some critics charged darkly that Nixon and Ford had made a secret bargain; others pointed out how unfair it was for Nixon’s aides to serve their prison terms while the chief criminal went free. Ford apparently acted in an eff ort to end the bitterness over Watergate, but his attempt backfi red, eroding public confi dence in his leadership and linking him indelibly with the scandal.
Ford soon found himself fi ghting an equally diffi cult battle on behalf of the beleaguered CIA. Th e Watergate scandal and the Vietnam fi asco had eroded public confi dence in the government and lent credibility to a startling series of disclosures about past covert actions. Th e president allowed the CIA to confi rm some of the charges, and then he made things worse by blurting out to the press the juiciest item of all: Th e CIA had been involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders.
Senate and House select committees appointed to investigate the CIA now focused on the assassination issue, eventually charg- ing that the agency had been involved in no less than eight separate attempts to kill Fidel Castro. Th e chairman of the Senate committee, Frank Church of Idaho, worried that the revelations would damage the reputations of Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; he tried to put all the blame on the CIA, likening it to “a rogue elephant on the rampage.”
In late 1975, President Ford finally moved to limit the damage to the CIA. He appointed George H. W. Bush, then a respected former Republican congressman, as the agency’s new director and gave him the authority both to reform the CIA and to strengthen its role in shaping national security policy. Most notably, Ford issued an executive order outlawing assassina- tion as an instrument of American foreign policy. To prevent future abuses, Congress created permanent House and Senate intelligence committees to exercise general oversight for covert CIA operations.
Ford proved less successful in his dealings with Congress on other issues. Although he prided himself on his good relations with members of both houses, he opposed Democratic measures such as federal aid to education and control over strip mining. In a little more than a year, he vetoed thirty-nine separate bills. In fact, Ford, who as a congressman had opposed virtually every Great Society measure, proved far more conservative than Nixon in the White House.
Carter and American Malaise Ford’s lackluster record and the legacy of Watergate made the Democratic nomination a prize worth fi ghting for in 1976. A large fi eld of candidates entered the contest, but a virtual unknown, former Georgia governor James Earl Carter, quickly became the
AIDS epidemic. Th e Watkins report in 1988 criticized the admin- istration’s AIDS eff orts as “inconsistent” and recommended a new eff ort that included antidiscrimination legislation and explicit pre- vention education. Koop responded by sending out a pamphlet titled “Understanding AIDS” to 107 million households, while in the fall, Congress voted to spend $1.3 billion to fi ght AIDS, with much of the money going for confi dential testing and counseling and home care for victims.
Despite the new eff orts, the epidemic continued to grow. In 1987, there were 50,000 cases; by mid-1989, the count had reached 100,000. Th e U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, reported more than 200,000 cases at the end of 1991; the total had increased to more than 500,000 by mid-1996. By then, 345,000 AIDS victims had died, making it the leading cause of death for Americans aged 25 to 44.
Th e number of those infected with HIV appeared to be stabilizing by the mid-1990s at between 650,000 and 900,000. Yet, what was once known as the gay disease had spread far beyond that one group in society by the end of the century. Minorities and the young were at greatest risk. African American youths made up two-thirds of the new HIV cases among people under 25. “Th e disease is disappearing from the mainstream” claimed a Washington, D.C., clinic director, “and becoming a disease of kids who are disenfranchised anyway.”
Th e most encouraging development was a fall-off in the death rate from AIDS that began in the mid-1990s. Health offi cials attrib- uted the decline to heavier spending on treatment and prevention and, above all, to powerful new drug combinations. By 2001, how- ever, the drop in new cases and deaths from AIDS began to level off . “Th e latest data,” commented one expert in August 2001, “suggest that the era of dramatic declines is now over.” Th ere was a particu- larly alarming increase in the number of new cases among young gay men who apparently believed that the new treatment had made the disease manageable. But unfortunately the so-called AIDS cock- tail was very expensive, running as high as $15,000 a year, and did not work for everyone. And even more disturbing was the growing realization that AIDS was threatening to decimate the population of developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
Why did the presidencies of Ford and Carter largely fail?
Th e economic and social disruptions of the era contributed to problems of governance left over from Watergate. Even as many Americans worried about shrinking paychecks and disintegrat- ing families, Congress increasingly challenged the prerogatives of the presidency. Th is made life in the White House diffi cult for Richard Nixon’s immediate successors—and it made solving America’s pressing problems nearly impossible.
The Ford Administration Gerald R. Ford had the distinction of being the fi rst president who had not been elected to national offi ce. Richard Nixon had appointed him to the vice presidency to succeed Spiro Agnew,
750 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
On television, the basic Carter commercial showed him at his Georgia peanut farm, dressed in blue jeans, looking directly into the camera and saying, “I’ll never tell a lie.”
Voters took Carter at his word, and elected him over Ford in a close contest. Unfortunately, Carter’s outsider status, while attractive in a campaign, made governing as president diffi cult. He had no discern- ible political philosophy, no clear sense of direction. He called himself a populist, but that label meant little more than an appeal to the common man, a somewhat ironic appeal, given Carter’s personal wealth. “Th e idea of a millionaire populist has always amused me,” commented his attorney general, fellow Georgian Griffi n Bell.
Lacking both a clear set of priorities and a coherent political philosophy, the Carter administration had little chance to succeed. The President strove hard for a balanced budget but was forced to accept mounting defi cits. Federal agencies fought to save the environment and help consumers but served only to anger industry.
In the crucial area of social services, Joseph Califano, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), failed repeatedly in efforts to carry out long- overdue reforms. His attempts to overhaul the nation’s welfare program, which had become a $30 billion annual operation serv- ing some thirty million Americans, won little support from the White House. Carter’s unwillingness to take the political risks involved in revamping the overburdened Social Security system by reducing ben- efi ts and raising the retirement age blocked Califano’s eff orts. And the HEW secretary finally gave up his attempt to draw up a workable national health insurance plan.
Informed by his pollsters in 1979 that he was losing the nation’s confi dence, Carter sought desperately to redeem himself. Aft er a series of meetings at Camp David with a wide variety of advisers, he gave a speech in which he seemed to blame his failure on the American people, accusing them of creating “a crisis of confi dence . . . that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” Then, a week after what his critics termed the “national malaise” speech, he requested
the resignation of Califano and the secretary of the treasury. But neither the attempt to pin responsibility on the American people nor the fi ring of cabinet members could hide the fact that Carter, despite his good intentions and hard work, had failed to provide the bold leadership the nation needed.
front-runner. Aware of the voters’ disgust with politicians of both parties, Jimmy Carter ran as an outsider, portraying himself as a southerner who had no experience in Washington and one who could thus give the nation fresh and untainted leadership.
As national polls in the summer of 1979 reflected a profound loss of Americans’ confidence in the leadership of President Jimmy Carter, the president attempted to rally the nation and redeem his presidency with his nationally televised “Crisis of Confidence” speech.
Jimmy Carter, The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech (1979)
Watch the Video
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate 751
with the shah, despite growing signs of domestic discontent with his leadership. By 1978, Iran was in chaos as the exiled Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini led a fundamentalist Muslim revolt against the shah, who was forced to fl ee the country.
In October 1979, Carter permitted the shah to enter the United States for medical treatment. Irate mobs in Iran denounced the United States, and on November 4, militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took fi ft y-three Americans prisoner. The prolonged Iranian hostage crisis revealed the extent to which American power had declined in the 1970s. Carter relied fi rst on diplomacy and economic reprisals in a vain attempt to free the hostages. In April 1980, the president authorized a desperate rescue mission that ended in failure when several helicopters broke down in the Iranian desert and an accident cost the lives of eight crew- men. Th e hostage crisis dragged on through the summer and fall of 1980, a symbol of American weakness that proved to be a powerful political handicap to Carter in the upcoming presidential election.
The Collapse of Détente Th e policy of détente was already in trouble when Carter took offi ce in 1977. Congressional refusal to relax trade restrictions on the Soviet Union had doomed Kissinger’s attempts to win politi- cal concessions from the Soviets through economic incentives. Th e Kremlin’s repression of the growing dissident movement and its harsh policy restricting the emigration of Soviet Jews had caused many Americans to doubt the wisdom of seeking accom- modation with the Soviet Union.
President Carter’s emphasis on human rights appeared to the Russians to be a direct repudiation of détente. In his inaugural address, Carter reaffi rmed his concern over the mistreatment of
THE ELECTION OF 1976
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Jimmy Carter Democratic 40,828,587 297
Gerald Ford Republican 39,147,613 241
Troubles Abroad In the aft ermath of the Vietnam War, most Americans wanted to have little to do with the world. Military intervention had failed in Southeast Asia, and with the American economy in trouble, the country’s economic leverage appeared minimal. Moreover, the point of détente was to diminish the need for American inter- vention abroad by directing the superpower contest with the Soviet Union into political channels.
Yet various groups in the developing world didn’t get the mes- sage of détente. Central America, for example, witnessed numerous uprisings against entrenched authoritarian regimes. In mid-1979, dictator Anastasio Somoza capitulated to the Sandinista forces in Nicaragua. Despite American attempts to moderate the Sandinista revolution, the new regime moved steadily to the left , developing close ties with Castro’s Cuba. In neighboring El Salvador, a grow- ing left ist insurgency against a repressive regime put the United States in an awkward position. Unable to fi nd a workable alterna- tive between the extremes of reactionary dictatorship and radical revolution in Central America, Carter tried to use American eco- nomic aid to encourage the military junta in El Salvador to carry out democratic reforms. But aft er the guerrillas launched a major off ensive in January 1981, he authorized large-scale military assis- tance to the government for its war against the insurgents, setting a precedent for the future.
Carter initially had better luck in the Middle East. In 1978, he invited Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin to negotiate a peace treaty under his guidance at Camp David. For thirteen days, Carter met with Sadat and Begin, fi nally emerging with the Camp David accords . A framework for negotiations rather than an actual peace settlement, the Camp David accords nonetheless paved the way for a 1979 treaty between these principal antagonists in the Arab– Israeli confl ict. Th e treaty provided for the gradual return of the Sinai to Egypt but left the fate of the Palestinians, the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, unsettled.
Any sense of progress in the Middle East was quickly off set in 1979 with the outbreak of the Iranian revolution. Under Nixon and Kissinger, the United States had come to depend heavily on the shah for defense of the vital Persian Gulf. Carter continued the close relationship
Blindfolded American hostages stand among their Iranian captors after Iranian militants captured the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979. The Iranians’ capture of fifty-three Americans as hostages and their violent attacks on the embassy shocked U.S. citizens. The hostage crisis dragged on for the rest of Carter’s administration; the hostages were not released until January 1981.
752 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
The Reagan Revolution
What was the “Reagan revolution”?
Aft er the turmoil of the 1960s, the economic and political troubles of the 1970s made Americans’ turn to conservatism almost inevi- table. Th e Watergate scandal won the Democrats a brief reprieve, but when the Republicans discovered an attractive candidate in Ronald Reagan, a decisive Republican victory was essentially assured.
The Election of 1980 In 1980, Jimmy Carter, who had used the Watergate trauma to win the presidency, found himself in serious trouble. Infl ation, touched off by the second oil shock of the 1970s, reached double- digit fi gures. Th e Federal Reserve Board’s eff ort to tighten the money supply had led to a recession, with unemployment climb- ing to nearly 8 percent by July 1980. What Ronald Reagan dubbed the “misery index,” the combined rate of infl ation and unemploy- ment, hit 28 percent early in 1980 and stayed above 20 percent throughout the year.
Foreign policy proved almost as damaging to Carter. Th e Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had exploded hopes for continued détente
human beings anywhere in the world, declaring that “our commit- ment to human rights must be absolute.” It was easier said than done. Carter withheld aid from authoritarian governments in Chile and Argentina, but equally repressive regimes in South Korea and the Philippines continued to receive generous American support. Th e Soviets, however, found even an inconsistent human rights policy to be threatening, particularly aft er Carter received Soviet exiles in the White House.
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance concentrated on continuing the main pillar of détente, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT). In 1974, President Ford had met with Brezhnev in Vladivostok and reached tentative agreement on the outline of SALT II. Th e chief provision was for a ceiling of twenty-four hundred nuclear launchers by each side, a level that would not require either the Soviet Union or the United States to give up any existing delivery vehicles. In March 1977, Vance went to Moscow to propose a dras- tic reduction in this level; the Soviets, already angry over human rights, rejected the American proposal as an attempt to overcome the Soviet lead in land-based ICBMs.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, worked from the outset to reverse the policy of détente. Commenting that he was “the fi rst Pole in three hundred years in a position to really stick it to the Russians,” he favored confrontation with the Kremlin. Although Carter signed a SALT II treaty with Russia in 1979, low- ering the ceiling on nuclear delivery systems to 2,250, growing opposition in the Senate played directly into Brzezinski’s hands. He prevailed on the president to advocate adoption of a new MX missile to replace the existing Minuteman ICBMs, which some experts thought were now vulnerable to a Soviet fi rst strike. Th is new weapons system, together with the planned Trident subma- rine, ensured that regardless of SALT, the nuclear arms race would be speeded up in the 1980s.
Brzezinski also was successful in persuading the president to use China to outmaneuver the Soviets. On January 1, 1979, the United States and China exchanged ambassadors, thereby com- pleting the reconciliation that Nixon had begun in 1971. Th e new relationship between Beijing and Washington presented the Soviet Union with the problem of a link between its two most powerful enemies.
The Cold War, in abeyance for nearly a decade, resumed with full fury in December 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Although this move was designed to ensure a regime friendly to the Soviet Union, it appeared to many the beginning of a Soviet thrust toward the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. Carter responded to this aggression by declaring a “Carter doc- trine” that threatened armed opposition to any further Soviet advance toward the Gulf. Th e president banned the sale of high technology to Russia, embargoed the export of grain, resumed draft registration, and even boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Th e Soviet action and the American reaction doomed détente. Aware that he could not get a two-thirds vote in the Senate, Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty. Th e hopeful phrases of détente gave way to belligerent rhetoric as groups such as the Committee on the Present Danger called for an all-out eff ort against the Soviet Union. Jimmy Carter, who had come into offi ce hoping to advance human rights and control the nuclear arms race, now found himself a victim of a renewed Cold War.
9
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ALASKA
HAWAII
WASH., D.C.
Election of 1980
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN Ronald Reagan
Popular Vote
43,901,812489
DEMOCRATIC Jimmy Carter 35,483,82049
MINOR PARTIES 921,188
INDEPENDENT John B. Anderson 5,719,437
86,026,257538
Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address (1981)
Read the Document
The Reagan Revolution 753
blamed what he termed “the worst economic mess since the Great Depression” on high federal spending and excessive taxa- tion. “Government is not the solution to our problems,” Reagan announced in his inaugural address. “Government is the problem.”
The president embraced the concept of supply-side economics as the remedy for the nation’s economic ills. Supply- side economists believed that the private sector, if encouraged by tax cuts, would shift its resources from tax shelters to productive investment, leading to an economic boom that would provide enough new income to off set the lost revenue. Although many economists worried that the 30 percent cut in income taxes that Reagan favored would lead to large defi cits, the president was con- fi dent that his program would both stimulate the economy and reduce the role of government.
Th e president made federal spending his fi rst target. Quickly deciding not to attack such popular middle-class entitlement pro- grams as Social Security and Medicare, and sparing critical social services for the “truly deserving needy,” the so-called safety net, the Republicans concentrated on slashing $41 billion from the budget by cutting heavily into other social services such as food stamps and by reducing public service jobs, student loans, and support for urban mass transit. Reagan used his charm and powers of per- suasion to woo conservative Democrats from the West and South. Appearing before a joint session of Congress only weeks aft er an attempt on his life, Reagan won a commanding 253 to 176 margin of victory for his budget in the House, and an even more lopsided vote of 78 to 20 in the Senate in May. A jubilant Reagan told a Los Angeles audience that he had achieved “the greatest reduction in government spending that has ever been attempted.”
and made Carter appear naive. Th e continuing hostage crisis in Iran underlined the administration’s helplessness.
Ronald Reagan and his running mate, George H. W. Bush, hammered away at the state of the economy and the world. Reagan scored heavily among traditionally Democratic blue-collar groups by blaming Carter for infl ation, which robbed workers of any gain in real wages. Reagan also accused Carter of allowing the Soviets to outstrip the United States militarily and promised a massive buildup of American forces if he was elected. Carter’s position was further hurt by the independent candidacy of liberal Republican John Anderson of Illinois, who appealed to voters disenchanted with Carter but not yet ready to embrace Reagan.
Th e president fought back by claiming that Reagan was too reckless to conduct American foreign policy in the nuclear age. Charging that the election would decide “whether we have peace or war,” Carter tried to portray his Republican challenger as a war- monger. Reagan defl ected the charge and summarized the case against the administration by putting a simple question to voters: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Voters answered with a resounding “no.” Reagan carried forty-four states and gained 51 percent of the popular vote. Carter won only six states and 41 percent of the popular vote, while John Anderson received the remaining 8 percent but failed to carry a single state. Reagan clearly benefi ted from the growing political power of the Sunbelt; he carried every state west of the Mississippi except Minnesota, the home state of Carter’s running mate, Walter Mondale. In the South, Reagan lost only Georgia, Carter’s home state. Even more impressive were Reagan’s inroads into the old New Deal coalition. He received 50.5 percent of the blue-collar vote and 46 percent of the Jewish vote, the best show- ing by a Republican since 1928. Only one group remained loyal to Carter: African American vot- ers gave him 85 percent of their ballots.
Republican gains in Congress were even more surprising. For the fi rst time since 1954, the GOP gained control of the Senate, 53 to 46, and the party picked up 33 seats in the House to narrow the Democratic margin from 114 to 50.
Th ough the full implications of the 1980 elec- tion remained to be seen, the outcome suggested that the Democratic coalition that had domi- nated American politics since the days of Franklin Roosevelt was falling apart. In the eight presidential elections from 1952 to 1980, Republican candidates received 52.3 percent of the popular vote, com- pared with 47.7 percent for the Democrats. Reagan’s victory in 1980 thus marked the culmination of a Republican presidential realignment that ended a half-century of Democratic dominance.
Cutting Taxes and Spending When Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, the ravages of infl ation had devastated the economy. Interest rates hovered near 20 percent, while the value of the dollar, compared to 1960, had dropped to just 36 cents. Th e new president
President Ronald Reagan’s televised speech to the nation in the 1981 advocating deep personal income taxes to spur economic growth and limit the ability of Congress to spend funds on domestic social programs. President Reagan persuaded Congress to adopt a 25 percent cut in personal income taxes over three years.
Ronald Reagan on the Wisdom of the Tax Cut Watch the Video
754 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
In March 1983, Congress approved a series of changes that guaran- teed the solvency of Social Security by gradually raising the retire- ment age, delaying cost-of-living increases for six months, and taxing pensions paid to the well-to-do elderly.
Th e administration’s record in dealing with women’s concerns and civil rights proved clumsy and divisive. Although feminist groups were disappointed by the administration’s strong rhetori- cal attacks on legalized abortion, the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court pleased them. By this one shrewd move, Reagan was able both to fulfi ll a campaign pledge and to make a symbolic gesture to women. His appointments to the lower federal courts were a better indication of his administration’s rela- tively low regard for women. Of the fi rst seventy-two Reagan nomi- nees to the federal judiciary, only three were women; just one of the sixty-nine men was African American.
Th e president proved equally successful in trimming taxes. He initially advocated annual cuts of 10 percent in personal income taxes for three consecutive years. When the Democrats countered with a two-year plan that would reduce taxes by only 15 percent, Reagan compromised with a proposal to cut taxes by 5 percent the fi rst year but insisted on the full 10 percent reduction for the second and third years. In July, both houses passed the tax cut by impressive margins.
In securing reductions in spending and lowering taxes, Reagan demonstrated beyond doubt his ability to wield presidential power eff ectively. As Time magazine commented, no president since FDR had “done so much of such magnitude so quickly to change the economic direction of the country.”
Unleashing the Private Sector Reagan met with only mixed success in his other eff orts to restrict government activity and reduce federal regulation of the economy. Cutting back on the scope of federal agencies and limiting their impact on American business was a central tenet of the president’s political philosophy. To achieve his goal of deregulation he appointed men and women who shared his belief in relying on the marketplace rather than the bureaucracy to direct the nation’s economy. To the outrage of environmentalists, Secretary of the Interior James Watt opened up federal land to coal and timber production, halted the growth of national parkland, and made more than a billion acres available for off shore oil drilling. Th ough Watt was eventually forced to resign, the Reagan administration continued its policy of reducing government intervention in business long aft er Watt’s departure.
Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis proved to be the most eff ective cabinet member in the administration’s fi rst two years. He helped relieve the troubled American automobile industry of many of the regulations adopted in the 1970s to reduce air pollution and increase passenger safety. At the same time, he played a key role in the behind-the-scenes negotiations that led Japan to agree in the spring of 1981 to restrict its automobile exports to the United States for the next three years. Th is unilateral Japanese action enabled the Reagan administration to help Detroit’s carmakers without openly violating its free market position by endorsing protectionist measures.
Lewis gained notoriety in opposing a strike by the air traffi c controllers’ union (PATCO) in the summer of 1981. Th e president, denouncing PATCO for threatening to interrupt “the protective services which are government’s reason for being,” fi red the striking workers, decertifi ed the union, and ordered Lewis to hire and train thousands of new air traffi c controllers at a cost of $1.3 billion. For the Reagan administration, the price was worth paying to prove that no group of government employees had the right to defy the public interest.
Th e Reagan administration was less successful in trying to cut back on the entitlement programs that it viewed as the primary cause of the growing budget defi cits. Social Security was the great- est off ender. A 500 percent increase in Social Security benefi ts in the 1970s threatened to bankrupt the system’s trust fund by the end of the century. Reagan, overconfi dent from his budget victory, met a sharp rebuff when he tried to make substantial cuts in future benefi ts. Th e president then appointed a bipartisan commission to recommend ways to protect the system’s endangered trust fund.
The Professional Air Traffic Controllers’ Organization (PATCO) was one of the few unions to support Reagan in the 1980 campaign. But when PATCO struck in August 1981, Reagan unhesitatingly fired the striking air traffic controllers and refused to rehire them when the strike collapsed.
Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers Strike
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Reagan and the World 755
Britain and Germany in November 1983. Th e Soviets, claiming the move gave them only ten minutes of warning time in case of an American attack, responded by breaking off disarmament negotiations in Geneva.
Th e nuclear arms race had now reached a more dangerous level than ever before. The United States stepped up research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) , an antimissile system based on the use of lasers and particle beams to destroy incoming missiles in outer space. SDI was quickly dubbed “star wars” by the media. Critics doubted that the SDI could be perfected, but they warned that even if it were, the result would be to escalate the arms race by forcing the Russians to build more off ensive missiles in order to overcome the American defense system. Th e Reagan administration, however, defended SDI as a legitimate attempt to free the United States from the deadly trap of deterrence, with its reliance on the threat of nuclear retalia- tion to keep the peace. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union kept deploy- ing larger and more accurate land-based ICBMs. Although both sides continued to observe the unratifi ed SALT II agreements, the fact remained that between them the two superpowers had nearly fi ft y thousand warheads in their nuclear arsenals.
Confrontation in Central America Reagan perceived the Soviet challenge as extending across the globe. In Central America, an area marked by great extremes of wealth, with a small landowning elite and masses of peasants mired in poverty, the United States had traditionally looked for moderate middle-class regimes to support. But these were hard to fi nd, and Washington oft en ended up backing repressive right- wing dictatorships rather than the left ist groups that raised the radical issues of land reform and redistribution of wealth. Yet it was oft en oppression by U.S.-supported regimes that drove those seeking political change to embrace revolutionary tactics.
Th is was precisely what happened in Nicaragua, where the left ist Sandinista coalition fi nally succeeded in overthrowing the authoritarian Somoza regime in 1979. In an eff ort to strengthen the many middle-class elements in the original Sandinista gov- ernment and to avoid forcing Nicaragua into the Cuban and Soviet orbit, Carter extended American economic aid.
The Reagan administration quickly reversed this policy. Secretary of State Alexander Haig cut off aid to Nicaragua in the spring of 1981, accusing the Sandinistas of driving out the moder- ates, welcoming Cuban advisers and Soviet military assistance, and serving as a supply base for left ist guerrillas in nearby El Salvador. Th e criticism became a self-fulfi lling prophecy as Nicaragua became even more dependent on Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Th e United States and Nicaragua were soon on a collision course. In April 1983, declaring that “the national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America,” Reagan asked Congress for the money and authority to oust the Sandinistas. When Congress, fearful of repeating the Vietnam fi asco, refused, Reagan opted for covert action. Th e CIA began supplying the Contras, exiles fi ghting against the Sandinistas from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica. Th e U.S.-backed rebels tried to disrupt the Nicaraguan economy, raiding villages, blowing up oil tanks, and even mining harbors. Th en, in 1984, Congress passed the Boland Amendment
The administration’s civil rights record proved especially revealing. Aware of how few African Americans had supported the GOP in 1980, Reagan made no eff ort to reward this group with government jobs or favors. Instead, the Justice Department actively opposed busing to achieve school integration and affi rmative action measures that resulted in minority hiring quotas.
Reagan and the World
How did Reagan reshape American foreign relations?
Reagan was determined to reverse the course of American policy abroad no less than at home. He believed that under Carter, American prestige and standing in the world had dropped to an all-time low. Intent on restoring traditional American pride and infl uence, Reagan devoted himself to strengthening America’s defenses and recapturing world supremacy from the Soviet Union.
Challenging the “Evil Empire” Th e president scored his fi rst foreign policy victory on the day he took offi ce, thanks to diplomatic eff orts begun under Carter. On January 20, 1981, Iran released the fi ft y-three Americans held hostage and thus enabled Reagan to begin his presidency on a positive note.
He built upon this accomplishment by embarking on a major military expansion. Here again he continued eff orts begun by Carter, who aft er the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had persuaded Congress to fund a 5 percent increase in defense spending. The Reagan expansion went far beyond Carter’s. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger proposed a plan that would more than double defense spending. Th e emphasis was on new weapons, ranging from the B-1 bomber and the controversial MX nuclear missile to the expan- sion of the navy from 456 to 600 ships. Despite some opposition in Congress, Reagan and Weinberger got most of what they wanted, and by 1985 the defense budget grew to more than $300 billion.
Th e justifi cation for all the new weapons was Reagan’s belief that the Soviet Union was a deadly enemy that threatened the well- being and security of the United States. Reagan saw the Russians as bent on world revolution, ready “to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat” to advance their cause. Citing what he called a “record of tyranny,” Reagan denounced the Russians before the UN in 1982, claiming, “Soviet-sponsored guerrillas and terrorists are at work in Central and South America, in Africa, the Middle East, in the Caribbean and in Europe, violating human rights and unnerving the world with violence.”
Given this view of Russia as “the focus of evil in the mod- ern world,” it is not surprising that the new president contin- ued the hard line that Carter had adopted aft er the invasion of Afghanistan. Abandoning détente, Reagan proceeded to imple- ment a 1979 decision to place 572 Pershing II and cruise missiles in western Europe within range of Moscow and other Russian population centers to match Soviet deployment of medium- range missiles aimed at NATO countries. Despite strong protests from the Soviet Union, as well as growing uneasiness in Europe and an increasingly vocal nuclear freeze movement at home, the United States began putting the weapons in bases in Great
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their more traditional sermons and advice on living the Christian life. The televangelists produced publications and solicited contributions for their ministries. Their mailing lists formed the fi rst “membership roles” of the new Christian Right. Jimmy Carter was one of their earliest national benefi ciaries and suffered the consequences.
Carter was a devoted Baptist who taught Sunday school, readily pro- fessed his Christianity, and empha- sized family values in his speeches. He received the endorsement of some of the televangelists for his campaign to become president of the United States, and the national press began to pay closer attention to his personal reli- gious beliefs. But support from the budding Christian Right was not nec- essarily an asset; such Christians hold themselves, their preachers, and other Christians to very high standards of moral behavior and ideological purity. When Carter discussed his Christian commitment in an interview in Playboy
and science lectures. Church leaders often encouraged their congregations to become more active in local politics; they endorsed candidates and causes and passed out literature at church services. Conservative Christians also supported candidates who promised measures that would reverse the per- ceived decline in traditional family values as evidenced by feminism, abor- tion, and overt homosexuality.
Concern for the changing values of Americana resulted in a new series of revivals. The open-air “camp meet- ings” of past awakenings developed into gatherings that packed thousands into large arenas for events broadcast by television to extended audiences. A number of Christian preachers used television to broaden their ministries. Several, like Falwell, pro- duced their own weekly or daily tele- vision broadcasts. The new television evangelists—dubbed televangelists — combined commentary on social, eco- nomic, and foreign policy issues with
In early 1979, Rev. Jerry Falwell was fl ying to Lynchburg, Virginia, when he suddenly felt God calling him to enlist “the good people of America” in a crusade to battle permissiveness and moral decay. Falwell, who had built a small church in Lynchburg into a huge religious enterprise with eighteen thousand members, sixty associate pastors, and a television and radio audience of a million and a half, plus fi fteen hundred students at Liberty Baptist College, launched his new enterprise on Capitol Hill in April 1979. Announcing that it was time to “fi ght the pornography, obscen- ity, vulgarity, profanity that, under the guise of sex education and ‘values clarifi cation,”’ pervaded public school education, Falwell founded an overtly political organi- zation to purify American society. He invited Roman Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Mormons, and even nonreligious conservatives to join his “Moral Majority.”
Falwell’s Moral Majority high- lighted the emergence in the 1970s of what journalists called the Christian Right. Throughout American history, many church members have been swept up in religious “awakenings.” Leaders of the revivals have called Americans back to personal piety and a concern for their society and its changing values. At those times, Christians have been urged to work actively to change their communities.
The Supreme Court’s 1962 and 1963 decisions to ban school- sponsored prayer and Bible reading sparked increased political activity among conservative Christians. Many joined organizations working at the local level to gain greater control over public education and the content of textbooks
The Christian Right Feature Essay
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Ronald Reagan appears with Rev. Jerry Falwell at a Moral Majority rally in Dallas, Texas, in 1980. Falwell’s Moral Majority and other similar evangelical groups endorsed conservative positions on a variety of issues, including abortion and school prayer. In his two presidential election campaigns, Reagan vigorously sought the support of Falwell’s followers.
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By the end of the twentieth century, the Christian Right had grown into a powerful political force but its national program remained unreal- ized. Conservative Christians had become experts at mobilizing support for national elections and local causes and candidates, but they did not form a mature political entity willing to negotiate, compromise, or trade one goal in order to achieve another. Many religious activists quickly became disillusioned with politics when their candidates could not fulfi ll all their promises once elected. Likewise, candidates who campaigned on the programs of the Christian Right often lost the support of the general elec- torate because they were seen as too extreme. Clearly, the ideological purity demanded by the Christian Right was at odds with the pragmatism needed to achieve their goals through the actions of government.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What events contributed to the emergence of the Christian Right in the 1970s and 1980s?
2. What challenges did the new movement pose to the liberalism of the 1960s?
3. To what extent do you think overtly religious values should infl uence political debate and the framing of laws?
So the Christian Right began to care- fully consider the choice of a successor.
Pat Robertson stepped forward. He was the son of a congressman and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington and Lee University, Yale Law School, and the New York Theological Seminary. He had fi rst joined the Baptist Church but later became a charismatic Christian and one of the most prominent preach- ers and healers on television with his 700 Club . Like Falwell, Robertson formed a coalition of religious conserva- tives from many faiths, with the intent of teaching the members how to be effective in politics. That organization provided the grassroots workers for his effort to win the Republican nomination for president in 1988.
Robertson, however, became the innocent victim of the televangelist scandals—the “fallen angels”—that fi lled newspapers and television throughout 1987 and 1988. Oral Roberts demanded that his supporters send him $8 million or God would “call him home.” Jim and Tammy Bakker, of the PTL Club , were accused of sexual, drug, and fi nancial misconduct; Jim Bakker was sentenced to prison. Jimmy Swaggart, famous for his exhortations calling Christians to morally upright lives, was caught with a prostitute. The scandals cut into the income of every religious broadcast, including the ministries of Falwell and Robertson. The Moral Majority folded. Pat Robertson received good seats for his supporters and some attention at the Republican convention; George Bush got the nomination.
magazine, it cost him some votes in a close election; Playboy was the cultural antithesis of the family values advo- cated by the Christian Right. Other voters feared that Carter was crossing the traditional barrier placed between religion and politics in America.
As president, Carter’s actions continually reminded conservatives that he was, after all, a Democrat and a liberal one. Carter was unwill- ing to reform welfare, to work for the return of prayer in public schools, or to ban abortion. The developing Christian Right wanted more than just Christians in offi ce; they wanted to see their program enacted. They found a new darling—Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was not a practicing Christian, he was divorced, and his children were not the model products of a “family values” home. But he was a bona fi de conservative. He knew the right words to answer questions about his faith; and he peppered his speeches with the program of the Christian Right. With his words, Reagan brought the growing power of the Christian Right solidly into the Republican party. Their numbers and the enthusiasm of their individual political workers were suffi cient to swing close elections; candidates at all levels sought their endorsement. The Moral Majority, and conservative Christians in general, were energized by the recognition they received while working hard for Ronald Reagan. However, President Reagan paid them for their support with little more than the words in his speeches.
758 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
Lebanese civil war, which had been raging since 1975. American marines, sent to Lebanon as part of the multinational force to restore order, were caught up in the renewed hostilities between Muslim and Christian militia. Th e Muslims perceived the marines as aiding the Christian-dominated government of Lebanon instead of acting as neutral peacekeepers, and they began fi ring on the vul- nerable American troops.
In the face of growing congressional demands for the with- drawal of the marines, Reagan declared they were there to protect Lebanon from the designs of Soviet-backed Syria. But fi nally, aft er terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the American barracks, killing 239 marines, the president saw no choice but to pull out. Th e last American unit left Beirut in late February 1984. Despite his good intentions, Reagan had experienced a humilia- tion similar to Carter’s in Iran—one that left Lebanon in shambles and the Arab–Israeli situation worse than ever.
Trading Arms for Hostages Reagan’s Middle Eastern troubles didn’t prevent his easy reelection in 1984. Voters gave him credit for curbing infl ation, reviving the economy, and challenging Communism; compared to these major
prohibiting any U.S. agency from spending money in Central America. Th e withdrawal of U.S. fi nancial backing left the Contras in a precarious position.
More Trouble in the Middle East Reagan tried to continue Carter’s basic policy in the turbulent Middle East. In April 1982, the Israelis honored a Camp David pledge by making their fi nal withdrawal from the Sinai. Reagan hoped to achieve the other Camp David objective of providing a homeland for the Palestinian Arabs on the West Bank, but Israel instead continued to extend Jewish settlements into the dis- puted area. Th e threat of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), based in southern Lebanon and frequently raiding across the border into Israel, seemed to be the major obstacle to further progress.
On June 6, 1982, with tacit American encouragement, Israel invaded southern Lebanon in order to secure its northern border and destroy the PLO. Th e Reagan administration made no eff ort to halt the off ensive but did join with France and Italy in send- ing a multinational force to permit the PLO to evacuate to Tunisia. Unfortunately, the United States soon became enmeshed in the
G r e a t e r A n t i l l e s
L e s s
e r
A n
t i lle s
B aham
as
Canal Zone
Panama Canal. Canal Zone comes under Panamanian control, 1979; Canal comes under Panamanian control in 2000.
Nicaragua. Sandinista rebels come to power, 1979; Sandinista government defeated by opposition candidate Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, Feb. 1990.
El Salvador. Civil war, 1980–1990; opposing sides hold peace talks, 1990; peace treaty signed, 1992.
Grenada. U.S. and regional forces land after military coup, Oct. 1983; elections held, Dec. 1984.
Haiti. Duvalier forced out of office, Feb. 1986; military coup against elected government, 1991.
Jamaica. Former socialist Michael Manley elected prime minister, Feb. 1989.
Guatemala. Military coup against President Cerezo fails, May 1989; free elections held, 1993.
Panama. U.S. forces invade and capture drug trafficker General Manuel Noriega, Dec. 1989; Noriega is flown to federal prison in United States, Jan. 1990.
Caribbean Sea
ATLANTIC OCEAN
PACIFIC OCEAN
Panama Canal
Gulf of Mexico
UNITED STATES
MEXICO
COLOMBIA
VENEZUELA
Puerto Rico (U.S.)
GUYANA
BELIZE GUATEMALA
HONDURAS
NICARAGUAEL SALVADOR
COSTA RICA
PANAMA
JAMAICA
CUBA
HAITI
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
GRENADA
0 300 600 kilometers
0 300 600 miles
Conflict in Central America (1970–1998) View the Map
TROUBLE SPOTS IN CENTRAL AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN U.S. involvement in Central American trouble spots intensified in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Reagan and the World 759
McFarlane soon found himself in over his head. He relied heavily on a young marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council (NSC), Oliver North, and North, in turn, sought the assistance of CIA director William Casey, who interpreted the Iran initiative as an opportunity to use the NSC to mount the kind of covert operation denied the CIA under the post-1975 congressional oversight policy. By early 1986, when John Poindexter, a naval offi cer with little political expe- rience, replaced a burned-out McFarlane as national security adviser, Casey was able to persuade the president to go ahead with shipments of TOW antitank missiles and HAWK antiaircraft missiles to Iran.
Th e arms deal with Iran was bad policy, but what came next was criminal. Ever since the Boland Amendment in late 1984 had cut off congressional funding, the Reagan administration had been searching for ways to supply the Contras in Nicaragua. Oliver North was put in charge of soliciting donations from wealthy right- wing Americans. In early 1986, North had what he later described as a “neat idea” (apparently shared by Casey as well)—he could use profi ts from the sale of weapons to Iran (charging as much as $10,000 for a TOW that cost the United States only $3,500) to fi nance the Contras. North’s ploy was clearly not only illegal but unconstitutional, since it meant usurping the congressional power of the purse.
Ultimately the secret got out. Administration offi cials tried to shield Reagan from blame, and even after a congressional investigation it was unclear whether the president had approved the Contra diversion. Reagan’s reputation survived the scandal,
achievements, the miscue in Lebanon appeared minor. Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, formerly Jimmy Carter’s vice presi- dent, provided a jolt to the campaign by choosing Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate. But even the presence of the fi rst woman on the national ticket of a major American party couldn’t dent Reagan’s enormous popularity. He swept to victory with 59 percent of the popular vote and carried every state but Mondale’s home, Minnesota.
Yet the troubles abroad persisted. Not long aft er Reagan’s second inauguration, his administration’s policies in the Middle East and Central America converged in the Iran-Contra affair . In mid-1985, Robert McFarlane, who had become national security adviser a year earlier, began a new initiative designed to restore American infl uence in the troubled Middle East. Concerned over the fate of six Americans held hostage in Lebanon by groups thought to be loyal to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, McFarlane proposed trading American antitank missiles to Iran in return for the hostages’ release. Th e Iranians, desperate for weapons in the war they had been waging against Iraq since 1980, seemed willing to comply.
THE ELECTION OF 1984
Candidate Party Popular Vote Electoral Vote
Reagan Republican 54,455,075 525
Mondale Democratic 37,577,185 13
Mediterranean Sea
Black Sea
Caspian Sea
Persian Gulf
Gulf of Sidra
R ed
S ea
Suez Canal
I R A N AFGHANISTAN
PAKISTAN
S A U D I A R A B I A
OMAN
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
QATAR
BAHRAIN
KUWAIT
I R A Q
SYRIA
Golan Heights
JORDAN
West Bank
Gaza Strip ISRAEL
LEBANON
T U R K E Y
E G Y P T L I B YA
Malta
Sicily
Crete Cyprus
GREECE
MACEDONIA ARMENIA
GEORGIA
AZERBAIJAN
TURKMENISTAN
Tripoli
Benghazi
Tehran
Daharan
S U D A N
TUNISIA
OMAN
ITALY ALBANIA
Iran. American hostages held in Tehran since Nov. 4, 1979; released Jan. 20, 1981 (noon EST).
Lebanon. Terrorist bomb kills 239 marines, Oct. 23, 1983; Shiite extremists hold American hostages, 1984–1990.
Afghanistan. Soviet invasion, Dec. 1979; Soviet withdrawal,1989;
Iran-Iraq War. 1980–1988.
Persian Gulf. U.S. escorts reflagged Kuwaiti tankers, 1987–1988.Libya. U.S. bombs military targets,
Apr. 14, 1986. Kuwait. Invaded and occupied by Iraq, Aug. 2, 1990.
Iraq. Operation Desert Storm (Persian Gulf War), Jan.–Feb. 1991.
0 200 400 kilometers
0 200 400 miles
Israeli-occupied territories
The Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s View the Map
TROUBLE SPOTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST Armed conflict and territorial attacks in this region intensified in the 1980s and early 1990s.
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Texas, the home of Norma McCorvey, was not one of them.
McCorvey was largely unaware of these legal struggles. A poor Texas woman from a broken home, she had dropped out of school in tenth grade and married at sixteen. The marriage quickly collapsed, and Norma spent the next fi ve years working odd jobs. Her fi rst child, born while she was sixteen, was eventually adopted by her mother, and her second, the product of a short affair with a co-worker a few years later, was given up for adoption. In late 1969, Norma again became preg- nant. Twenty-two years old, depressed and poor, she sought a way to avoid having another child. Her attempt to induce an abortion by drinking castor oil only made her sick. Texas’s abor- tion law, which had stood virtually unchanged since 1857, prescribed a punishment of up to fi ve years in prison for anyone convicted of performing an abortion for reasons other than saving the mother’s life. Adoption, it seemed, was her only option.
Surprisingly, her path toward adop- tion led McCorvey into the struggle for abortion rights. An adoption lawyer referred her to Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee, two young lawyers who were preparing to challenge Texas’s abortion law but needed a pregnant woman willing to serve as the name plaintiff. In December 1969, the three women met for dinner in Dallas. McCorvey agreed to join the law- suit without much prodding, but had one request: the use of a pseudonym to hide her identity. Three months later, Weddington and Coffee fi led a class action lawsuit on behalf of all Texas women against Henry Wade, the district attorney of Dallas County,
On January 22, 1998, Norma McCorvey joined thousands of Americans who braved the freezing weather of Washington, D.C., to pro- test the Supreme Court decision in the case of Jane Roe et. al. v. Henry Wade . Exactly twenty-fi ve years earlier the court had sided with Jane Roe, the pseudonym for an anonymous Texas woman seeking an abortion, and over- turned a state law that made abortion illegal in all cases except when the life of the mother was at risk. The ruling had voided forty-six state laws that denied or restricted a woman’s access to the controversial procedure. Now, Norma McCorvey and other abor- tion opponents were observing the anniversary of the decision by taking to the streets to demonstrate their opposition. In many ways, McCorvey’s presence was unsurprising; she was a “born-again” Christian, an active abortion opponent, and the founder of an antiabortion ministry. In 1997, she had publicly denounced abor- tion in America as “a terrible, terrible holocaust.” Yet, one thing made Norma different from the other protes- tors: Twenty-fi ve years earlier, she had been Jane Roe.
The intensity of the debate over abortion reached unprecedented heights in the 1970s, and state legis- latures began to pay attention to the cries for reform of laws governing abor- tion. Between 1967 and 1970, twelve states liberalized their laws, usually to permit abortion in cases of rape, incest, or fetal deformity, or to protect the life and health of the pregnant woman. Most states, however, retained their restrictive laws, and by 1973 only four states guaranteed their residents virtu- ally unhindered access to an abortion.
In colonial America, abortion was generally legal as a method of terminating early preg- nancies, although the practice was usually kept secret since the most common cause of unwanted pregnancy—sex between unmar- ried men and women—was illegal. Throughout the nineteenth cen- tury, states began restricting or outlawing abortion, and by 1900 every state except Kentucky had enacted some form of antiabor- tion law. Despite laws criminaliz- ing abortion, the number of illegal abortions each year—whether per- formed privately by physicians or by unlicensed practitioners— numbered anywhere from 200,000 to 1.2 million. And each year about two hundred of the women who obtained illegal abortions died as a result of the procedure.
Abortion rights advocates mobi- lized in the 1960s, helped by the grow- ing women’s rights movement, the declining health risk involved in the procedure, and the wave of fetal defor- mities and birth defects that swept the nation in the early 1960s, largely attrib- utable to an outbreak of German mea- sles. Their argument centered on the belief that a woman had the right to control her own body. Just as vocal as abortion rights advocates were those who opposed abortion, believing that human life began at conception and that a fetus’s right to life outweighed a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. In 1973, in the case of Roe v. Wade , the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a momentous decision on the abortion debate—a decision that continues to generate controversy more than thirty years later.
Roe v. Wade The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights
Law and Society
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761
the Texas attorney general announced his intention to appeal the case and to continue prosecuting doctors who violated the statute. Weddington and Coffee also appealed, citing the court’s refusal to issue an injunction.
For Weddington and Coffee, the decision would mean an eventual appeal to the Supreme Court; for Norma McCorvey it meant only crushing dis- appointment. McCorvey had never seen herself as a crusader for women’s
right [to privacy], secured by the Ninth Amendment.” They also found the stat- ute too vague to be allowed to continue under the Fourteenth Amendment. The law would have to be eliminated. However, the judges refused to issue an injunction ordering the district attor- ney’s offi ce to stop enforcing it immedi- ately; such an action, they announced, would be too intrusive considering that the state had not yet been given the opportunity to revise its laws. Quickly,
demanding that he stop enforcing the state’s abortion laws; McCorvey, the name plaintiff, was identifi ed only as Jane Roe.
Coffee and Weddington asked the three-judge court of the federal Fifth Circuit to overturn the Texas law on two grounds. First, they claimed, it was written too vaguely to be applied fairly. More signifi cantly, they argued that the Texas law violated a woman’s right to privacy. They cited recent Supreme Court decisions articulating a zone of personal privacy; this zone, the jus- tices had admitted, was not explicitly written into the Constitution but could be inferred from a number of amend- ments. In 1965, the Supreme Court had made their most specifi c statement on this concept, writing in Griswold v. Connecticut of a “zone of privacy created by several fundamental consti- tutional guarantees.” In Griswold , the justices struck down a one-hundred- year-old Connecticut law forbidding the sale of birth control devices; now, Weddington and Coffee argued that this personal privacy zone included reproductive rights as well.
Texas’s lawyers rejected the claims. Jay Floyd of the attorney gen- eral’s offi ce contended that Jane Roe, whoever she was, had no standing to sue since the law punished only doctors who performed abortions, not the women who received them. Besides, Floyd claimed, Roe had to be so far along in her pregnancy by now that either she had already given birth or would do so fairly soon; thus, regardless of the court’s decision, the whole case was moot. Assistant District Attorney John Tolle took a different approach, arguing that the state had the right to protect life in all forms, and hence the fetus was enti- tled to the full protection of the state. “I personally think and I think the state’s position,” he concluded, “is that the right of the child to life is superior to that woman’s right to privacy.”
It took almost a month for the judges to announce their decision. The Texas laws, they ruled, were unconsti- tutional, “because they deprive single women and married couples of their
Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade , with one of her lawyers, Gloria Allred.
762
The ruling set off both celebration and protest. In Texas, Norma McCorvey read about the decision in the newspa- per and immediately broke into tears. When Weddington fi nally reached her a few days later, Norma was thrilled. “It makes me feel like I’m on top of Mt. Everest,” she told her lawyer. Many others felt quite differently. John Cardinal Krol, president of the National Catholic Conference, predicted that the Court was ushering in “the greatest slaughter of innocent life in the history of mankind.”
The debate over Roe v. Wade was just beginning. Shocked by the decision, antiabortion forces redou- bled their efforts. Although a few chose violence, most opponents of the Roe decision turned to lobbying and legislation to undo the verdict. Congressmen introduced hundreds of constitutional amendments limiting abortion, but none were approved. In 1976, Congress did prohibit the use of Medicaid funds for abortions, except when the life of the mother was at risk, and twelve years later, the Department of Health and Human Services banned government-employed doctors from counseling women about abortions. Even the Supreme Court showed a willingness to chip away at its earlier decision. In Bellotti v. Baird (1979), the Court allowed states to require unmarried minors to get parental consent for abortions, as long as the state offered an alternative proce- dure such as allowing her to obtain a judge’s permission instead. The Court, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992), later upheld a Pennsylvania law that placed various restrictions on abortion rights, including a manda- tory twenty-four hour waiting period and a requirement that doctors pres- ent alternative options before per- forming the surgery. During the next decade, abortion continued to be the most controversial issue in American politics and law. As of early 2006, the Roe decision still held, and abortion remained legal in most cases. But conservatives remained as deter- mined as ever to overturn it.
told the court. “We do not ask this Court to rule that abortion is good or desir- able in any particular situation. We are here to advocate that the decision as to whether or not a particular woman will continue to carry or will terminate a pregnancy is a decision that should be made by that individual.”
A majority of the justices agreed. On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court struck down the Texas law by a 7 to 2 vote. Justice Blackmun’s eighty-page majority opinion echoed Weddington and Coffee’s argument about an implied zone of privacy. “The right of privacy,” he wrote, “whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encom- pass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” The fetus, the majority also agreed, had never been given legal recognition as a person, and as such could not expect to receive equal protections.
Once again the verdict was not an unqualifi ed victory for Coffee and Weddington. Blackmun’s decision for- bade states from restricting abortion in the fi rst trimester of pregnancy and allowed them to regulate it only in the interests of preserving maternal health in the second. However, he recognized a legitimate state interest in protect- ing “potential life,” which he defi ned as occurring when the fetus had “the capacity for meaningful life outside of the mother’s womb.” Accordingly, he permitted states to regulate abortion under almost all circumstances dur- ing the last trimester. Only Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist sided with Texas. In a scathing dissent, White attacked his brethren for making a decision that should have been left to the individual states, calling the verdict “an improvident and extravagant exer- cise of the power of judicial review.” The Court, he concluded, “apparently values the convenience of the pregnant mother more than the continued exis- tence and development of the life or potential life which she carries.”
rights, and despite being the named plaintiff she had played virtually no role in the case. She had joined the lawsuit only in the hope of obtaining an abor- tion, and for six months had drifted across Texas, clinging to the lawsuit as her last chance. Now, she discovered, she had won her case, but without an immediate injunction she would have to deliver the baby after all. The law- suit, she realized for the fi rst time, was “not really for me. It was about me, and maybe all the women who’ve come before me, but it was really for all the women who were coming after me.” A few months later she had her third baby, whom she gave up for adoption.
In March 1971, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Supreme Court involvement prior to a case being argued before an appeals court was an unusual step, but since a constitutional right was at issue, the jus- tices agreed to intervene immediately. Undoubtedly, the growing intensity of the abortion debate also infl uenced the court; by the time the Roe appeal was fi led, eleven state courts had abor- tion cases pending, twenty cases were before three-judge federal panels, and four others were on the Supreme Court docket for consideration.
In the end, the Supreme Court would hear Roe v. Wade not once but twice. At oral arguments on December 13, 1971, both sides reiterated their positions to the nation’s highest court. The justices pondered the arguments and handed down their verdict. Five of the justices favored striking down the Texas law, while only two sided with the state. Due to recent retirements, however, the court was operating with only seven members, two short of its full complement. This fact, combined with general unhappiness with the majority opinion written by Justice Harry Blackmun, led the Court to the unusual decision of putting the case over for reargument the following year.
On October 10, 1972, the two sides rehashed their arguments for a fi nal time. Again, McCorvey remained in Texas while Weddington emphasized her constitutional right to privacy. “We are not here to advocate abortion,” she
763
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What is the constitutional basis for the assertion of a woman’s right to privacy?
2. Why was Justice Blackmun’s opinion so controversial? Why did he limit the right to abortion to the fi rst two trimesters of a pregnancy?
3. To what extent have subsequent court decisions limited a woman’s right to abortion? How likely do you think it is that the Court will overturn Roe v. Wade in the future?
other side of the debate who applauded her wisdom and courage in renouncing the errors of her past. By 1997, she had joined the controversial antiabortion group Operation Rescue and the follow- ing year opened her own ministry, “Roe No More.” Yet, despite her role as a sym- bol of this intense struggle, McCorvey remained just a typical American strug- gling to come to grips with a diffi cult and complex topic. “Deep inside,” she recalled twenty years after Jane Roe had become famous, “I’m still nobody but Norma McCorvey.”
Throughout the intense debate, no fi gure remained more central to the struggle than Norma McCorvey. For two decades, many who supported abortion rights admired her as a cou- rageous individual who led American women in their fi ght to recapture con- trol of their own bodies. Yet, more than twenty years later, McCorvey, who revealed her identity in 1984, stunned her supporters by renouncing her past position and embracing the antiabor- tion movement. She then became an inspirational symbol to those on the
764 CHAPTER 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
hardliner, Reagan soft ened during his second term to become an advocate of cooperation with Moscow.
A momentous change in leadership in the Soviet Union had much to do with the change in Reagan’s approach. Th e illness and death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, followed in rapid succession by the deaths of his aged successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, led fi nally to the selection of Mikhail Gorbachev, a younger and more dynamic Soviet leader. Gorbachev was intent on improving relations with the United States as part of his new policy of perestroika (restructuring the Soviet economy) and g lasnost (political openness). Soviet economic performance had been dete- riorating steadily, and the war in Afghanistan had become a major liability. Gorbachev needed a breathing spell in the arms race and a reduction in Cold War tensions in order to carry out his sweeping changes at home.
A series of summit meetings between Reagan and Gorbachev broke the chill in superpower relations and led in December 1987 to an Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty , by which Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to remove and destroy all intermediate- range missiles in Europe. Th e most important arms-control agree- ment since SALT I of 1972, the INF treaty raised hopes that an end to the Cold War was fi nally in sight.
During the president’s last year in offi ce, the Soviets cooper- ated with the United States in pressuring Iran and Iraq to end their long war. Most signifi cant of all, Gorbachev moved to end the war in Afghanistan. Th e fi rst Soviet units pulled out in April 1988, with the fi nal evacuation due to be completed early the next year. By the time Reagan left offi ce in January 1989, he had scored a series of foreign policy triumphs that off set the Iran-Contra fi asco and thus helped redeem his presidency.
Conclusion: Challenging the New Deal
Though trouble dogged the final years of his presidency, the overall effect of Reagan’s two terms was to reshape the land- scape of American politics. Th e Democratic coalition forged by Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal fi nally broke down as the Republicans captured the South and made deep inroads into organized labor.
More signifi cantly, Reagan challenged the liberal premises of the New Deal by asserting that the private sector, rather than the federal government, ought to be the source of remedies to most of America’s ills. Reagan prudently left intact the centerpieces of the welfare state—Social Security and Medicare—but he trimmed other programs and made any comparable expansion of fed- eral authority nearly impossible. By the time he left offi ce, small- government conservatism seemed the undeniable wave of the American future.
albeit tarnished. Several of his subordinates, including North and Poindexter, were prosecuted. William Casey might have joined them in the dock but died suddenly of a brain tumor.
Reagan the Peacemaker Americans’ tolerance of Reagan’s mistakes in the Iran-Contra aff air resulted in part from the progress he was making on the larger issue of U.S.–Soviet relations. Elected as an antiCommunist
Oliver North Hearing Watch the Video
Despite Oliver North’s questionable conduct, the public elevated him to near hero status during the televised Iran-Contra hearings. The bemedaled marine testified that he believed his deeds were justified as a defense of democracy.
STUDY RESOURCES 765
1977 Carter signs Panama Canal treaties restoring sovereignty to Panama (September); Carter orchestrates Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt (September)
1979 Iranian militants seize American hostages Tehran (November); Soviet invasion of Afghanistan leads to U.S. withdrawal from 1980 Moscow Olympics (December)
1980 Ronald Reagan wins presidency over Carter 1981 American hostages in Iran released after 444 days
in captivity (January); Sandra Day O’Connor becomes fi rst woman U.S. Supreme Court justice (September)
1982 Equal Rights Amendment fails state ratifi cation (June); Unemployment reaches postwar record high of 10.4 percent (October)
1984 Russia boycotts summer Olympics in Los Angeles (July); Reagan reelected president (November)
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union (March)
1986 Iran-Contra affair made public (November) 1987 Reagan and Gorbachev sign INF treaty at
Washington summit
1988 George H. W. Bush defeats Michael Dukakis decisively in presidential election
1969 Stonewall Riots in New York’s Greenwich Village spark gay rights movement (June); American astronauts land on the moon (July)
1970 U.S. forces invade Cambodia (April); Ohio National Guardsmen kill four students at Kent State University (May)
1971 States ratify Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote (July); President Nixon freezes wages and prices for ninety days (August)
1972 Richard Nixon visits China (February); U.S. and USSR sign SALT I accords in Moscow (May); White House “plumbers” unit breaks into Democratic headquarters in Watergate complex (June); Nixon wins reelection in landslide victory over George McGovern (November)
1973 United States and North Vietnam sign truce (January); Arab oil embargo creates energy crisis in the United States (October)
1974 Supreme Court orders Nixon to surrender White House tapes (June); Nixon resigns presidency (August)
1975 Last evacuation helicopter leaves roof of U.S. embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam (April)
1976 Nation celebrates bicentennial with fi reworks, patriotic music, and parade of sailing ships (July); Jimmy Carter defeats Gerald Ford in presidential election (November)
Study Resources Take the Study Plan for Chapter 31 The Rise of a New Conservatism, 1969–1988 on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The Tempting of Richard Nixon
What were the major accomplishments and fail- ures of the Nixon presidency?
Nixon opened diplomatic relations with China and initi- ated détente with the Soviet Union. He withdrew American troops from Vietnam, terminating a quarter-century of
American involvement. But his role in the Watergate scandal led to a con- stitutional crisis that forced him from office in disgrace. (p. 738 )
The Economy of Stagfl ation
How were oil and inflation linked during the 1970s?
Oil prices jumped dramatically in the 1970s, as a result of growing demand for oil and turmoil in the Middle East. Rising oil prices contributed to the worst inflation in
modern American history. (p. 742 )
Private Lives, Public Issues
How did private life change during this period?
The divorce rate rose significantly, and the number of mar- ried couples with children declined. More women entered the professions, and Roe v. Wade guaranteed their right to an abortion. Gay men and lesbians achieved greater freedom than
before, though they still lacked rights accorded to heterosexuals. (p. 745 )
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
Why did the presidencies of Ford and Carter largely fail?
Ford and Carter had to deal with the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate and the economic disruptions that followed the oil price rises of the 1970s. Ford alienated many
Americans by pardoning Nixon, and Carter fumbled the hostage crisis in Iran. (p. 749 )
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20
15
10
5
Crude Oil
766 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER REVIEW
The Reagan Revolution
What was the “Reagan revolution”?
The Reagan revolution was the return to conservatism in American politics and diplomacy upon Reagan’s 1980 election as president. Reagan pledged to reduce the role of government in American life, and restore American honor
and confidence abroad. (p. 752 )
Reagan and the World
How did Reagan reshape American foreign relations?
Reagan rejected détente and challenged the Soviet Union more directly than any American president in decades. He called for the creation of the SDI missile system, and
he waged covert war against leftists in Central America. The Iran-Contra affair, in which Reagan traded arms for hostages, tarnished his reputation, but he also negotiated the INF treaty with the Soviet Union. (p. 755 )
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Moral Majority In 1979, the Reverend Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority to combat “amoral liberals,” drug abuse, “coddling” of criminals, homosexuality, communism, and abortion. The Moral Majority repre- sented the rise of political activism among organized religion’s radical right wing. p. 738
Neoconservatism Former liberals who advocated a strong stand against Communism abroad and free market capitalism at home. These intellectuals stressed the positive values of American society in contrast to those liberals who emphasized social problems. p. 738
Détente President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued a policy of détente, a French word meaning a relaxation of tension, with the Soviet Union to lessen the possibility of nuclear war in the 1970s. p. 739
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union culminated four years of SALT by signing a treaty limiting the deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABM) and an agree- ment to freeze the number of offensive missiles for five years. p. 739
Watergate scandal A break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex in Washington was carried out under the direction of White House employees. Disclosure of the White House involvement in the break-in and subsequent cover-up forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. p. 741
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) A cartel of oil-exporting nations. p. 742
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) A proposed constitutional amendment passed by Congress in 1972 to guarantee women equal treat- ment under the law. The amendment failed to be ratified in 1982. p. 746
Roe v. Wade The 1973 Supreme Court decision that women have a constitutional right to abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. p. 746
Camp David accords In 1978, President Jimmy Carter mediated a peace agreement between the leaders of Egypt and Israel at Camp David. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty based on the accords. p. 751
Iranian hostage crisis In 1979, Iranian fundamentalists seized the American embassy in Tehran and held fifty-three Americans hostage for over a year. The hostages were released on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan became president. p. 751
Supply-side economics The theory that tax cuts would stimulate the economy by giving individuals more incentive to earn more money, which would lead to greater investment and eventually larger tax revenues at a lower rate. p. 753
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Popularly known as “Star Wars,” President Ronald Reagan’s SDI proposed to construct an elaborate computer-controlled antimissile defense system capable of destroying enemy missiles in outer space. p. 755
Iran-Contra affair The Iran-Contra affair involved officials in the Reagan administration secretly and illegally selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to finance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. p. 759
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in late 1987, this agreement provided for the destruction of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles and permitted on-site inspection for the first time during the Cold War. p. 764
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S
1. If Nixon hadn’t resigned, would he have been impeached? Would that have been a good thing or a bad thing?
2. What did feminism and gay liberation have to do with each other?
3. Should Ford have pardoned Nixon? Why or why not? 4. Which was more scandalous: Iran-Contra or Watergate? Why?
STUDY RESOURCES 767
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The Tempting of Richard Nixon
The Reagan Revolution
Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address (1981) p. 752
Read the Document
Jimmy Carter, The “Crisis of Confidence” Speech (1979) p. 750
Watch the Video
Reagan and the World
Roe v. Wade (January 22, 1973) p. 747
Read the Document ◾
View the Closer Look Watergate Shipwreck p. 742 ◾
Find these resources in the Media Assignments folder for Chapter 31 on MyHistoryLab
◾ Indicates Study Plan Media Assignment
Private Lives, Public Issues
◾ Ronald Reagan on the Wisdom of the Tax Cut p. 753
Watch the Video
Read the Document
Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights p. 760
Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers Strike p. 754
The Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s p. 759
View the Map ◾
Conflict in Central America (1970–1998) p. 758 View the Map
Oliver North Hearing p. 764 Watch the Video
Complete the Assignment
The Christian Right p. 756 ◾ Complete the Assignment
Contents and Learning Objectives
American ambassador in Iraq, April Glaspie, who came away from the meeting with the belief that his bellicose talk was chiefly for political effect. The United States had indicated its displeasure with Saddam’s threats, and Glaspie judged that he had gotten the message. “He does not want to further antagonize us,” she wrote to Washington.
For this reason, Saddam’s decision to invade Kuwait at the beginning of August caught the Bush adminis- tration by surprise. American intelligence agencies detected Iraq’s mobilization; this was what brought Scowcroft and Haass to the White House on the evening of August 1. Haass suggested that the president call Saddam and warn him not to go through with the attack. But even as Bush considered this suggestion, Scowcroft received a message from the State Department that the American embassy in Kuwait had reported shooting in downtown Kuwait City. “So much for calling Saddam,” Bush said. Within hours the Iraqi forces crushed all resistance in Kuwait.
Bush, Scowcroft, and other American officials recognized that the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait constituted the first crisis of the post–Cold War era. As Lawrence Eagleburger, the deputy secretary of state, asserted in
“This Will Not Stand”: Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era On the evening of August 1, 1990, George H. W. Bush sat in a T-shirt in the medical office in the basement of the White House. Bush was an avid golfer, but his duties as president kept him from playing as much as he would have liked, and when he did find time to squeeze in a round or some practice, he tended to overdo things. This summer day he had strained a shoulder muscle hitting practice balls, and now he rested on the exam table while a therapist applied deep heat. He planned a quiet eve- ning and hoped the soreness would be gone by morning.
Two unexpected visitors altered his plans. Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser, and Richard Haass, the Middle East expert of the National Security Council, appeared at the door of the exam room. Bush had known Scowcroft for years, and the look on his face told him something was seriously amiss. Scowcroft’s words con- firmed the impression. “Mr. President, it looks very bad,” Scowcroft said. “Iraq may be about to invade Kuwait.”
For months, the Bush administration had been monitoring a territorial and financial dispute between Iraq and Kuwait. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was rattling the saber against the much smaller Kuwait, but Saddam had rattled sabers before without actually using them. The previous week, Saddam had spoken with the
THE FIRST PRESIDENT BUSH PG. 770 What were the important issues in George H. W. Bush’s presidency, and how were they handled?
THE CHANGING FACES OF AMERICA PG. 774 How did the American population shift and grow between 1990 and 2010?
THE NEW DEMOCRATS PG. 778 What were the accomplishments and failures of the Clinton administration?
CLINTON AND THE WORLD PG. 781 How did Clinton respond to the Balkan Wars?
REPUBLICANS TRIUMPHANT PG. 783 How did George W. Bush become president, and what did he do in the White House?
BARACK OBAMA’S TRIUMPH AND TRIALS PG. 791 What challenges faced Barack Obama and the American people during the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century?
◾ FEATURE ESSAY An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming
Into the Twenty-first Century, 1989–2012 32
Chapter 32 Into the Twenty-first Century, 1989–2012Listen to the Audio File on myhistorylab
President George Bush confers with National Security Council adviser Brent Scowcroft (left), White House Chief of Staff John Sununu (center), and Vice President Dan Quayle (right) at the Oval Office on August 1, 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
Source: Getty Images/Time Life Pictures.
an emergency meeting of the National Security Council, “This is the first test of the postwar system. As the bipolar world is relaxed, it permits this, giving people more flexibility because they are not worried about the involvement of the superpowers.” During the Cold War, a de facto division of labor had developed, with the United States and the Soviet Union each generally keep- ing its clients and allies in line, typically by threaten- ing to withhold weapons or other assistance. Had the Soviet Union still been a superpower, Saddam, a long- time recipient of Soviet aid, likely would have heeded Moscow’s warnings to settle his dispute with Kuwait peacefully. But in 1990 the Soviet system was disinte- grating, and the Kremlin’s clients were on their own. “Saddam Hussein now has greater flexibility because the Soviets are tangled up in domestic issues,” Eagleburger explained. The world was watching. “If he succeeds, others may try the same thing.”
It was this belief that shaped the Bush administra- tion’s response to the crisis. The president and his advisers understood that they were entering uncharted territory after the Cold War. As the sole remaining superpower, the United States had the opportunity to employ its mili- tary and economic resources more freely than at any time in history. But with that freedom came unprecedented responsibility. During the Cold War, the United States could cite the threat of Soviet retaliation as reason to avoid intervening in the affairs of other countries; with that threat gone, American leaders would have to weigh each prospective intervention on its own merits. If one coun- try attacked another, should the United States defend the victim? If the government of a country oppressed its own people, should the United States move to stop the oppression? These questions—and the answers American presidents gave to them—would define American foreign policy in the era after the Cold War.
770 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
the Reagan theme of limiting federal interference in the everyday lives of American citizens. He vetoed family leave legislation, declined to endorse meaningful health care reform, and watered down civil rights proposals in Congress. Th e one exception was the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) , passed by Congress in 1991, which prohibited discrimination against the disabled in hiring, transportation, and public accommodations. Beginning in July 1992, ADA called for all public buildings, restaurants, and stores to be made accessible to those with physical handicaps and required that businesses with twenty-fi ve or more workers hire new employees without regard to disability.
THE ELECTION OF 1988
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Bush Republican 48,886,097 426
Dukakis Democratic 41,809,074 111
Most of Bush’s time on domestic aff airs was taken up with two pressing issues: the possible meltdown of the savings and loan industry, and the soaring federal budget defi cit. Th e thrift industry, based on U.S. government-insured deposits, had fallen into deep trouble as a result of lax regulation and unwise, and in some cases fraudulent, loan policies. Aft er record losses of $13.4 billion in 1988, more than 250 savings and loan companies had been forced to close. Bush sought to stanch the bleeding by merging the weak- est of the remaining thrift s with the stronger, and by regulating the survivors more carefully. Congress consented, and in August 1989 passed a bill to close or merge more than seven hundred ail- ing savings and loans and to restructure the federal regulatory sys- tem. A new agency, the Resolution Trust Corporation, took over properties on which developers had secured loans many times their actual value, and it gradually sold them off at discount prices. By the time the Resolution Trust Corporation expired in 1992, the cost to the government had passed $150 billion; the eventual bill for the savings and loan cleanup, including interest, was estimated between $500 and $700 billion.
Th e federal budget defi cit posed an even greater challenge. Th e defi cits Bush inherited from Reagan topped $150 billion per year, and conventional fi nancial wisdom dictated that something be done to bring them down. In campaigning for president, Bush had promised “no new taxes,” but in the fall of 1990 he broke the pledge. In a package deal negotiated with the leaders of Congress, he agreed to a budget that included new taxes along with substan- tial spending cuts, especially on the military. Th e resulting agree- ment projected a savings of $500 billion over fi ve years, half from reduced spending and half from new revenue generated mainly by increasing the top tax rate from 28 percent to 31 percent and rais- ing the gasoline tax by 5.1 cents a gallon.
Unfortunately for the president, the budget deal coincided with the beginning of a slow but painful recession that ended the Republican prosperity of the 1980s. Not only did Bush face recrim- inations from voters for breaking a campaign pledge not to raise taxes, but the economic decline led to greatly reduced government revenues. As a result, the defi cit continued to soar, rising from
B ush sensed the importance of the United States’ responses, and he responded accordingly. He convened his principal deputies for a series of White House meetings. Th e particular stakes with Iraq and in the surrounding Persian Gulf were discussed at length. “Th e rest of the world badly needs oil,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney observed, restating the obvious. Saddam’s seizure of Kuwait gave him control of a large part of the world’s oil supply, but the real prize was Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia and others will cut and run if we are weak,” Cheney predicted.
Bush consulted America’s oldest allies. Britain’s Margaret Th atcher urged the president to oppose Saddam most vigor- ously. “If Iraq wins, no small state is safe,” the prime minister declared. She off ered to help. “We must win this . . . . We cannot give in to dictators.”
Bush asked his generals what his military options were. “Iraq is not ten feet tall, but it is formidable,” Norman Schwarzkopf, the U.S. commander for the Middle East, replied. American air power could punish Saddam and perhaps soft en him up, but ground forces—in large numbers—would be required to guarantee victory.
By August 5, Bush had made up his mind. As he exited the helicopter that brought him back from Camp David to the White House from another high-level meeting, reporters crowded the South Lawn. What was he planning to do? they asked.
“I’m not going to discuss what we’re doing in terms of moving forces, anything of that nature,” Bush answered. “But I view it very seriously, not just that but any threat to any other countries.” Bush was no orator, and these remarks were unscripted. But one sentence summarized the policy that soon began to unfold: “Th is will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.”
The First President Bush
What were the important issues in George H. W. Bush’s presidency, and how were they handled?
Elected on the strength of his association with Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush appeared poised to confi rm the ascendancy of the conservative values Reagan forced to the center stage of American life. But events, especially abroad, distracted Bush, whose principal contribution proved to be in the area of foreign aff airs. Bush brought the Cold War to a peaceful and triumphant conclusion, and he launched America toward the twenty-fi rst century, an era when the United States faced new opportunities and new challenges.
Republicans at Home Democrats approached the 1988 presidential election with high hopes, having regained control of the Senate in 1986 and not having to face the popular Reagan. But Vice President George H. W. Bush proved a stronger candidate than almost anyone had expected, and in a contest that confi rmed the Republicans’ hold on the Sunbelt, he defeated Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis.
Many people expected the policies of the Bush administra- tion to refl ect the reputation of the new president—bland and cautious, lacking in vision but safely predictable. At home, he lived up (or down) to his reputation, sponsoring few initiatives in edu- cation, health care, or environmental protection while continuing
The First President Bush 771
protesters were killed, and thousands were injured. Chinese lead- ers imposed martial law to quell the dissent and shatter American hopes for a democratic China.
Bush responded cautiously. He wanted to preserve American infl uence with the Chinese government. Hence, despite offi cial statements denouncing the crackdown, Bush sent National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft on a secret mission to Beijing to maintain a working relationship with the Chinese leaders.
A far more promising trend toward freedom began in Europe in mid-1989. In June, Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement came to power in free elections in Poland. Soon the winds of change were sweeping over the former Iron Curtain countries. A new regime in Hungary opened its borders to the West in September, allowing thousands of East German tour- ists in Hungary to fl ee to freedom. One by one, the repressive governments of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania fell. Th e most heartening scene of all took place in East Germany in early November when the new communist leaders suddenly announced the opening of the Berlin Wall. Workers quickly demolished a 12-foot-high section of this despised physical symbol of the Cold War, joyously singing a German version of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
$150 billion in fi scal year 1989 to just under $300 billion in 1992. Despite the 1990 budget agreement, the national debt increased by more than $1 trillion during Bush’s presidency.
Ending the Cold War Bush might have accomplished more in domestic aff airs had not the international developments begun during the Reagan years accelerated dramatically. Bush had been in offi ce only months when the communist system of the Cold War began falling apart. In country aft er country, communism gave way to democracy as the old order collapsed more quickly than anyone had expected.
An early attempt at anticommunist liberation proved tragi- cally abortive. In May 1989, students in China began a month-long demonstration for democracy in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that attracted worldwide attention. Watching American television cov- erage of Gorbachev’s visit to China in mid-May, Americans were fascinated to see the Chinese students call for democracy with a hunger strike and a handcraft ed replica of the Statue of Liberty. But on the evening of June 4, the Chinese leaders sent tanks and troops to Tiananmen Square to crush the student demonstration. By the next day, full-scale repression swept over China; several hundred
View the Closer Look Opening the Wall, Berlin
Germans celebrate the destruction and fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. The Berlin Wall had been a hated symbol of the Cold War since its construction by the communist East German authorities in August of 1961.
772 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
to Russia and the other members of the new CIS. On the critical issue of nuclear weapons, Bush and Gorbachev in 1991 signed START I, agreeing to reduce nuclear warheads to less than ten thousand apiece. In late 1992, Bush and Yeltsin agreed on the terms of START II, which would eliminate land missiles with multiple warheads and reduce the number of nuclear weapons on each side to just over three thousand, a level not seen since the mid-1960s.
The Gulf War Amid the disintegration of the Soviet system, Iraq in August 1990 invaded Kuwait. Although Bush quickly concluded that Saddam Hussein’s aggression must be reversed, actually removing Iraq from Kuwait took time and great eff ort. Th e president started by persuad- ing Saudi Arabia to accept a huge American troop buildup, dubbed Desert Shield. Th is American presence would prevent Saddam from advancing beyond Kuwait into Saudi Arabia; it would also allow the United States to launch a ground attack against Iraqi forces if and when the president determined such an attack was necessary.
While the American buildup took place, Bush arranged an international coalition to condemn the Iraqi invasion and endorse economic sanctions against Iraq. Not every member of the coali- tion subscribed to the “new world order” that Bush said the liberation of Kuwait would help establish, but all concurred in the general principle of deterring international aggression. Essential to the success of Bush’s diplomatic off ensive was the support of the
Most people realized it was Mikhail Gorbachev who was responsible for the liberation of eastern Europe. In late 1988, the Soviet leader signaled the spread of his reforms to the Soviet satellites by announcing that the Brezhnev doctrine, which called for Soviet control of eastern Europe, was now replaced with “the Sinatra doctrine,” which meant that the people of this region could now do things “their way.” It was Gorbachev’s refusal to use armed force to keep repressive regimes in power that permitted the long-delayed liberation of the captive peoples of central and eastern Europe.
Yet by the end of 1991, both Gorbachev and the Soviet Union had become victims of the demise of communism. On August 19, 1991, right-wing plotters placed Gorbachev under arrest. Boris Yeltsin, the newly elected president of the Russian Republic, broke up the coup by mounting a tank in Moscow and demanding Gorbachev’s release. Th e Red Army rallied to Yeltsin’s side. Th e coup failed and Gorbachev was released, only to resign in December 1991 aft er the fi ft een republics dissolved the Soviet Union. Russia, by far the largest and most powerful of the former Soviet republics, took the lead in joining with ten others to form a loose alignment called the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Yeltsin then disbanded the Communist party and continued the reforms begun by Gorbachev to establish democ- racy and a free market system in Russia.
Th e Bush administration, although criticized for its cautious approach, welcomed the demise of communism. Bush facilitated the reunification of Germany and offered economic assistance
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RUSSIA Poland. Solidarity Party sweeps elections, June 1989.
Czechoslovakia. Communist leadership ousted, Nov. 1989; country divided into Czech Republic and Slovakia, Jan. 1, 1993.
Germany. Berlin Wall breached, Nov. 1989; East and West Germany reunited, Oct. 1990.
Yugoslavia. Country disintegrates, 1991–92; civil war begins in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992.
Romania. Communist dictator Ceausescu overthrown and executed, Dec. 1989; Salvation Front led by dissident former Communists wins elections, May 1990.
Lithuania declares independence, Mar. 1990.
Latvia and Estonia begin process of separation from Soviet Union, Apr. 1990.
Hungary. Free election sweeps non- Communists into power, Apr. 1990.
Bulgaria. Government pledges free elections and new constitution in 1990; free elections sweep non-Communists into power.
Albania. Free elections sweep non-Communists into power.
Soviet Union. Dissolved, Dec. 1991; Russia and 10 former Soviet republics form Commonwealth of Independent States.
0 250 500 kilometers
0 250 500 miles
THE END OF THE COLD WAR Free elections in Poland in June 1989 triggered the domino effect in the fall of communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Changes in policy came quickly, but the restructuring of social and economic institutions continues to take time.
The First President Bush 773
Aft er fi ve weeks of this, Bush gave the order for the ground assault. Led by General Schwarzkopf, American and allied armored units swept across the desert in a great fl anking operation while a combined force of U.S. marines and Saudi troops drove directly into Kuwait City. In just one hundred hours, the American-led off ensive liberated Kuwait and sent Saddam Hussein’s vaunted Republican Guard fl eeing back into Iraq.
In a controversial decision, President Bush, acting on the advice of General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, halted the advance and agreed to an armistice with Iraq. Critics claimed that with just a few more days of fi ghting, perhaps even just a few more hours, American forces could have encircled the Republican Guard and ended Saddam’s cruel regime. But the president, fearful of disrupting the allied coalition and of having American troops mired down in a guerrilla war, stopped when he had achieved his announced goal of liberating Kuwait. Moreover, he hoped that a chastened Saddam would help balance the threat of Iran in the volatile Persian Gulf region.
Desert Storm brought mixed blessings. It was a great personal victory for George Bush, who saw his approval rating climb to
Soviet Union, which during the Cold War had regularly blocked American initiatives in the United Nations. Soviet leaders may have been sincere in wishing to see Saddam punished, but they also hoped to receive American aid in restructuring their economy.
Congress required somewhat more convincing. Many Democrats supported economic sanctions against Iraq but opposed the use of force. Yet as the troop buildup in the Persian Gulf proceeded—as Operation Desert Shield evolved into what would be called Operation Desert Storm —and as the sanctions failed to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait, some of the skeptics gradually came around. Aft er securing UN support for military action, Bush persuaded Congress (with just fi ve votes to spare in the Senate) to approve the use of force to liberate Kuwait.
On January 17, 1991, the president unleashed a devastating aerial assault on Iraq. Aft er knocking out the Iraqi air defense net- work in a few hours, F-117A stealth fi ghters and Tomahawk cruise missiles hit key targets in Baghdad. Th e air attack, virtually unchal- lenged by the Iraqis, wiped out command and control centers and enabled the bombers of the United States and its coalition partners (chiefl y Britain) to demoralize the beleaguered enemy troops.
Read the Document George Bush, Address to the Nation on the Persian Gulf (1991)
On the evening of January 16,1991, President George H.W. Bush addresses the nation to discuss the launch of Operation Desert Storm.
774 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
The increasing urbanization of America had positive and negative aspects. People living in the large metropolitan areas were both more affl uent and better educated than their rural counter- parts. Family income among people living in the bigger cities and their suburbs ran $9,000 a year more, and three-fourths of the urban population had graduated from high school, compared to two-thirds of other Americans. A metropolitan American was twice as likely to be a college graduate as a rural resident. Yet these advantages were off set by higher urban crime rates, longer com- muting time in heavy traffi c, and higher living costs. Nevertheless, the big cities and their suburbs continued to thrive, accounting for 80 percent of all Americans by 2000.
Another striking population trend was the nationwide rise in the number of the elderly. At the beginning of the twentieth century, only 4.1 percent of the population was aged 65 or older; by 2000, those over 65 made up more than 12 percent of the population, with the nearly four million over 85 the fastest growing group of all. Census Bureau projections suggest that by the year 2030, one out of every fi ve Americans will be over age 65.
Six of every ten older Americans were women, and they tended to have a higher rate of chronic disease and to be worse off economically than men the same age. Many of the oldest old, those over 85, lived in nursing homes and accounted for one-third of all Medicaid payments. Yet only 10 percent of the elderly lived below the poverty line and three-fourths owned their own homes. Th e annual cost-of-living increases in Social Security payments spared them the worst ravages of infl ation. Most impressive of all was their political power: Two-thirds of those over 65 voted regu- larly, compared to just under half of the entire population. With more than 30 million members, the AARP (formerly known as the American Association of Retired People) proved very eff ective in Washington in representing the interests of the elderly, particularly in regard to Medicare.
The Revival of Immigration Th e fl ow of immigrants into the United States reached record pro- portions in the 1990s as a result of the new policies adopted in 1965. (See the Feature Essay in Chapter 30 , “Unintended Consequences: Th e Second Great Migration,” pp. 722–723 .) Th e number of arriv- als continued to grow during the fi rst decade of the new century, with nearly 8 million immigrants reaching America between the beginning of 2000 and early 2005. By 2005, a record high of 35 million foreign-born persons lived in the United States, consti- tuting 12 percent of the total population.
Th e new wave of immigrants came mainly from Latin America and Asia. By 2005, over half the foreign-born population of the United States came from Latin America, about one-quarter from Asia, and about one out of seven from Europe. Th e new immi- grants tended to settle in urban areas in six states—California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey. In California, the infl ux of immigrants from Asia and Mexico created growing pressure on public services, especially during the recessions of the early 1990s and the early 2000s.
Th e arrival of so many immigrants was bound to lead to con- troversy over whether immigrants were a benefi t or a liability to American society. A study by the National Academy of Sciences in
an unprecedented level—nearly 90 percent, higher than for even Eisenhower and Kennedy at the height of the Cold War. American military leaders believed they had fi nally atoned for Vietnam, a sentiment widely shared by a euphoric public. Th e United States had deployed more than fi ve hundred thousand troops, as many as were in Vietnam in 1968, and had lost just 146 lives in infl icting a stinging defeat on a dangerous bully. Moreover, the price of oil, which had climbed to nearly $40 a barrel in October, fell back to less than $20, allowing Americans to fi ll the gas tanks of their cars for just over $1 a gallon.
At the same time, however, Saddam Hussein continued to rule in Baghdad, persecuting Kurds in northern Iraq and Shi’ite Muslims in the south. He survived several attempts on his life and tightened his grip on Iraq, frustrating U.S. eff orts to uncover and destroy his suspected chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities. During the next dozen years, many Americans would conclude that if Bush had completed the ouster of Saddam in 1991, he would have spared the United States and the world a great deal of trouble.
The Changing Faces of America
How did the American population shift and grow between 1990 and 2010?
From the Mayfl ower to the covered wagon, movement has always characterized the American people. Th e fi nal years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-fi rst witnessed two sig- nifi cant shift s in the American population: continued movement internally to the Sunbelt region of the South and West, and a remarkable infl ux of immigrants from developing nations. Th ese changes led to increased urbanization, greater ethnic diversity, and growing social unrest.
A People on the Move By the 1990s, a majority of Americans lived in the Sunbelt of the South and West. Best defi ned as a broad band running across the country below the 37th parallel from the Carolinas to Southern California, the Sunbelt had begun to fl ourish with the buildup of military bases and defense plants during World War II. Rapid population growth continued with the stimulus of heavy Cold War defense spending and accelerated in the 1970s when both new high- technology fi rms and more established industries were attracted by lower labor costs and the favorable climate of the Sunbelt states. Florida, Texas, and California led the way, each gaining more than two million new residents in the 1970s.
Th e fl ow continued at a slightly lower rate over the next two decades. Th e Northeast and the Middle West continued losing peo- ple to the South and West, and in 1994 Texas surpassed New York as the nation’s second most populous state. Th e 2000 census revealed that while all regions had gained population in the 1990s, the South and West had expanded by nearly 20 percent, compared to around 6 percent for the Northeast and Middle West. Phoenix was typi- cal of the phenomenal growth of Sunbelt cities, adding a million residents in the 1990s to grow at a 45 percent rate. “Phoenix is fl at and it’s easy,” explained a geographer who saw no end in sight. “You stick a shovel in the ground and pour a slab and you have a house.”
The Changing Faces of America 775
most of the Hispanic population was concentrated in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Miami, the 2000 census showed a surprising geographical spread. Hispanics made up 20 percent of the population in individual counties in states such as Georgia, Iowa, and Minnesota. “Th e Latinization of the country is not just happening in New York, Miami, or L.A.,” observed a Puerto Rican leader. “Its greatest impact is in the heartland in places like Reading, Pennsylvania; Lorain, Ohio; and Lowell, Massachusetts.”
Th e Hispanic groups had several features in common. All were relatively youthful, with a median age of 22 and a high fertil- ity rate. Th ey tended to be relatively poor, with one-fourth falling below the poverty line, and to be employed in low-paying posi- tions as manual laborers, domestic servants, and migrant workers. Although the position of Hispanics had improved considerably in the boom years of the 1980s and 1990s, they still lagged behind mainstream America. The poverty rate among Hispanics was twice the national average, and family median income in 2005 was $34,000, or roughly two-thirds the level for whites.
Lack of education was a key factor in preventing economic progress for Hispanics. Fewer Hispanics graduated from high school than other minorities, and their school dropout rate was the nation’s highest at more than 50 percent. Hispanic leaders warned that these fi gures boded ill not just for their own group but for society as a whole. “You either educate us,” claimed a San Antonio activist, “or you pay for building more jails or for more welfare.”
1997 reported that while government services used by immigrants— schools, welfare, health clinics—cost more initially than was collected from them in taxes, in the long run, immigrants and their families more than paid their way. In regard to employment, immigrants tended to help consumers and employers by working for relatively low wages in restaurants, the textile industry, and farming, but they hurt low-skilled U.S. workers, notably high school dropouts and many African Americans, by keeping wages low. Economist George J. Borjas, a refugee from Cuba, claimed that immigrants from developing countries lacked the education and job skills needed to achieve the level of prosperity attained by newcomers in the past; instead of entering the mainstream of American life, they were likely to remain a permanent underclass.
Emerging Hispanics People of Hispanic origin became the nation’s largest ethnic group in 2002, surpassing African Americans for the fi rst time. Th e rapidly growing Hispanic population climbed to over 41 million by 2005, accounting for 14 percent of the nation’s population. “It doesn’t sur- prise me,” commented the leader of the League of Latin American Citizens. “Anybody that travels around . . . can see Latinos every- where, working everywhere, trying to reach the American dream.”
Th e Census Bureau identifi ed four major Hispanic groups: Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and other Hispanics, including many from Central America. Even though
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility
Act of 1996 Read the Document
Newly sworn-in citizens of the United States wave U.S. flags during a naturalization ceremony in Miami on April 28, 2006. Days later, more than one million immigrants participated in a nationwide boycott called “A Day Without Immigrants” to protest the proposed tightening of U.S. immigration laws.
776 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
explained much of this movement, but it also refl ected the same economic incentives that drew so many Americans to the Sunbelt in the last three decades of the twentieth century.
African Americans made substantial gains in certain areas of life. In 2004, some 81 percent of blacks aged 25 and older had earned a high school diploma, an increase of 8 percent during the previous decade. Eighteen percent of African Americans possessed a college degree, 5 percent more than a decade earlier. Th e num- ber of black-owned businesses topped 1.2 million, up more than 45 percent since 1997.
Yet in other respects African Americans did less well. Th e black poverty rate was nearly 25 percent, and the median income for black families was less than two-thirds of that for whites. Blacks remained clustered in entry-level jobs, where they faced increasing competi- tion from immigrants. Th e African American incarceration rate was much higher than the national average; in 2002, more than 10 percent of black males aged 25 to 29 were in prison, and more than one out of four black men could expect to spend time in a state or federal prison during their lives. Blacks were also more likely to be victims of crime, especially violent crime. Homicide was the leading cause of death among black males between the ages of 15 and 34.
Two events, one from 1991 and the other from 2005, summa- rized much of the frustration African Americans felt. In March 1991, a bystander videotaped four Los Angeles policemen brutally beat- ing Rodney King, an African American who had been stopped for a traffi c violation. Th e pictures of the rain of blows on King shocked the nation. Nearly a year later, when an all-white jury acquitted the four offi cers of charges of police brutality, rioting erupted in South Central Los Angeles that for a time threatened the entire city when the police failed to respond promptly. In the aft ermath of the riot, which took fi ft y-three lives (compared to thirty-four deaths in the 1965 riot in the nearby Watts area) and did more than $1 billion in damage, government and state agencies promised new eff orts to help the inner-city dwellers. But the eff orts produced little eff ect, and life for many urban blacks remained diffi cult and dangerous.
A tragedy of a diff erent sort occurred fourteen years later. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast and broke levees in New Orleans. Th e high winds and water killed more than a thousand persons, destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes, and forced the evacuation of millions of men, women, and children. Television cameras captured the plight of the several thousand who took refuge in the New Orleans Superdome, only to be stranded when state and federal relief eff orts failed. Most conspicuous in the footage was the fact that the vast majority of those suff ering the worst in New Orleans were black. Th eir neighborhoods were the lowest- lying in the city, and hence, the worst fl ooded. Many lacked the cars necessary to fl ee the city in advance of the hurricane; others lacked the means to pay for hotels or apartments had they been able to get out. Th ough the relief eff orts were largely color-blind (despite early allegations to the contrary), the entire experience demonstrated that poverty in America most certainly was not.
Americans from Asia and the Middle East Asian Americans were the fasting-growing minority group at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. According to the 2000 census, there were more than 12 million Americans of Asian
The entry of several million illegal immigrants from Mexico, once derisively called “wetbacks” and now known as undocumented aliens , created a substantial social problem for the nation and especially for the Southwest. Critics charged that the fl agrant violation of the nation’s border with Mexico had led to a subculture beyond the boundaries of law and ordinary custom. Th ey argued that the aliens took jobs from U.S. citizens, kept wages artifi cially low, and received extensive welfare and medical benefi ts that strained budgets in states such as Texas and California.
Defenders of the undocumented aliens contended that the nation gained from the abundant supply of workers who were will- ing to work in fi elds and factories at backbreaking jobs shunned by most Americans. Moreover, defenders stated, illegal entrants usually paid sales and withholding taxes but rarely used govern- ment services for fear of being deported. Whichever view was correct, an exploited class of illegal aliens was living on the edge of poverty. Th e Wall Street Journal summed it up best by observing, “Th e people who benefi t the most from this situation are certainly the employers, who have access to an underground market of cheap, productive labor, unencumbered by minimum wage laws, union restrictions, or pension requirements.”
Concern over economic competition from Mexican “illegals” led Congress to pass legislation in 1986 that penalized employers who hired undocumented workers. Congress permitted those aliens who could show that they were living in the United States before 1982 to become legal residents; nearly three million accepted this off er of amnesty to become legal residents. Th e reform eff ort, how- ever, failed to stem the continued fl ow of undocumented workers northward from Mexico in the 1990s and early 2000s—more than fi ve hundred thousand in some years. While experts debated the exact number, the most widely accepted estimates indicated that more than ten million foreigners, mainly from Mexico and Central America, were living illegally in the United States in 2005.
Despite stepped-up border enforcement efforts after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, illegal immigrants continued to move northward from Mexico and Central America. Th e trip could be dangerous, even lethal. Human-rights advocates estimated that more than three thousand migrants lost their lives attempt- ing to enter the United States illegally between 1997 and 2006. Nineteen Mexican and Central American workers died from suf- focation in south Texas in May 2003—nearly one hundred illegal aliens had been jammed into a truck trailer without access to water or fresh air. Yet the movement continued. As one rural Mexican offi cial commented, “Th ere are great problems in the countryside. And that famous American dream keeps calling.”
Advance and Retreat for African Americans African Americans formed the second largest of the nation’s ethnic minorities. In 2004, there were just over 39 million blacks in the United States, 13.4 percent of the population. Although the heaviest concentration of African Americans was in northern cities, notably New York and Chicago, there was a signifi cant movement back to the South. Th is shift , which began in the 1970s and acceler- ated during the 1990s, meant that by 2000 nearly 54 percent of those identifying themselves as black for the census lived in the sixteen states of the Sunbelt. Family ties and a search for ancestral roots
The Changing Faces of America 777
and reforming,” one of his characters proclaimed. “Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians—into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American!”
Th e melting pot image carried with it the concept of strip- ping newcomers of their culture and national traits and casting them into an Anglo-Saxon mold. Dubious for European immi- gration in view of the way each ethnic group retained its separate identity, this analogy seemed increasingly irrelevant to the Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern migration to America in the late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst centuries. Instead of recasting immigrants into an American type, immigration could better be seen as broadening the diversity that had always characterized the United States. Sociologist Amitai Etzioni sug- gested replacing the melting pot image with a “mosaic” portray- ing a nation in which ethnic groups retained their own identities “while recognizing that they are integral parts of a more encom- passing whole.”
Th e new awareness of ethnic diversity manifested itself in many ways. In public education, blacks led a crusade against Eurocentric curriculums and demanded a new emphasis on the infl uence of African culture; on college campuses, the call for mul- ticultural courses and separate departments for African American, Asian American, and Hispanic studies created controversy. Citing the forecasts of a declining Anglo dominance and the rise of minor- ity groups in the twenty-fi rst century, ethnic leaders advocated cul- tural pluralism. Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy group, argued that America had never had a real melting pot in which all races contributed to the mix. “What we’ve had is a pressure cooker, where everybody has had to come in and become Anglophiles.” Yzaguirre claimed that the “new demographics ask America to live up to its own concep- tion of itself as a pluralistic society.”
Many Americans found themselves perplexed and uncertain of their cultural identity. A Census Bureau survey, asking people to state their ancestry, revealed that fully one-fourth of Americans listed Germany fi rst, with Ireland and England a distant second and third. Some Hispanics found the census racial classifi cations—black, Asian–Pacifi c Islander, white, or American Indian— meaningless. “I don’t really consider myself Caucasian,” objected Jose Arroyo of San Jose, California. “My roots go down into the Indians of Mexico.” People of Arab descent felt equally confused. Maha El-Sheikh, a Californian of mixed Egyptian and Jordanian parent- age, resented the fact that “on tests and things like that, I either have to put that I’m ‘Caucasian’ or I’m ‘Asian’—which I’m not. . . . I say I am Arabic—or I leave it blank.”
In the 1990s, people of mixed racial parentage demanded that the census for 2000 include a box labeled “multiracial” rather than just the meaningless “other.” A group called Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) argued that the four million children of more than a million interracial marriages deserved their own census category. Th e professional golf champion Tiger Woods—whose ancestry is part black, part Th ai, part Chinese, part Native American, and part Caucasian—agreed, saying that as a child he called himself “Cablinasian.” Civil rights groups, how- ever, objected, fearing cuts in government benefi ts to minorities based on the census fi gures. Th e Census Bureau compromised in 2000 by adding four new dual-race categories—American Indian– white, American Indian–black, Asian-white, and black-white.
or Pacifi c Island descent. Although they represented only 4 percent of the total population, they were increasing at seven times the national rate, and future projections indicated that by 2050 one in ten Americans would be of Asian ancestry.
Th e Chinese formed the largest single group of Asian Americans, followed by Filipinos, Japanese, Indians, Koreans, and Vietnamese. Immigration was the primary reason for the rapid growth of all these groups except the Japanese; during the 1980s, Asia had pro- vided nearly half of all immigrants to the United States. Th ough the infl ux subsequently slowed, the children of the immigrants added to the Asian numbers.
Compared to other minorities, Asian Americans were well- educated and affl uent. Th ree out of four Asian youths graduated from high school, compared to less than one out of two for blacks and Hispanics. Asian Americans also had the highest percentage of college graduates and recipients of doctoral degrees of any minority group; in fact, they were better represented in colleges and universities than the white majority. Many Asians entered pro- fessional fi elds, and in part as a result, the median income for Asian American families in 2004 was nearly 20 percent higher than the national average.
Not all Asian Americans fared so well, however. Refugees from Southeast Asia experienced both economic hardship and perse- cution. Th e median family income for Vietnamese Americans fell substantially below the national average. Nearly half the Laotian refugees living in Minnesota were unemployed because they had great diffi culty learning to read and write English. Vietnamese fi sh- ermen who settled on the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana expe- rienced repeated attacks on their livelihood and their homes. In the Los Angeles riots in 1992, Korean stores and shops became a main target for looting and fi rebombing.
But the overall experience of Asian Americans was a positive one. Th ey came to America seeking economic opportunity, or as many put it, “to climb the mountain of gold.” “People are looking for a better life,” a Chinese spokeswoman explained. “It’s as simple as that, and we will continue to come here, especially if the situa- tions over there [in Asia] stay tight, or get worse.”
Th e number of Americans from the Middle East grew almost as fast as the number of those from Asia in the 1990s. Th e 2000 census counted 1.5 million Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry, up from 200,000 thirty years earlier. Most came from Arab countries, as well as Israel and Iran. Concentrated in California, New York, and Michigan, Middle Eastern Americans were well-educated, with nearly half having college degrees. Many Arab Americans felt ner- vous aft er the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, committed by Arab extremists; some experienced actual violence at the hands of persons who wanted to blame anyone of Arab descent for the shocking mass murders. Yet most Arab Americans carried on as before, pursuing their interpretation of the American dream.
Assimilation or Diversity? Th e infl ux of people from all around the world, not just from Europe, had profound implications for American culture. Traditionally, the favorite American self-image was the melting pot, the title of Israel Zangwill’s play written in 1908, at the height of European immigration into the nation. “America is God’s crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting
778 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
unum, the image of a great symphony in which all groups blended harmoniously off ered a way to balance the pride individuals fi nd in ethnic identity with the need for national unity.
The New Democrats
What were the accomplishments and failures of the Clinton administration?
The Democrats, victims of the runaway inflation of the 1970s, became the benefi ciaries of the lingering recession of the early 1990s. Moving away from its traditional liberal reliance on big government, the party regained strength by choosing moderate candidates and tai- loring its programs to appeal to the hard-pressed middle class. Th ese tactics enabled the Democrats to regain the White House in 1992 and retain it in 1996, despite a Republican sweep of Congress in 1994. Th e key fi gure in this political shift was Bill Clinton, who overcame some early setbacks to reap the rewards of a sustained economic boom.
In addition, individuals of mixed ancestry could mark several racial categories, not just one as in the past.
Th e results were startling. Nearly seven million Americans claimed to be multiracial, with most choosing either black-white or Asian-white. Levonne Gaddy, president of the Association of Multiethnic Americans, was ecstatic. “Th is is the beginning of our having to redefi ne this social myth that we call race,” she declared. A more neutral Census Bureau offi cial observed, “Th e nation is much more diverse in the year 2000 than it was in 1990.” “Th at diversity,” he added, “is much more complex than we’ve ever measured before.”
Horace Kallen, one of the early critics of Zangwill’s melting pot analogy, off ered the most appealing image of the nation’s diverse heritage. He likened the United States to a symphony orchestra, in which each nationality and ethnic group contributed its “own specifi c timbre and tonality” to create “a multiplicity in a unity, an orchestration of mankind.” As Americans wrestled with the continuing dilemma embodied in the national motto, E pluribus
Bill Clinton Sells Himself to America Watch the Video
Twelve years of Republican administrations and economic turmoil left voters ready to make a change. Enter Bill Clinton, Democratic governor of Arkansas, who would best George Bush in the election of 1992 and go on to serve two full terms.
The New Democrats 779
The Election of 1992 Th e persistence of the recession that had begun two years earlier became a major political issue in 1992. Although mild by postwar standards, the economic downturn that began in July 1990 proved unusually stubborn, especially in states such as California that relied heavily on the defense industry, which was hurt by the end of the Cold War. Th e recovery, which started just aft er the end of the Persian Gulf War in the spring of 1991, proved slow and uneven. Unemployment remained high for eighteen months and the gross domestic product rose only an anemic 2.9 percent in the same period.
Th e political impact was devastating for the Bush adminis- tration. Th ree million Americans joined the ranks of the unem- ployed, and many were white-collar employees rather than factory workers typically hit by hard times. Although the economy began to advance more briskly in 1992, unemployment persisted as busi- nesses still hesitated to hire new workers. As a result, the average American worker was ready to look beyond the Republican party for relief.
As Bush’s popularity plummeted, two men sought to capitalize on the dismal state of the U.S. economy. First, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton defeated a fi eld of fi ve other challengers for the Democratic nomination by becoming the champion of economic renewal. Forgoing traditional liberal appeals to interest groups, Clinton stressed the need for investment in the nation’s future—rebuilding roads and bridges, training workers for high-tech jobs, and solving the growing national health care crisis.
Despite his victories in the Democratic primaries, however, Clinton faced a new rival in H. Ross Perot. An eccentric Texas billionaire, Perot singled out the deficit as the nation’s gravest
problem and agreed to run as an independent candidate in response to a grassroots movement (which he fi nanced) to place his name on the November ballot.
When Clinton and his running mate, Senator Albert Gore, Jr., of Tennessee, succeeded in unifying the Democratic party and gaining agreement on a moderate platform promising economic change, Perot stunned his supporters by suddenly dropping out of the race in July. Clinton immediately became the front-runner, rising from 30 percent to more than 50 percent in the polls, leaving Bush far behind.
A relentless Democratic attack on the administration’s lackluster economic performance overcame all the president’s efforts to remind the nation of Reagan prosperity and Bush triumphs abroad. Even GOP assaults on Clinton’s character, notably his evasion of the draft during the Vietnam War, failed to halt the Democratic momentum. Th e message that Clinton’s political advisers tacked up at the Democratic candidate’s headquarters in Little Rock—“Th e economy, stupid”—provided the key to victory in November. Clinton wound up with 43 percent of the popular vote but with a commanding lead in the electoral college, 370 to 168 for Bush. Perot, who had reentered the race, won 19 percent of the popular vote but failed to carry a single state.
Clinton and Congress In the White House, Bill Clinton proved to be the most adept poli- tician since Franklin Roosevelt. Born in Hope, Arkansas, in 1946, Clinton weathered a diffi cult childhood with an alcoholic stepfa- ther by developing skills at dealing with people and using personal charm to achieve his goals. Intelligent and ambitious, he completed his undergraduate work at Georgetown University, studied law at Yale, and spent two years as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England. Entering politics aft er teaching law briefl y at the University of Arkansas, he won election fi rst as Arkansas attorney general and then as governor. Defeated aft er his fi rst term in 1980, Clinton won the nickname “Comeback Kid” by regaining the governor’s offi ce in 1982. He was elected three more times, earning a reputation as one of the nation’s most successful young political leaders.
In keeping with the theme of his campaign, Clinton concentrated at fi rst on the economy. Th e federal budget he proposed to Congress in February 1993 called for tax increases and spending cuts to achieve a balanced budget. Congress was skeptical of such unpopular measures, but Clinton cajoled, shamed, and threatened suffi cient members to win approval of $241 billion in new taxes and $255 billion in spending cuts, for a total defi cit reduction of $496 billion over four years. Th is major achievement earned Clinton the confi dence of fi nancial mar- kets and helped fuel the economic boom of the 1990s.
Clinton scored another victory when Congress approved the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the fall of 1993. NAFTA, initiated and nearly completed by Bush, was a free-trade plan that united the United States, Mexico, and Canada into a common market without tariff barriers. Clinton endorsed the treaty as a way of securing American prosperity and spread- ing American values. Critics complained that free trade would cost American workers their jobs as American companies moved pro- duction overseas; Ross Perot, the defeated 1992 third-party can- didate, predicted a “giant sucking sound” as American jobs went south to Mexico. But Clinton carried the day, winning a bruising fi ght in the House and an easier contest in the Senate.
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Election of 1992
Electoral Vote by State Popular Vote
DEMOCRATIC Bill Clinton 44,908,254370
REPUBLICAN George Bush
39,102,343168
104,524,823538
INDEPENDENT H. Ross Perot
19,741,065
MINOR PARTIES 773,161
780 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
Although Clinton’s NAFTA coalition included many con- gressional Republicans, on other issues the GOP staunchly opposed the president. Republicans decried his budget as entail- ing “the biggest tax increase in the history of the world,” and they scuttled an ambitious attempt to revamp the nation’s health care system. Leading the opposition was a young congress- man from Georgia, Newton Leroy “Newt” Gingrich, who asked all GOP candidates in the 1994 congressional races to sign a ten-point Contract with America . Th e contract consisted of familiar conservative goals, including a balanced budget amend- ment to the Constitution, term limits for m embers of Congress, a line-item veto for the president, and a middle-class tax cut. For the fi rst time in recent political history, a party sought to win Congress on ideological issues rather than relying on individual personalities.
A series of embarrassing disclosures involving Bill Clinton’s character made this tactic particularly eff ective in 1994. During the 1992 campaign, the New York Times had raised questions about a bankrupt Arkansas land development called Whitewater in which the Clintons had lost a modest investment. Additional scandals cropped up over activities that had taken place aft er Clinton was elected president. Travelgate was the name given to the fi ring, apparently at the urging of First Lady Hillary Clinton, of several White House employees who arranged travel for the press covering the president. Th en in early 1994, Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee, fi led a sexual harassment suit against Clinton, charging that in 1991 then-Governor Clinton had made sexual advances to her.
Th e outcome of the November 1994 vote stunned political observers. Th e Republicans gained 9 seats in the Senate and an
astonishing 53 in the House to take control of both houses. Newt Gingrich, who had worked so hard to ensure the change in leader- ship in the Congress, became speaker of the House. Th e GOP also captured 32 governorships, including those of New York, California, and Texas, where George W. Bush, the son of the man Clinton beat in 1992, won handily.
Th e Republicans claimed a mandate to resume the Reagan Revolution: to cut taxes, diminish the scope of government, and empower the private sector. Clinton and the Democrats managed to keep the Republicans in check on matters of substance, but the Republicans, in turn, contrived to hobble Clinton. Th e administration and the Republicans collaborated on welfare reform and a modest increase in the minimum wage, but otherwise deadlock descended on Washington.
Clinton turned the deadlock to his benefit in 1996 after the Republicans, having failed to force him to accept cuts in Medicare, college loans, and other social services, refused to pass a budget bill, and thereby shut down the federal govern- ment. Clinton proved more deft at fi nger-pointing than Gingrich and the Republicans did, and he succeeded in persuading voters that they were to blame. He carried this theme into his 1996 reelec- tion campaign. Th e Republican nominee, Robert Dole of Kansas, lacked Clinton’s charisma and failed to shake the impression that the Republicans were fl int-hearts who wanted to cut the pet pro- grams of the American people. Clinton won decisively, holding the presidency for the Democrats even while the Republicans con- tinued to control Congress.
Scandal in the White House Despite Clinton’s reelection, rumors of wrongdoing still clung to his presidency. Th e special prosecutor appointed to probe the Whitewater transactions, Kenneth Starr, turned over stone aft er stone in search of evidence of malfeasance, until he came across rumors that Clinton had conducted a clandestine aff air with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton initially denied the affair. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky,” he said in January 1998. But Starr subpoenaed Lewinsky, who eventually gave a detailed account of her sexual encounters with the president and provided crucial physical evidence implicating Clinton.
Realizing that he could no longer deny the aff air, the presi- dent sought to limit the damage. On August 17, 1998, he appeared before Starr’s grand jury and admitted to having “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky. Th at evening Clinton spoke briefl y to the nation. Claiming that he had given the grand jury “legally accurate” answers, the president for the fi rst time admit- ted to a relationship with Lewinsky that was “not appropriate” and “wrong.” He said he regretted misleading the people and espe- cially his wife, but he refused to apologize for his behavior or his false denials.
Clinton’s fate hung in the balance. For the fi rst time, some Democrats began to speak out, most notably Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who called the president’s behavior “disgraceful” and “immoral.” But just when Clinton seemed most vulnerable, the special prosecutor inadvertently rescued him. In early September, Starr sent a 452-page report to Congress outlining
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Election of 1996
Electoral Vote by State Popular Vote
DEMOCRATIC Bill Clinton 45,590,703379
REPUBLICAN Robert Dole 37,816,307159
91,273,294538
INDEPENDENT H. Ross Perot 7,866,284
Clinton and the World 781
the GOP was unable to muster even a majority on the perjury charge, with 45 in favor and 55 opposed. Aft er a second, closer vote, 50 to 50, on obstruction of justice, the presiding offi cer, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, declared, “Acquitted of the charges.”
Clinton had survived the Monica Lewinsky affair, but he emerged from the ordeal with his presidency badly damaged. His fi nal two years in offi ce would be devoted to a concerted eff ort to restore his damaged reputation. Desperate for a legacy to mark his White House years, Clinton failed to realize that he had already created an enduring one—he would always be remembered as the president who dishonored his offi ce by his aff air with a young intern.
Clinton and the World
How did Clinton respond to the Balkan Wars?
Neither Clinton’s scandals nor his struggle with Congress allowed Americans to forget about the rest of the world, although many would have liked to do so. Th e Cold War had ended, and with it America’s forty-year struggle with communism. But the post–Cold
eleven possible impeachment charges against Clinton. Th e key charge was perjury, and Starr provided painstakingly graphic detail on all of the sexual encounters between Clinton and Lewinsky to prove that the president had lied when he denied engaging in sexual relations with the intern.
Many Americans responded by condemning Starr rather than the president. Shocked by the sordid details, they blamed the prosecutor for exposing families to distasteful sexual practices on the evening news. When Hillary Clinton stood staunchly by her husband, a majority of the public seemed to conclude that however bad the president’s conduct, it was a pri- vate matter, one to be settled between a husband and a wife, not in the public arena.
Republican leaders ignored the public sentiment and pressed ahead with impeachment proceedings. In December, the House (where the 1998 midterm elections had narrowed the GOP advan- tage to six) voted on four articles of impeachment, rejecting two, but approving two others—perjury and obstruction of justice—by small margins in nearly straight party-line votes.
Th e fi nal showdown in the Senate was anticlimactic. With a two-thirds vote required to fi nd the president guilty and remove him from offi ce, there was no chance of conviction in the highly charged partisan mood that prevailed. On February 12, 1999,
Read the Document Bill Clinton, Answers to the Articles of Impeachment
Members of the House Judiciary Committee listen to Clinton’s testimony during the hearings on the president’s impeachment in December 1998. The Committee sent four articles of impeachment to the full House, and the House adopted two—one count of perjury and one of obstruction of justice. The Senate could not muster the two-thirds majority required for conviction, and so Clinton was acquitted of both articles.
782 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
War world was plenty threatening, and while the United States was the only superpower still standing, America’s power could not preserve Americans from having to make diffi cult decisions about how to use that power.
Old Rivals in New Light Inheriting the chaos left by the breakup of the Soviet Union, Clinton concentrated on two issues in dealing with Russia and its neighbors. First, as Bush had done, he strongly supported Russian President Boris Yeltsin. In 1993, Clinton persuaded Congress to provide a $2.5 billion aid package to help Yeltsin carry out his free market reforms of the devastated Russian economy. Th e Clinton administration backed Yeltsin and his successor, Vladimir V. Putin, despite Russia’s continuing brutal war with Chechnya. Although the expansion of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and plans for a missile defense system created some tension, the Clinton administration succeeded in maintain- ing good relations with Russia.
Clinton was even more successful on the second big issue left over from the Cold War against the Soviets: preventing the pro- liferation of nuclear weapons among the former republics of the Soviet Union. With patient diplomacy, Secretary of State Warren Christopher won agreements from Belarus and Kazakhstan to scrap their deadly ICBMs. Ukraine proved more diffi cult, but in 1994, Clinton persuaded the president of Ukraine to surrender his coun- try’s entire nuclear stockpile. Clinton’s eff ort on behalf of nuclear nonproliferation in the former Soviet Union was perhaps his most important, if least heralded, achievement.
Th e president’s policy toward China was more questionable. Clinton ignored China’s dismal human rights record and con- tinued Bush’s policy of annually extending most-favored-nation status to Beijing. Th e growing importance of trade with China, whose economic output in 1993 exceeded Britain’s, led Clinton to overlook the memory of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the continued persecution of dissidents in China. As trade with China began to rival that with Japan, the president announced a policy of “constructive engagement.” It was better, he contended, to keep talking, and trading, with China than to harden Chinese resent- ment against the West by harping on moral issues. In 2000, Clinton won a notable victory for free trade when the House voted to give China permanent most-favored-nation status.
Th e Chinese, however, proved to be less than fully coopera- tive. China ignored U.S. protests of its export of missiles to Iran and nuclear technology to Pakistan, and it continued to stifl e dissent at home. China conducted provocative missile tests near Taiwan, which Beijing still claimed for China. When the Clinton admin- istration sent aircraft carriers to patrol the waters off Taiwan, a Chinese offi cial talked casually about raining nuclear bombs upon Los Angeles. Constructive engagement clearly had its limits.
To Intervene or Not Th e most diffi cult foreign policy decisions for the Clinton admin- istration came over the use of American troops abroad. Th e absence of the Cold War threat, with its implicit need to counter communist rivals, made it much more diffi cult for the president
and his advisers to decide when the national interest required sending American servicemen and servicewomen into harm’s way. Between 1993 and 1999, Clinton opted for foreign interven- tion in four areas—Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo—with decidedly mixed results.
Clinton inherited the Somalian venture from Bush, who in December 1992 had sent twenty-fi ve thousand American troops to that starving country on a humanitarian mission. Under Clinton, however, the original aim of using troops to protect the fl ow of food supplies and relief workers gradually shift ed to supporting a UN eff ort at nation building. Tragedy struck in October 1993 when eighteen American soldiers died in a botched attempt to capture a local warlord in Mogadishu. Aft er television cameras recorded the naked corpse of a U.S. helicopter pilot being dragged through the streets of Somalia’s capital, an angry Congress demanded a quick end to the intervention. American forces left Somalia by the end of March 1994 in what was unquestionably the low point of Clinton foreign policy.
The lack of clear criteria governing intervention that had brought on the disaster in Somalia almost led to another fi asco in Haiti. Seeking to halt the fl ow into Florida of thousands of Haitians fl eeing both poverty and tyranny, Clinton worked to compel the military rulers of Haiti to abdicate in favor of the man they had overthrown in 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aft er nearly a year of trade sanctions and increasing diplomatic pressure, the presi- dent prepared to use force to remove the military regime. At the last minute, a three-member peace mission led by former President Jimmy Carter worked out a compromise that allowed U.S. troops to land unopposed in late September 1994. Aristide returned to Haiti, but he could do little either to restore democracy or achieve economic progress in view of his country’s bankrupt treasury, ruined economy, and deep political divisions. By the time Aristide turned over the presidency to his elected successor in 1996, Haiti remained mired in hopeless poverty. Th e reality of Haiti’s plight had frustrated Clinton’s eff ort to use American power righteously.
The Balkan Wars Two other U.S. interventions, in Bosnia and Kosovo in the Balkan Peninsula, were more diffi cult but more successful. Th e breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 led the Muslim president of Bosnia to ask the European community to recognize the independence of Bosnia- Herzegovina. But Bosnia’s ethnic and religious makeup—44 percent Muslim, 31 percent Serb, and 17 percent Croat—contributed to a civil war in which the Bosnian Serbs used the weapons of the for- mer Yugoslavian army to seize more than 70 percent of Bosnian territory. Th e Muslim and Croatian forces were unable to prevent the Serb bombardment of the capital, Sarajevo, or the Serb pol- icy of “ethnic cleansing”—driving Muslims and Croats from their ancestral homes.
Clinton initially backed a plan to divide Bosnia into ten ethnic provinces. When the Serbs rejected the proposal in the spring of 1993, the president fell back on using American air power to patrol no-fl y zones over Bosnia designed to protect UN peacekeeping eff orts. Meanwhile, Serb artillery continued to pour a withering fi re on the civilian population of Sarajevo, and journalists reported a series of brutal atrocities in which Serb troops slaughtered thou- sands of Muslim men and raped thousands of Muslim women.
Republicans Triumphant 783
rule, even though 90 percent of the province’s population was ethnic Albanian. When these Kosovars launched a guerrilla war against the Serbian police, Milosevic responded with a campaign of repression that outraged world opinion. Diplomatic eff orts failed to achieve a ceasefi re, prompting Clinton and the heads of government of other NATO countries in March 1999 to order an aerial assault on Serbia, in an eff ort to end the persecution of the Kosovars.
At fi rst it appeared that Clinton had miscalculated. Th e initial air attacks, directed at empty barracks and remote military bases, failed to persuade Milosevic to seek peace. Instead, he stepped up the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, forcing hundreds of thousands of Kosovars to leave their homes and fl ee to neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Clinton and the NATO governments shift ed the focus of the air assault to Serbia’s infrastructure, targeting bridges, oil refi neries, and, most important of all, power stations. By the end of May 1999, Serbia had lost 60 percent of its electrical capacity, and domestic pressure on Milosevic began to mount. With Russian diplomats acting as go-betweens, Milosevic fi nally agreed to halt his attempts to purge Kosovo of its Albanian inhabitants. An agree- ment signed on June 10, 1999, called for the withdrawal of all Serb forces and placed Kosovo under UN supervision, with NATO troops acting as peacekeepers.
The conflict over Kosovo revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of the United States in the turbulent post–Cold War world. American military power, while great, was limited by a strong desire to avoid risking American lives. Clinton could boast of an amazing result—NATO had waged a 12-week air campaign without the loss of a single pilot. Yet the United States had been unable to prevent Milosevic from uprooting and terrorizing nearly one million Kosovars. When the fighting ended, the Kosovars returned to their devastated homeland, and soon NATO troops had the thankless task of preventing the Albanians from seeking revenge against the Serbian minority in Kosovo.
Republicans Triumphant
How did George W. Bush become president, and what did he do in the White House?
Clinton’s eight years in the White House gave Democrats hope that the conservative gains of the 1980s had been only temporary. Th ey pointed to the booming economy of the 1990s and the absence of any serious threat to American security as reasons for voters to leave the presidency in Democratic hands. Th e election of 2000 proved a bitter disappointment—all the more bitter by reason of the way in which it made Republican George W. Bush president.
The Disputed Election of 2000 If history had been the guide, the prosperity of the 1990s should have guaranteed victory to Clinton’s protégé, Vice President Al Gore. Th e state of the economy generally determines the outcome of presiden- tial elections, and entering 2000, the American economy had never appeared stronger. Th e stock market soared, spreading wealth among tens of millions of Americans; the federal defi cit of the Reagan years had given way to large and growing surpluses.
Th ese reports forced Clinton’s hand. In the summer of 1995, American planes under NATO auspices began a series of air strikes on the Serb forces that were shelling Sarajevo from the surround- ing mountains. Th e air campaign, which lasted two weeks, along with a major counteroff ensive by better equipped Croatian and Muslim forces, led to a cease-fi re in October 1995. Th e three war- ring factions sent delegations to Dayton, Ohio, to discuss a settle- ment. Aft er three weeks of talks, U.S. mediator Richard Holbrooke secured agreement to create a weak central government for all Bosnia at Sarajevo and to divide the rest of the country into two parts—a Muslim–Croatian federation with 51 percent of the terri- tory and a Serbian enclave with 49 percent. Th e Dayton plan called for free elections, the return of refugees to their former homes, and a NATO force to oversee the peace process.
Th e U.S. intervention in Kosovo was similarly rooted in the breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic had ended Kosovo’s autonomy within Yugoslavia and imposed Serbian
Adriatic Sea
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Ljubljana Zagreb
Belgrade
Skopje
ROMANIA
HUNGARY AUSTRIA
SLOVENIA (1991)
ITALY
YUGOSLAVIA (1991)
CROATIA (1991)
BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA (1992)
MACEDONIA (1992)
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War in Kosovo (1999)
Civil War in Bosnia (1992–1995)
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Slovenes Hungarians
Croatians Romanians
Serbians Albanians
Macedonians Turks
Germans Greeks
Boundary of Dayton Accord (1995)
Bosnian Muslims (Slavs converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest)
THE BREAKUP OF YUGOSLAVIA/CIVIL WAR IN BOSNIA With the end of the communist regime in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the country broke apart into ethnically distinct regions. In Bosnia, Muslims, Croatians, and Serbians fought a bloody civil war rife with atrocities on all sides over the issue of ethnic cleansing.
The Balkan Proximity Peace
Talks Agreement (1995) Read the Document
784 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
Th e decision fi nally came in the courts. Democrats appealed the initial attempt to certify Bush as the victor to the Florida Supreme Court. Th e Florida court twice ordered recounts, the second time for all counties in the state, but Bush’s lawyers appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On December 12, fi ve weeks aft er the election, the Court overruled the state court’s call for a recount, in a fi ve to four decision that refl ected a long-standing ideological divide among the nine justices. Th e next day, Gore gracefully conceded, and Bush fi nally became president-elect.
Bush’s narrow victory revealed deep divisions in American life at the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. Th e rural West and South went for Bush, along with a few key Midwest and border states, while Gore won the urban states along both coasts. Th ere was an equally strong divide along economic lines, with the poor voting for Gore, the rich for Bush, and the middle class dividing evenly between the two candidates. Gore benefi ted from the gen- der gap, winning 54 percent of the women’s vote, and he won an even larger share of the black vote, 90 percent, than Clinton in 1996. Bush did manage to narrow the Democratic margin among Hispanic voters, taking 35 percent, compared to only 28 percent for Dole four years earlier. Th e two candidates split the suburban vote evenly, while Bush reclaimed the Catholic vote for Republicans.
George W. Bush at Home Bush’s fi rst order of business was a large tax cut, which required intense lobbying from the White House. Th e president had to win over enough conservative southern Democrats to compensate for
But Clinton’s personal problems muddled the issue. Clinton had survived his impeachment trial, yet the experience tainted his record and left many voters unwilling to reward the Democrats by promoting his vice president.
Certain other domestic problems unnerved voters, as well. Th e 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City by two domestic terrorists killed 168 people and suggested that irra- tional violence threatened the daily lives of ordinary Americans. This feeling was reinforced by a 1999 shooting rampage at Columbine High School near Denver, which left twelve students and a teacher dead, besides the two shooters, who killed them- selves. Th e apparent confl ict between material abundance and eroding personal values resulted in the closest election in more than a century.
Th e two candidates, Vice President Gore of Tennessee and Governor Bush of Texas, had little in common beyond being the sons of successful political fathers. Gore had spent eighteen years in Washington as a congressman, senator, and vice president. Somewhat stiff and aloof in manner, he had mastered the intri- cacies of all the major policy issues and had the experience and knowledge to lead the nation. Bush, by contrast, had pursued a business career before winning the governorship of Texas in 1994. Personable and outgoing, Bush had the temperament for leader- ship but lacked not only experience but a full grasp of national issues. Journalists were quick to seize on the weaknesses of both men, accusing Gore of frequent and misleading exaggeration and Bush of mangling words and speaking only in generalities.
The candidacy of consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who ran on the Green Party ticket, complicated the political reckoning. Nader never seemed likely to win more than a small percentage of the votes, but in a close election a few points could make all the diff erence. Nader’s mere presence pushed Gore to the left , leaving room for Bush among independent-minded swing voters.
The race appeared close until election day, and even closer on election night. Gore seemed the likely winner when the major television networks predicted a Democratic victory in Florida. Th ey reconsidered as Bush swept the South, including the Clinton-Gore home states of Arkansas and Tennessee. Aft er midnight, the networks again called Florida, but this time for Bush, and the vice president telephoned the governor to concede, only to recant an hour later when it became clear that the Bush margin in Florida was paper thin.
Th ere things stuck, and for the next month all eyes were on Florida. Gore had two hundred thousand more popular votes nationwide than Bush, and 267 electoral votes to Bush’s 246. Yet with Florida’s 25 electoral votes, Bush could win the presidency. Both sides sent teams of lawyers to Florida. Bush’s team, working with Florida’s Republican secretary of state, sought to certify the results that showed the GOP candidate with a lead of 930 votes out of nearly six million cast. Citing many voting problems disclosed by the media, Gore asked for a recount in three heavily Democratic counties in south Florida. All three used antiquated punch card machines that resulted in some ballots not being clearly marked for any presidential candidate when the chads, the bits of paper removed when a card is punched, were not completely detached from the cards. For weeks the results in Florida, and hence of the entire election, appeared to depend on how one divined the intent of a voter based on hanging, dimpled, or bulging chads.
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Election of 2000
*One District of Columbia Gore elector abstained.
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN George W. Bush
Popular Vote
50,456,167271
DEMOCRATIC Al Gore 50,996,064266*
GREEN Ralph Nader 2,864,810
OTHER 834,774
105,151,815537
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of astonishingly corrupt business practices, including fraudulent accounting and private partnerships designed to infl ate profi ts and hide losses. When investors began to sell their overvalued Enron stock, shares that were once worth nearly $100 fell to less than $1. Enron declared bankruptcy and the remaining shareholders lost over $50 billion, while rank-and-fi le employees lost not only their jobs but much of their retirement savings, invested largely in now worthless Enron stock.
The War on Terror On the morning of September 11, 2001, nineteen Islamic militant terrorists hijacked four U.S. airliners and turned them to attack targets in New York City and Washington, D.C. Th e hijackers took over two planes fl ying out of Boston’s Logan Airport en route to California, and fl ew them into the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York. One plane slammed into the north tower just before 9 a.m., and the second hit the south tower only twenty minutes later. Within two hours, both towers had collapsed, taking the lives of nearly three thousand victims trapped in the buildings or crushed by the debris and more than three hundred fi refi ghters and other rescue workers who had attempted to save them.
In Washington, an American Airlines fl ight that left Dulles Airport bound for Los Angeles met a similar fate. Taken over by fi ve terrorists, the Boeing 757 plowed into the Pentagon, destroying one wing of the building and killing 189 military personnel and civil- ian workers. Th e terrorists had seized a fourth plane, United Airlines fl ight 93, scheduled to fl y from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco. Over Pennsylvania, as the hijackers attempted to turn the plane toward the nation’s capital, the passengers fought to regain control of the plane. Th ey failed to do so, but prevented the plane from hit- ting another target in Washington—perhaps the White House or the Capitol building. Flight 93 crashed in southern Pennsylvania, killing all forty-four passengers and crew as well as the hijackers.
“None of us will forget this day,” President Bush told the American people in a televised speech that evening. Bush vowed to fi nd and punish those responsible for the attacks, as well as any who assisted them. “We will make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them.”
Bush didn’t have to look long to discover the master mind behind the September 11 attacks. Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi, released videotapes claiming responsibility on behalf of his terrorist organization, al Qaeda (“the Base” in Arabic). Bin Laden had originally been part of the international Muslim resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that had received support and weapons from the CIA in the 1980s. He turned against the United States at the time of the Persian Gulf War, outraged by the presence of large numbers of American troops in his native Saudi Arabia. Evidence linked bin Laden and al Qaeda to the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998 and an attack on the American destroyer USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
Th e United States had been trying to neutralize al Qaeda for a decade without success. Ordered out of Saudi Arabia in 1991, bin Laden had sought refuge in the Sudan and later in Afghanistan aft er the Taliban, another extremist Muslim group, took over that country. In Afghanistan, bin Laden set up camps to train hundreds of would-be terrorists, mainly from Arab countries but including
losing Republican moderates who insisted on reducing the federal debt before cutting taxes. Bush managed the feat, and in June 2005 Congress passed legislation that slashed taxes by a staggering $1.35 trillion over a ten-year period. Many of the cuts would take eff ect only in future years, but Congress off ered an immediate stimulus to the economy by authorizing rebate payments to tax- payers: $600 for couples and $300 for individuals earning more than $6,000 a year. While critics saw this measure as a betrayal of the long eff ort to balance the budget, Bush contended that future budget surpluses would more than off set the loss of tax revenue.
A slowdown in the American economy, triggered by the bursting of the 1990s high-tech bubble, soon turned the projected budget surplus into annual defi cits. But it failed to halt the Bush administration’s tax cut momentum. In 2003, arguing that a fur- ther reduction in taxes would stimulate the stalled economy, Bush prevailed upon Congress to adopt another $350 billion in cuts. Like the 2001 cuts, the new reductions were temporary in order to preserve the possibility of a balanced budget by 2010. Opponents charged that if a future Congress made these tax cuts permanent, as seemed likely, the total cost would rise to nearly $1 trillion. While Clinton had favored a policy of eliminating the defi cit, Bush made tax reduction the centerpiece of his economic policy.
Although it took a bit longer, the president also succeeded in persuading Congress to enact a program of education reform. Borrowing the label, “No Child Left Behind,” from liberal Democrats, the administration pushed hard for a new policy requiring states to give annual performance tests to all elemen- tary school students. Democrats countered with demands for increased federal funding of public education to assist states and local school boards in raising their standards. Bush shrewdly cultivated the support of Senator Edward Kennedy, a leading liberal Democrat, to forge a bipartisan consensus. Th e fi nal mea- sure increased federal aid to education by $4 billion, to a total of $22 billion annually, and mandated state tests in reading and math for all students in grades three through eight, and at least once during grades ten to twelve.
By this time the economic slowdown had become a full-blown recession, the fi rst in ten years. A glut of unsold goods forced manu- facturers to curtail production and lay off workers. Unemployment rose, eventually to 6 percent, despite the eff orts of the Federal Reserve to stem the economic decline by cutting interest rates. Th e tax rebates authorized by Congress had boosted the economy slightly during the summer of 2001, but then the September 11 ter- rorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon led to a further decline. In 2002, the economy once again began to recover, only to relapse late in the year amid concern over the threat of war with Iraq.
One of the most troubling aspects of the economic downturn was the implosion of several major corporations and the sub- sequent revelation of shocking fi nancial practices. WorldCom, Inc., a major telecommunications company, became the largest corporation in American history to declare bankruptcy, while a New York grand jury charged executives of Tyco International, a large electronics company, with stealing more than $600 million from shareholders through stock fraud, false expense reports, and unauthorized bonuses.
Th ese scandals, however, paled before the misdeeds of Enron, a Houston energy company that failed in late 2001 as the result
786
When Al Gore lost the disputed 2000 presi- dential election, he gave such a gracious concession speech that pundits wondered just how badly he wanted to be president. Did he know something they didn’t know? Was there life after politics?
For Gore it turned out there was. But if he had expected that the next phase of his career might be less bruising than the slugfest he had just experienced with George W. Bush, he was quickly proven wrong. Gore’s new cause was environmentalism, and he discovered that nothing posed greater danger to one’s repu- tation or peace of mind than trying to save the earth.
Gore had become interested in environmental affairs while he was in Congress during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1992 he published Earth in the Balance, an environmentalist call to arms. “We must make the rescue of the environment the central organiz- ing principle for civilization,” he wrote. As vice president under Bill Clinton, he pushed hard for American approval of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which would have committed the United States to substantially reduce green- house gases: carbon dioxide and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and are responsible, in the opinion of most scientists, for rising global temperatures.
Gore lost the Kyoto fi ght—badly. The Senate, which has the responsibil- ity to ratify treaties, rejected the Kyoto
pact by a vote of 95 to 0. The negative Republican votes were no surprise, but that Democrat Gore—a former senator and the Senate’s presiding offi cer, by virtue of his offi ce as vice president— couldn’t muster even one Democratic vote was an embarrassment that would have daunted most politicians.
But Gore wasn’t an ordinary poli- tician, and he didn’t embarrass eas- ily. Following his defeat by Bush in 2000, he threw himself into the envi- ronmental cause, becoming what some of his many critics derided as a one-man-traveling-band in favor of all things green. He wrote a new book, An Inconvenient Truth, that described the threat to civilization from global warming as dire and imminent. The book became the basis for a docu- mentary, also called An Inconvenient
Feature Essay
An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming
Al Gore in a still from An Inconvenient Truth, his Oscar-winning documentary about climate change.
Complete the Assignment An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming on myhistorylab
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assertion that humans were warming the planet “patently absurd…It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life.” When Mitt Romney, the front-runner, expressed tepid support for the idea, Rush Limbaugh, the con- servative radio host, jibed, “Bye-bye nomination.”
Romney’s stance on global warm- ing did not kill his hopes of getting the nomination, but the controversy guaranteed that the government would take no serious action to curtail emissions of greenhouse gases. Even environmentalists acknowledged that there was comparatively little the United States could do, given that the greatest growth in carbon diox- ide emissions would almost certainly come from China, India, and other developing countries. Those countries weren’t likely to agree to emissions caps until their inhabitants’ standards of living more closely approximated those of the developed nations. The economic recession in the United States also raised the political cost of new environmental regulations on business that might cause fi rms to hire fewer workers.
In consequence, the issue of global warming joined such others as health care and Social Security in generating enormous debate but no resolution. One of the strengths of the American political system had always been its checks and balances, with each branch and interest group countering the oth- ers until a consensus was achieved. As the earth heated up, many Americans wondered if the old system could meet this new challenge.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Why has the issue of global warm- ing become so controversial in the United States?
2. What does the controversy say about the intersection of poli- tics and science in American democracy?
3. Is democracy the best way to resolve debates that turn on technical issues?
at times impossible. Liberals often treated the skeptics as ignorant and venal; many conservatives made denial of global warming a litmus test of true conservatism. Many liberals made changes in their own lives, switch- ing to gas-electric hybrid cars, which squeezed more mileage out of each gallon of gas, and recycling house- hold items, to save the energy cost of producing new ones. Cities adopted ordinances to encourage recycling and diminish the “carbon footprint”—the amount of carbon dioxide emitted— of urban activities. But conservatives often derided such measures as lib- eral hypocrisy—they noted that Gore’s globe-spanning travels on behalf of carbon reduction generated huge amounts of carbon—and an affront to the American way of life.
Meanwhile, the evidence mounted. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported in 2012 that the surface temperature of the earth had been rising since 1880, and that the warming was accelerat- ing, with the ten warmest years of the last century occurring within the last twelve years. The oceans were also warming, which caused sea lev- els to rise and threaten low-lying areas along the shores. Glaciers and the ice sheets that covered most of Greenland and Antarctica were shrinking. The ice cap over the North Pole retreated farther and faster during the sum- mer. Instances of extreme weather— droughts, torrential rains, record high temperatures—appeared to be increas- ing, although climate scientists were careful not to claim that any one of these events was a direct consequence of global warming.
Despite the evidence, the con- troversy persisted. Among conserva- tives, especially social and religious conservatives, rejection of human- caused global warming seemed to be part of the broader rejection of sci- ence that included disbelief in evolu- tion. During the Republican campaign for the 2012 nomination for president, most of the candidates either dodged the issue or denied it. Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania senator, called the
Truth, that in 2007 won an Academy Award, further irking Gore’s critics. President Bush gave the movie the back of his hand; asked whether he would watch it, Bush replied, “Doubt it.” The Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Jim Inhofe, who was dis- paraged in the fi lm, compared it to Hitler’s Mein Kampf: “If you say the same lie over and over again, and par- ticularly if you have the media’s sup- port, people will believe it.” Spoofs of An Inconvenient Truth on YouTube mocked the fi lm as boring and self- righteous. Gore’s critics grew even more incensed when he was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental efforts.
At the heart of the controversy were the substantive questions of global warming: Was the earth’s climate really getting hotter, and were human actions responsible? Mountains of data gathered over decades by thousands of scientists suggested that the planet was indeed warming and that human production of greenhouse gases was responsible. But the data and the mod- els the scientists employed weren’t defi nitive or irrefutable. Persons deter- mined not to be persuaded could fi nd plausible grounds for skepticism.
Had the debate involved scien- tists only, it would have been bitter enough. But the consequences of global warming predicted by most of the scientists—fl oods, droughts, fam- ine, pestilence—appeared to require a political response. Humans must stop producing so much carbon dioxide, and their governments must make them stop. This would be inconvenient (hence the title of Gore’s book and fi lm), and almost certainly expensive. But it had to be done.
So said the convinced. Skeptics disagreed. Many were political con- servatives, who didn’t like government telling them what to do. Most com- plained at the expense and trouble. And nearly all bridled at what they deemed the holier-than-thou attitude of Gore and the global-warming believers.
The emotions surrounding the issue made reasoned debate diffi cult,
788 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
political coalition resisting the Taliban. Using a variety of methods, ranging from bribes of local warlords to air strikes, American forces quickly routed the Taliban and by December had installed a U.S.-friendly regime in Kabul. Most of Afghanistan, however, remained in chaos, and despite extensive eff orts and several near misses, bin Laden avoided capture.
While waging the war on terror abroad, the Bush administration also focused on the problem of securing the United States from any further terrorist assaults. At the president’s urging, Congress approved a new Department of Homeland Security, combin- ing the Customs Bureau, the Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and other government bureaus.
A primary focus of homeland security was ensuring the safety of airline travel in the wake of the September 11 hijackings. In November 2001, Bush signed legislation replacing private compa- nies with government employees at all airport screening stations. Th e airlines were required to replace cockpit doors with secure barriers and to permit armed air marshals to ride among the passengers. Th e understandable public fear of fl ying aft er September 11 nevertheless had a dev- astating eff ect on the airline industry, forcing the cancellation of many fl ights and the laying off of thousands of pilots and other workers. Despite a $15 billion government bailout approved in late September 2001, the airlines continued to expe- rience heavy losses. Several, including United Airlines, fi led for bankruptcy. Although air travel began to revive slowly in 2002, the industry, along with other forms of tourism, continued to be a drag on an already sluggish economy.
Th e war on terror raised an even more fundamental question than economic stagna- tion. Attorney General John Ashcroft , using new powers granted by Congress under the Patriot Act, conducted a broad crackdown on possible terrorists, detaining many Muslim Americans on fl imsy evidence and insisting
that concern for national security outweighed traditional civil liberties. Opponents quickly challenged Ashcroft , arguing that the terrorists would win their greatest victory if the United States vio- lated its own historic principles of individual freedom in the name of fi ghting terrorism. It was a debate that troubled many Americans who had diffi culty reconciling the need for security with respect for civil liberties.
Widening the Battlefi eld Th e terrorist attacks on the United States were the catalyst for a major change in direction for American foreign policy. Not only did the Bush administration wage an intensive eff ort to avenge
recruits from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Central Asia. Aft er the 1998 embassy bombings, President Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on several of these camps in the hope of killing bin Laden. Th e al Qaeda leader survived, though, leaving one of the targets only a few hours before the strike.
Bush’s determination to go aft er those harboring terrorists made Afghanistan the prime target for the American coun- terattack. The president ordered the Pentagon and the CIA, which already had agents on the scene, to launch an invasion of Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban, wipe out al Qaeda, and capture or kill Osama bin Laden.
In early October 2001, the CIA and Army Special Forces began the operation, relying on the Northern Alliance, an Afghan
View the Closer Look World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001
This photo depicts the unprecedented deaths and destruction caused by the al Qaeda terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2011. Nearly 3,000 victims were trapped in the buildings or crushed by the debris and more than three hundred first responders died in their heroic efforts to save the victims.
Republicans Triumphant 789
the September 11 attacks and prevent further assaults, it initiated a new global policy of American preeminence. For the fi rst time since the end of the Cold War, the United States had a clear, if controversial, blueprint for international aff airs.
The new administration rejected traditional forms of international cooperation. President Bush withdrew U.S. par- ticipation in the Kyoto Protocol to control global warming and announced plans to terminate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Russia. And he was outspoken in refusing to expose American military personnel to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court for possible crimes committed in worldwide peacekeeping eff orts.
Th e new direction of American foreign policy became clear on January 29, 2002, when Bush delivered his second State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. He repeated his vow to punish all nations sponsoring terrorism, and he specifi ed three countries in particular. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, he declared in a memorable phrase, constituted an “axis of evil.” Nine months later, in September 2002, the Bush administration released a fully developed statement of its new world policy, “National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States.” Th e goal of American policy, Bush’s NSS declared, was to “extend the peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.”
There were two main components of the new strategy, which critics quickly called unilateralism . The first was to
As rescue efforts continued in the rubble of the World Trade Center, President Bush toured the site on September 14, 2001. In CNN’s televised coverage of the visit, Bush is shown here addressing rescue workers through a bullhorn. Firefighter Bob Beckwith stands beside him.
Read the Document George W. Bush, Address to Congress (September 20, 2001)
accept fully the role the nation had been playing since the end of the Cold War: global policeman. The United States would not shrink from defending freedom any- where in the world—with allies if possible, by itself if necessary. To implement this policy, NSS asserted that the Bush admin- istration would maintain “military strength beyond challenge.” “Our forces,” the NSS declared, “will be strong enough to dis- suade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”
In playing the role of world cop, Bush and his advisers asserted the right to the preventive use of force. Reacting to September 11, the NSS continued, “We cannot let our enemies strike first.” Although promising to seek the support of the international commu- nity before using force, the NSS stated, “we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense.” In other words, the Bush administration, aware that the United States was far stronger militar- ily and economically than any other nation, accepted its new role as fi nal arbiter of all international disputes.
Iraq quickly became the test case for this new shift in American foreign policy. Aft er his “axis of evil” speech in January, President Bush focused on what he and his Pentagon advisers called weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) that they claimed Saddam Hussein had been secretly amassing in large quantities. Th e United States demanded that Iraq permit UN inspectors (forced out of the country in 1998) to search for such weapons. Meanwhile, the Bush administration formulated plans for a unilateral American military solution to the Iraq question.
Slowly, but inevitably, the United States moved toward war with Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. Congress approved a reso- lution in October authorizing the president to use force against Saddam Hussein’s regime. A month later, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to send its team of inspectors back into Iraq, warning Saddam of “severe consequences” if he failed to comply. Despite the failure of the international inspectors to fi nd any evi- dence of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Iraq, the Bush administration kept pressing for a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to compel Saddam to disarm. When France and Russia vowed to veto any such measure, Bush and his advisers decided to ignore the world body and proceed on their own. Preemption would have its fi rst real test.
Th e ensuing war with Iraq surprised both the backers and the critics of unilateralism. In March 2003, three columns of American troops, a total of sixty-fi ve thousand, began to execute a two-pronged invasion of Iraq from bases in Kuwait. Britain, the only major power to join the United States in the fi ght- ing, helped by besieging the city of Basra and taking control of
790 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
and oil facilities made economic recovery very slow and halting. U.S. eff orts to involve occupation forces from other UN members yielded only a few troops.
Th e December 2003 arrest of Saddam, who had eluded cap- ture until then despite determined eff orts to fi nd him, revived American optimism. Yet the overall situation remained troubling. Despite slow but steady progress in restoring public services such as electric power and the gradual recovery of the Iraq oil indus- try, the armed insurrection continued. Mortar attacks on Baghdad hotels, roadside bombs aimed at American armored convoys, and handheld missile attacks on American helicopters made Iraq a very dangerous place. Equally disturbing, confl icts of interest between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims, as well as the Kurdish demand for autonomy, threatened the American goal of creating a stable Iraqi government.
Bush Reelected Not surprisingly, the war in Iraq became the central issue in the 2004 presidential race. Bush cast himself as the resolute com- mander in the war on terror; he and his supporters contended that it would be reckless to change commanders midconflict. Democrats initially favored former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who had opposed the invasion of Iraq and still strongly criticized Bush’s conduct of the war. But the nomination ultimately
southern Iraq. Within two weeks, the U.S. army had captured the Baghdad international airport, and on April 8, just three weeks aft er the fi ghting had begun, marines marched virtually unop- posed into the heart of the city. Th e American people watched the televised scene of joyous Iraqis toppling a statue of Saddam in Fardos Square. An Iraqi major summed up the magnitude of his country’s defeat: “Losing a war is one thing, but losing Baghdad is another,” he explained. “It was like losing the dearest thing in life.”
Th e rapid success of the anti-Saddam off ensive seemed to confi rm the wisdom of Bush’s decision for war. But the subsequent failure to fi nd any weapons of mass destruction led critics to ques- tion the validity of the war. In response, the president’s defenders emphasized the importance of deposing Saddam by pointing to his brutal prisons and to the killing fi elds south of Baghdad where thousands of Shi’ite rebels had been slaughtered in 1991.
The problems of restoring order and rebuilding the shat- tered Iraqi economy quickly overshadowed the debate over the war’s legitimacy. Daily attacks on American troops in the Sunni triangle north of Baghdad began in the summer of 2003 and increased in intensity during the fall, killing an average of three American soldiers each week. By October, more troops had died from these attacks than had been killed during the combat phase in March and April. Widespread looting, sabotage of oil pipelines, and diffi culties in repairing and operating outdated power plants
In a memorable image from the war in Iraq, Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers pull down a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Eight months later, U.S. soldiers captured the former Iraqi president near Tikrit.
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials 791
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INDEPENDENT Ralph Nader
Election of 2004
Electoral Vote by State
REPUBLICAN George W. Bush
Popular Vote
60,934,251286
DEMOCRATIC John F. Kerry 57,765,291252
405,933
119,105,475538
3ALASKA
3WASH., D.C.
4HAWAII
a divide-and-conquer policy toward the insurgents, diminished the violence and made credible Bush’s claim that Iraq had turned a cor- ner toward democratic self-government.
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials
What challenges faced Barack Obama and the American people during the fi rst decade of the twenty- fi rst century?
By then, however, Americans faced a new problem—one that looked much like an old problem. A booming real estate market in the early 2000s tempted banks and other investors to borrow and lend more than was prudent; when the real estate bubble burst in 2007, the fi nancial markets reeled. Wall Street’s panic evoked grim memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s and produced a comparable result at the ballot box: the replacement of a Republican president by a Democratic one. Th at this new president was the fi rst African American to occupy the White House made his accession even more historic. But it didn’t make the problems he inherited less daunting.
The Great Recession Wall Street’s troubles reached the crisis stage in the summer and autumn of 2008. Major lenders, including the government- backed twins the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation (nicknamed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Th e Bush administration, fearful of the consequences that might follow their collapse, threw the two a life-preserver of federal loans. Th e panic nonetheless spread, bringing down Wall Street giants Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and frightening the administration and Congress into craft ing a broader rescue package for the fi nancial sector, totaling hundreds of billions of dollars.
Th e bailout package averted chaos but left voters shaken. Until this point, the Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain of Arizona, appeared the favorite in the 2008 contest. His war-hero background from the Vietnam era reassured Americans worried about the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the fl oundering economy neutralized McCain’s advantage and made voters take a second look at the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois. Obama ran a brilliant campaign, sum- marized in the catchword “Hope” and the promise “Yes, We Can.” More important was the fact that he was from the opposite party to that which had held the White House during the boom and bust. Obama garnered 53 percent of the popular vote and defeated McCain handily (See Map: Th e Election of 2008).
Obama’s supporters hoped for great things from the new presi- dent. And indeed his inauguration was historic and moving. “God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny,” Obama said. “Th is is the meaning of our liberty and our creed; why men and women and chil- dren of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnifi cent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
went to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who voted for the war but later criticized Bush for misleading the country regarding the causes of the confl ict, and who contended that the war in Iraq, rather than contributing to the war on terror, actually distracted from it.
Th e campaign was the most vitriolic in years. Democrats accused Bush of having stolen the election of 2000 (with the help of the Supreme Court) and of lying about Saddam’s weap- ons. Republicans called Kerry’s belated opposition to the war in Vietnam an insult to those Americans who had died there, and they cited certain of his votes in the Senate as evidence of a fatal inconsistency. Both sides (following the example of Howard Dean in the primaries) employed the Internet to rally the faithful, raise money, and spread rumors.
Th e strong emotions produced a record turnout: 12 million more than in 2000. Bush won the popular vote by 2.5 percent, becoming the fi rst victor since his father in 1988 to gain an absolute popular majority. Th e electoral race was comparably close, with 286 for Bush and 252 for Kerry. Taken together with the congressional elections, which increased the Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the 2004 race confi rmed a “red state/blue state” split in America, with the Republicans domi- nating the South, the Plains, and the Rockies, while the Democrats carried the Northeast, the Great Lakes, and the West Coast.
Despite his modest margin of victory, Bush claimed a man- date. He proposed to privatize part of the Social Security sys- tem and promised to stay the course in Iraq. His Social Security plan went nowhere, but the situation in Iraq eventually improved. Following a new round of insurgent attacks, Bush in 2007 ordered an increase in American troop strength; this “surge,” combined with
792 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
workers, as it seemed certain to do, it might aggravate the recession. Th e problem, for the moment, defi ed solution.
Other problems had deeper roots but no easier solutions. Th e race question remained alive and contentious, despite the presence of an African American in the White House. Affi rmative action policies—policies designed to ensure greater participation by minorities—had been under scrutiny for years. Th e Bakke v. Regents of the University of California decision of 1978 had allowed the use of race as one factor in determining admission to colleges and universities, so long as rigid racial quotas weren’t employed. Th is dissatisfi ed many conservatives, who during the 1980s and 1990s attacked affi rmative action politically and in the courts. In 1992, Cheryl Hopwood, an unsuccessful white applicant to the University of Texas Law School, challenged her rejection, contending that the school had admitted less-qualified African Americans. In 1996, the Fift h Circuit Court of Appeals decided in her favor, and the Hopwood decision raised the hopes of anti–affi rmative action groups that the Supreme Court would overturn Bakke . But in a 2003 case involving the University of Michigan, the Supreme Court ruled that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions.” In other words, affi rmative action in higher education could continue. But the nar- rowness of the 5–4 vote suggested that affi rmative action would continue to spark controversy, as indeed it did.
Even more controversial was abortion. Th e issue had roiled American politics for decades, but it did so particularly aft er the 2005 death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the nearly con- current retirement of Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Th e two vacancies on the Supreme Court allowed George W. Bush to nominate their replacements. Rehnquist had been a reliable con- servative, but O’Connor was a swing vote, and liberals feared that a more conservative successor would tip the balance against abortion rights, among other contentious issues. Yet John Roberts, Bush’s nominee for chief justice, and Samuel Alito, the nominee for asso- ciate justice, dodged Democrats’ questions in hearings, and both nominations succeeded. Almost immediately, the South Dakota legislature essentially banned abortion, hoping to persuade the newly reconfi gured court to revisit the 1973 Roe decision, which guaranteed abortion rights. South Dakota voters subsequently overturned the state law, but the issue remained highly charged.
Gay rights provoked fresh controversy as gay advocates pushed for equal marital rights. Aft er the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004 struck down a state law barring same-sex marriages, gay advocates celebrated, but conservatives in dozens of states pressed for laws and constitutional amendments reaffi rming traditional views on the subject and defi ning marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Nearly all these eff orts were successful, suggest- ing that, on this front at least, the advances gay men and women had achieved since the 1960s had hit a wall. Th e issue of military service proved similarly controversial. Bill Clinton had achieved a minor breakthrough with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gay service as long as the men and women in question kept their sexual orientation to themselves. Barack Obama campaigned to let gays come out of the military closet, but the Republican party resisted. Finally, however, in the lame duck session of Congress in December 2010, the legislature approved and Obama signed a measure repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and permitting gays to serve openly in the armed forces.
But the warm feeling soon wore off in the cold wind of the bleak economy. Th e rescue package helped stabilize the fi nancial sector, but unemployment rose inexorably, peaking at 10 percent in 2009 and remaining near there for the next year. Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress pushed through an economic stimulus package, which may have kept unemployment from going even higher but did little to bring it down.
Obama and the Democrats also achieved something Democratic presidents since Harry Truman had been attempting: passage of a comprehensive program of medical insurance for nearly all Americans. But the measure, passed in the face of bitter resistance from Republicans in Congress, prompted a backlash among voters. Together with the lengthening recession, it contributed to the rebuke the Democrats received in the 2010 midterm elections, in which the Republicans reclaimed control of the House of Representatives, gained six seats in the Senate, and carried most of the governor’s races.
Obama scored an important success when American special forces killed Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda mastermind, in 2011. And he withdrew American troops from Iraq and scheduled the removal of troops from Afghanistan, foreshadowing a reduction of the American military role in the Middle East. But instability in Pakistan and the nuclear ambitions of Iran suggested that America’s worries about the region were far from over.
New Challenges and Old Meanwhile, the Great Recession knocked the federal budget wildly out of balance. Government revenues fell as unemployed workers no longer paid income taxes; government spending rose to cover unemployment compensation and other recession-related expenses. By 2011, the annual defi cit seemed stuck at more than $1 trillion. Reducing the defi cit was the fi rst priority to many voters and elected offi cials, but if reducing the defi cit required laying off government
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Election of 2008
Electoral Vote by State
DEMOCRATIC Barack Obama
Popular Vote
69,456,897365
129,391,711538
3ALASKA
3WASH., D.C.
4HAWAII
REPUBLICAN John McCain 59,934,814173
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials 793
Th e stubbornness of the Great Recession made Americans won- der whether the economy would ever recover its resiliency. Th e towering federal defi cit imperiled such cherished programs as Social Security and Medicare and put the myriad other contri- butions the federal government had long made to American life even more at risk.
Demographics didn’t help. As the baby boom generation neared retirement, the load on the Social Security system increased. Everyone realized that something would have to be done to keep the pension program afl oat, but no one could fi gure out how to make the necessary changes politically palatable. Middle-aged Americans faced the prospect of delayed retirement, smaller pensions, or both. Not surprisingly, they objected. Younger Americans resisted the tax increases that could have spared their elders such sacrifi ce.
Th e trend in health care costs was even more alarming. For years, medical costs had grown rapidly, and as the population
Science and religion continued to battle in America’s class- rooms. Opponents of evolution revised their challenge to Darwin, replacing creationism with “intelligent design” and demanding that biology classes air this version of their beliefs. School board elec- tions hinged on the issue; Ohio embraced intelligent design only to reject it following an adverse 2005 court decision in a case from the Dover school district. For the moment, the evolutionists held their own, but given that public-opinion polls consistently showed most Americans rejecting evolution in favor of divine creation, the fi ght was sure to continue.
Doubting the Future During most of American history, every generation had been bet- ter off materially than the generation before. Events of the early twenty-fi rst century called this implicit guarantee into question.
The Historical Significance of the 2008 Election Watch the Video
Barack Obama takes the presidential oath of office from Supreme Court Justice John Roberts on January 20, 2011 to become the 44th president of the United States. President Obama’s wife, Michelle, is holding the Bible as an estimated 1.8 million people attended the inaugural on the National Mall.
794 CHAPTER 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
Conclusion: The End of the American Future—or Not?
From before its eighteenth-century birth as an independent nation, America had been the land of the future. Immigrants to America left their pasts behind as they traveled to the new country; native-born Americans treated the future as though they owned it. And to nearly everyone in the country, the future almost invariably looked bright.
By 2012, however, the American future didn’t look bright at all. Th e terrorist attacks of 2001 had made Americans feel vulner- able; eleven years later they had suff ered no comparable assaults, but they still felt vulnerable. Th ey waited in long lines at airport security checkpoints and submitted to personal searches on enter- ing public buildings and gathering places all over the country. The Great Recession darkened America’s economic horizons like nothing since the Great Depression, and American offi cials could not agree on how to restore prosperity. A poll released in 2011 revealed that only 44 percent of Americans believed that the young people of this generation would live better than their parents, the smallest percentage on record.
Not everyone despaired, though. Immigrants still came to America, seeking its promise of a better life for themselves and their children. High-school graduates went to college in search of fulfi lling jobs. Young men and women got married and had children, hoping the little ones would fare well in the decades ahead.
Th ose who knew history tended to be the most optimistic. Th e country had been through diffi cult times in the past. Th e American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and two world wars had tested Americans’ mettle and faith in the future. Each time the country had survived, typically stronger for the trial. No one could guarantee that America would emerge from its current trials stronger than before, but Americans had never required guarantees.
aged, the costs appeared certain to claim an ever-larger share of the nation’s income. Th e health care law enacted by Congress at Obama’s behest promised to rein in medical costs, but many observers doubted the promises, and the Republicans vowed to repeal it.
Immigration remained controversial. Eff orts to reduce the number of illegal entries—by tighter enforcement at the border, by sanctions on employers hiring undocumented aliens, by tem- porary visas for guest workers—stalled on the opposition of immi- grant advocates, businesses, and other groups. Th e cloud of the Great Recession had at least one silver lining: As jobs grew scarce in America, the fl ow of illegal immigrants diminished. But no one doubted that the immigration issue would resurface or that it would provoke heated debate.
Environmental problems demanded attention, which they got, and solutions, which they didn’t. A broad consensus emerged among the scientifi c community that global warming had to be addressed, but the proposed solutions—higher mileage standards for automobiles, a “carbon tax” on emissions of greenhouse gases, greater reliance on nuclear energy, among others—were costly, intrusive, unproven, or environmentally problematic in their own ways. And though the scientists mostly agreed that humans were causing global warning, the politicians did not. As on other prob- lems facing the country, the consequence was deadlock.
THE ELECTION OF 2008
Candidate Party Popular Vote
Electoral Vote
Obama Democratic 69,456,897 365
McCain Republican 59,934,814 173
STUDY RESOURCES 795
Study Resources y Take the Study Plan for Chapter 32 Into the Twenty-first Century, 1989–2012 on MyHistoryLab
T I M E L I N E
1989 Berlin Wall opens (November) 1990 Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait (August); Bush
breaks “no new taxes” campaign pledge, supports $500 billion budget deal (November)
1991 Operation Desert Storm frees Kuwait and crushes Iraq (January–February); Soviet Union dissolves, replaced by Commonwealth of Independent States (December)
1992 Riots devastate South Central Los Angeles after verdict in Rodney King case (May); Bill Clinton elected president (November)
1993 General Motors announces loss of $23.4 billion, the largest one-year loss in U.S. corporate history
1994 Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress (November)
1995 U.S. troops arrive in Bosnia as part of international peacekeeping force (December)
1996 Clinton signs major welfare reform measure (August) 1998 Terrorists bomb American embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania
1999 Senate acquits Clinton of impeachment charges (February), Dow Jones Industrial Average goes over 10,000 for fi rst time (March)
2000 Y2K worries prove unfounded; George W. Bush wins contested presidential election
2001 American economy goes into recession, ending the longest period of expansion in U.S. history (March); Terrorist attacks on World Trade Center and the Pentagon (September 11); Anthrax spores
found in mail (October); United States military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (October–December)
2002 Department of Homeland Security created (November)
2003 U.S. troops invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime (March–April); Saddam Hussein captured (December)
2004 Insurgency in Iraq escalates; Global warming gains international attention; George W. Bush reelected (November)
2005 Bush’s plan for Social Security reform fails; Hurricane Katrina (August) devastates Gulf Coast and forces evacuation of New Orleans
2006 Proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage fails to achieve required two-thirds majority in the Senate
2007 Troop “surge” in Iraq helps calm insurgency (February, to 2008); Real-estate bubble bursts
2008 Oil prices skyrocket before falling back; Federal government takes control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (September); Barack Obama elected president (November)
2009 Recession drives unemployment rate to 10 percent (October)
2010 Health care reform passed (January); Republicans regain control of House (November)
2011 Osama bin Laden killed (May); US troops leave Iraq (December)
C H A P T E R R E V I E W
The First President Bush
What were the important issues in George H. W. Bush’s presidency, and how were they handled?
In domestic affairs, the first President Bush focused on fixing the savings and loan industry and balancing the budget. In foreign affairs, he managed the end the Cold
War peacefully and successfully. The Gulf War of 1991 liberated Kuwait and weakened the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, but didn’t remove Saddam from power in Baghdad. (p. 770 )
The Changing Faces of America
How did the American population shift and grow between 1990 and 2010?
Americans continued to migrate to the Sunbelt in the 1990s and early 2000s, and immigration continued to grow. Hispanics formed the largest segment of the immi-
grant population and included millions of illegal immigrants. African Americans gained ground economically but still suffered from poverty, as Hurricane Katrina demonstrated. (p. 774 )
North Sea
Northern Ireland
SWITZ.
FRANCE
IRELAND
UNITED KINGDOM
GERMANY
ITALY
DENMARK
NETH.
LUX.
BELG.
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Germany. Berlin Wall breached, Nov. 1989; East and West Germany reunited, Oct. 1990.
Hungary. Free election sweeps non- Communists into power, Apr. 1990.
796 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER REVIEW
The New Democrats
What were the accomplishments and failures of the Clinton administration?
Clinton balanced the federal budget and helped revive the economy, which boomed during the 1990s. The North American Free Trade Agreement eliminated tariff barriers
among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. But personal scandals led to Clinton’s impeachment, which he survived, although not without dam- age to his own reputation and that of the Democrats. (p. 778 )
Clinton and the World
How did Clinton respond to the Balkan Wars?
The breakup of communist Yugoslavia in 1991 led to bloody ethnic fighting. When Serb forces began to com- mit atrocities first against Muslim Bosnians and then Albanians in Kosovo, Clinton organized military interven-
tion by U.S. and NATO forces that forced the Serbs to stop and led to independence for both Bosnia and Kosovo. (p. 781 )
Republicans Triumphant
How did George W. Bush become president, and what did he do in the White House?
George W. Bush became president in an election that turned on a ballot dispute in Florida, which was resolved only by the Supreme Court. As president, Bush persuaded Congress to
cut taxes and, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to authorize invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in Iraq bogged down amid an insurgency against the American-supported government in Baghdad. (p. 783 )
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials
What challenges faced Barack Obama and the American people during the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century?
The culture wars between conservatives and liberals con- tinued into the twenty-first century, with abortion, affirmative
action, gay rights, and evolution provoking controversy. The Great Recession shook the economy, and Americans wondered how to deal with problems of health care, retirement, illegal immigration, and the environment. (p. 791 )
K E Y T E R M S A N D D E F I N I T I O N S Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Passed by Congress in 1991, this act banned discrimination against the disabled in employment and mandated easy access to all public and commercial buildings. p. 770
Operation Desert Storm Desert Storm was the code name used the United States and its coalition partners used in the war against Iraq in 1991 to liberate Kuwait. p. 773
Sunbelt A broad band of states running across the South from Florida to Texas, extending west and north to include California and the Pacific Northwest. Beginning in the 1970s, it experienced rapid economic and population growth. p. 774
Undocumented aliens Illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico and Central America. p. 776
Contract with America In the 1994 congressional elections, Congressman Newt Gingrich had Republican candidates sign a document in which they pledged support for such things as a balanced budget amend- ment, term limits for members of Congress, and a middle-class tax cut. p. 780
War on terror Initiated by President George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the broadly defined war on terror aimed to weed out terrorist operatives and their supporters throughout the world. p. 788
Unilateralism A national policy of acting alone without consulting others. p. 789
Affirmative action The use of laws or regulations to achieve racial, eth- nic, gender, or other diversity, as in hiring or school admissions. Such efforts are often aimed at improving employment or educational opportunities for women and minorities. p. 792
C R I T I C A L T H I N K I N G Q U E S T I O N S 1. Was the first President Bush lucky or skillful in ending the Cold War
so successfully?
2. What do the internal migration to the Sunbelt and the immigration to America from other countries have in common?
3. Do you think President Clinton should have been convicted on his impeachment charges?
4. Many people thought the outcome of the 2000 election was a violation of democracy. Do you?
5. Are you optimistic about America’s future, or pessimistic? Why?
Sarajevo
Zagreb
OVENIA 991)
CROATIA (1991)
BOSNIA AND
HERZEGOVINA (1992)
VOJ
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A JIN
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IO N
EASTERN SLAVONIA
r in Bosnia
STUDY RESOURCES 797
MyHistoryLab Media Assignments
The First President Bush
The Changing Faces of America
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 p. 775
The New Democrats
Bill Clinton Sells Himself to America p. 778
Clinton and the World
The Balkan Proximity Peace Talks Agreement (1995) p. 783
Republicans Triumphant
George W. Bush, Address to Congress (September 20, 2001) p. 789
Opening the Wall, Berlin p. 771 ◾ View the Closer Look
George Bush, Address to the Nation on the Persian Gulf (1991) p. 773
Read the Document
Read the Document ◾
Watch the Video
Bill Clinton, Answers to the Articles of Impeachment p. 781
Read the Document
Read the Document
Read the Document
An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming p. 786
◾
◾
World Trade Center, Sept. 11, 2001 p. 788
◾ View the Closer Look
Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials
The Historical Significance of the 2008 Election p. 793
Watch the Video
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Complete the Assignment
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A-1
The Declaration of Independence In Congress, July 4, 1776
Th e Unanimous Declaration of the Th irteen United States of America,
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: Th at all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to eff ect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that govern- ments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suff er, while evils are suff erable, than to right them- selves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despo- tism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient suff erance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. Th e history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be sub- mitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and neces- sary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of
■ The Declaration of Independence
■ The Articles of Confederation
■ The Constitution of the United States of America
■ Amendments to the Constitution
■ Presidential Elections
■ Presidents and Vice Presidents
For additional reference material, go to www.myhistorylab.com
Th e on-line appendix includes the following: • Th e Declaration of Independence • Th e Articles of Confederation • Th e Constitution of the United States of America • Amendments to the Constitution • Presidential Elections • Vice Presidents and Cabinet Members by Administration • Supreme Court Justices • Presidents, Congresses, and Chief Justices, 1789–2001 • Territorial Expansion of the United States (map) • Admission of States of the Union • U.S. Population, 1790–2000 • Ten Largest Cities by Population, 1700–1900 • Birthrate, 1820–2000 (chart) • Death Rate, 1900–2000 (chart) • Life Expectancy, 1900–2000 (chart) • Urban/Rural Population, 1750–1900 (chart) • Women in the Labor Force, 1890–1990 • United States Physical Features (map) • United States Native Vegetation (map) • Ancient Native American Communities (map) • Native American Peoples, c. 1500 (map) • Present-Day United States (map)
Appendix
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may defi ne a tyrant, is unfi t to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them, by the ties of our com- mon kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. Th ey, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separa- tion, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all alle- giance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dis- solved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a fi rm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncom- fortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly fi rmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, aft er such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of anni- hilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of inva- sions from without and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offi ces, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offi ces, and sent hither swarms of offi cers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.
He has aff ected to render the military independent of, and supe- rior to, the civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any
murder which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; For imposing taxes on us without our consent; For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefi ts of trial by jury; For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended off enses; For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fi t instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies;
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments;
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his pro- tection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfi dy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
John Hancock Button Gwinnett Lyman Hall Geo. Walton Wm. Hooper Joseph Hewes John Penn Edward Rutledge Th os. Heyward, Junr. Th omas Lynch, Junr. Arthur Middleton Samuel Chase Wm. Paca Th os. Stone Charles Carroll of Carrollton George Wythe Richard Henry Lee Th . Jeff erson Benj. Harrison
Th os. Nelson, Jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee Carter Braxton Robt. Morris Benjamin Rush Benja. Franklin John Morton Geo. Clymer Jas. Smith Geo. Taylor James Wilson Geo. Ross Caesar Rodney Geo. Read Th o. M’kean Wm. Floyd Phil. Livingston Frans. Lewis Lewis Morris
A-2 APPENDIX
APPENDIX A-3
Richd. Stockton Jno. Witherspoon Fras. Hopkinson John Hart Abra. Clark Josiah Bartlett Wm. Whipple Saml. Adams John Adams
ARTICLE 5 For the more convenient management of the general interests of the United States, delegates shall be annually appointed, in such manner as the legislature of each State shall direct, to meet in Congress, on the 1st Monday in November in every year, with a power reserved to each State to recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send others in their stead for the remainder of the year.
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any offi ce under the United States, for which he, or any other for his benefi t, receives any salary, fees, or emolument of any kind.
Each State shall maintain its own delegates in a meeting of the states, and while they act as members of the committee of the states.
In determining questions in the United States, in Congress assem- bled, each State shall have one vote.
Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Congress: and the members of Congress shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments, during the time of their going to and from, and atten- dance on Congress, except for treason, felony, or breach of the peace.
ARTICLE 6 No State, without the consent of the United States, in Congress assem- bled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or enter into any conference, agreement, alliance, or treaty with any king, prince, or state; nor shall any person, holding any offi ce of profi t or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, offi ce or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state; nor shall the United States, in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of nobility.
No two or more states shall enter into any treaty, confederation, or alliance, whatever, between them, without the consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue.
No State shall lay any imposts or duties which may interfere with any stipulations in treaties entered into by the United States, in Congress assembled, with any king, prince, or state, in pursuance of any treaties already proposed by Congress to the courts of France and Spain.
No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except such number only as shall be deemed necessary by the United States, in Congress assembled, for the defence of such State or its trade; nor shall any body of forces be kept up by any State, in time of peace, except such number only as, in the judgment of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be deemed requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such State; but every State shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutred, and shall provide, and con- stantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.
No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the United States, in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to admit of a delay till the United States, in Congress assembled, can be consulted; nor shall any State grant
Robt. Treat Paine Elbridge Gerry Step. Hopkins William Ellery Roger Sherman Sam’el Huntington Wm. Williams Oliver Wolcott Matthew Th ornton
The Articles of Confederation Between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia
ARTICLE 1 Th e stile of this confederacy shall be “Th e United States of America.”
ARTICLE 2 Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confedera- tion expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
ARTICLE 3 Th e said states hereby severally enter into a fi rm league of friendship with each other for their common defence, the security of their liber- ties and their mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist each other against all force off ered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.
ARTICLE 4 Th e better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and inter- course among the people of the diff erent states in this union, the free inhabitants of each of these states, paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immuni- ties of free citizens in the several states; and the people of each State shall have free ingress and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privileges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions, and restrictions, as the inhabitants thereof respectively; provided, that such restrictions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property, imported into any State, to any other State of which the owner is an inhabitant; provided also, that no imposition, duties, or restriction, shall be laid by any State on the property of the United States, or either of them.
If any person guilty of, or charged with treason, felony, or other high misdemeanor in any State, shall fl ee from justice and be found in any of the United States, he shall, upon demand of the governor or executive power of the State from which he fl ed, be delivered up and removed to the State having jurisdiction of his off ence.
Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these states to the records, acts, and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other State.
A-4 APPENDIX
joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for hear- ing and determining the matter in question; but, if they cannot agree, Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, in the petitioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names, as Congress shall direct, shall, in the presence of Congress, be drawn out by lot; and the persons whose names shall be drawn, or any fi ve of them, shall be commissioners or judges to hear and fi nally determine the controversy, so always as a major part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination; and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without shewing reasons which Congress shall judge suffi cient, or, being present, shall refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of each State, and the secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court to be appointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be fi nal and conclusive; and if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed to pronounce sentence or judg- ment, which shall, in like manner, be fi nal and decisive, the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being, in either case, transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the security of the parties concerned: provided, that every commissioner, before he sits in judgment, shall take an oath, to be administered by one of the judges of the supreme or superior court of the State where the cause shall be tried, “well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to the best of his judgment, without favour, aff ec- tion, or hope of reward”: provided, also, that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefi t of the United States.
All controversies concerning the private right of soil, claimed under diff erent grants of two or more states, whose jurisdictions, as they may respect such lands and the states which passed such grants, are adjusted, the said grants, or either of them, being at the same time claimed to have originated antecedent to such settlement of jurisdic- tion, shall, on the petition of either party to the Congress of the United States, be fi nally determined, as near as may be, in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes respecting territorial juris- diction between diff erent states.
The United States, in Congress assembled, shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by their own authority, or by that of the respective states; fixing the standard of weights and measures throughout the United States; regulating the trade and managing all affairs with the Indians not members of any of the states; provided that the leg- islative right of any State within its own limits be not infringed or violated; establishing and regulating post offices from one State to another throughout all the United States, and exacting such post- age on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expences of the said office; appointing all officers of the land forces in the service of the United States, excepting regimental officers; appointing all the officers of the naval forces, and com- missioning all officers whatever in the service of the United States; making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and naval forces, and directing their operations.
Th e United States, in Congress assembled, shall have authority to appoint a committee to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denomi- nated “a Committee of the States,” and to consist of one delegate from each State, and to appoint such other committees and civil offi cers as may be necessary for managing the general aff airs of the United States,
commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters of marque or reprisal, except it be aft er a declaration of war by the United States, in Congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or state, and the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such regulations as shall be established by the United States, in Congress assembled, unless such States be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be fi tted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or until the United States, in Congress assembled, shall determine otherwise.
ARTICLE 7 When land forces are raised by any State for the common defence, all offi cers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the legis- lature of each State respectively, by whom such forces shall be raised, or in such manner as such State shall direct; and all vacancies shall be fi lled up by the State which fi rst made the appointment.
ARTICLE 8 All charges of war and all other expences, that shall be incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, which shall be supplied by the several states, in proportion to the value of all land within each State, granted to or surveyed for any person, as such land and the buildings and improvements thereon shall be esti- mated according to such mode as the United States, in Congress assembled, shall, from time to time, direct and appoint.
Th e taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several states, within the time agreed upon by the United States, in Congress assembled.
ARTICLE 9 Th e United States, in Congress assembled, shall have the sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in the cases mentioned in the 6th article; of sending and receiving ambassadors; entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce shall be made, whereby the legislative power of the respective states shall be restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners as their own people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of any species of goods or commodities whatsoever; of establishing rules for deciding, in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what man- ner prizes, taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States, shall be divided or appropriated; of granting letters of marque and reprisal in times of peace; appointing courts for the trial of pira- cies and felonies committed on the high seas, and establishing courts for receiving and determining, fi nally, appeals in all cases of captures; provided, that no member of Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts.
Th e United States, in Congress assembled, shall also be the last resort on appeal in all disputes and diff erences now subsisting, or that hereaft er may arise between two or more states concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the manner following: whenever the legislative or exec- utive authority, or lawful agent of any State, in controversy with another, shall present a petition to Congress, stating the matter in question, and praying for a hearing, notice thereof shall be given, by order of Congress, to the legislative or executive authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the appearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to appoint, by
APPENDIX A-5
ARTICLE 11 Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the measures of the United States, shall be admitted into and entitled to all the advan- tages of this union; but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, unless such admission be agreed to by nine states.
ARTICLE 12 All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts contracted by, or under the authority of Congress before the assembling of the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and sat- isfaction whereof the said United States and the public faith are hereby solemnly pledged.
ARTICLE 13 Every State shall abide by the determinations of the United States, in Congress assembled, on all questions which, by this confederation, are submitted to them. And the articles of this confederation shall be invi- olably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereaft er be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be aft erwards confi rmed by the legislatures of every State.
Th ese articles shall be proposed to the legislatures of all the United States, to be considered, and if approved of by them, they are advised to authorize their delegates to ratify the same in the Congress of the United States; which being done, the same shall become conclusive.
The Constitution of the United States of America
PREAMBLE We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
ARTICLE I
Section 1 All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Section 2 Th e House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifi cations requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty fi ve Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fi ft hs of all other
under their direction; to appoint one of their number to preside; pro- vided that no person be allowed to serve in the offi ce of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain the neces- sary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United States, and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expences; to borrow money or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmitting, every half year, to the respective states, an account of the sums of money so borrowed or emitted; to build and equip a navy; to agree upon the number of land forces, and to make requisi- tions from each State for its quota, in proportion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisitions shall be binding; and, thereupon, the legislature of each State shall appoint the regimen- tal offi cers, raise the men, and cloathe, arm, and equip them in a sol- dier-like manner, at the expence of the United States; and the offi cers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed and within the time agreed on by the United States, in Congress assembled; but if the United States, in Congress assembled, shall, on consideration of circumstances, judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smaller number than its quota, and that any other State should raise a greater number of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, offi cered, cloathed, armed, and equipped in the same manner as the quota of such State, unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot be safely spared out of the same, in which case they shall raise, offi cer, cloathe, arm, and equip as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. And the offi cers and men so cloathed, armed, and equipped, shall march to the place appointed and within the time agreed on by the United States, in Congress assembled.
Th e United States, in Congress assembled, shall never engage in a war, nor grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties or alliances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the sums and expences necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, or any of them: nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine states assent to the same; nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning from day to day, be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United States, in Congress assembled.
Th e Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts thereof, relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as, in their judgment, require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on any question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegate; and the del- egates of a State, or any of them, at his, or their request, shall be fur- nished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above excepted, to lay before the legislatures of the several states.
ARTICLE 10 Th e committee of the states, or any nine of them, shall be authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress as the United States, in Congress assembled, by the consent of nine states, shall, from time to time, think expedient to vest them with; provided, that no power be delegated to the said committee for the exercise of which, by the articles of confederation, the voice of nine states, in the Congress of the United States assembled, is requisite.
A-6 APPENDIX
Section 5 Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifi cations of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall consti- tute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fi ft h of those Present, be entered on the Journal.
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
Section 6 Th e Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. Th ey shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Offi ce under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time, and no Person holding any Offi ce under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Offi ce.
Section 7 All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to the House in which it shall have origi- nated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and pro- ceed to reconsider it. If aft er such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsid- ered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) aft er it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Eff ect, shall be approved
Persons. * Th e actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years aft er the fi rst Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. Th e Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina fi ve, South Carolina fi ve, and Georgia three.
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fi ll such Vacancies.
Th e House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Offi cers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section 3 Th e Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof , for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately aft er they shall be assembled in Consequence of the fi rst Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any state, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fi ll such Vacancies.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
Th e Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
Th e Senate shall chuse their other Offi cers, and also a President pro tempore , in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Offi ce of President of the United States.
Th e Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affi rmation. When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Offi ce, and disqualifi cation to hold and enjoy any Offi ce of honor, Trust or Profi t under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Section 4 Th e Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
Th e Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the fi rst Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a diff erent Day .
* Passages no longer in eff ect are printed in italic type.
APPENDIX A-7
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion
to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or
Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be pub- lished from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Offi ce of Profi t or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Offi ce, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Section 10 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Th ing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be abso- lutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
ARTICLE II
Section 1 Th e executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Offi ce during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Offi ce of Trust or Profi t under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Th e Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. Th e President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certifi cates, and the Votes shall then be counted. Th e Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of
by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
Section 8 The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States; To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the
several States, and with the Indian Tribes; To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws
on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin,
and fi x the Standard of Weights and Measures; To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and
current Coin of the United States; To establish Post Offi ces and post Roads; To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing
for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court; To defi ne and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high
Seas, and Off ences against the Law of Nations; To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make
Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to
that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; To provide and maintain a Navy; To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and
naval Forces; To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the
Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia,
and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Offi cers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of par- ticular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department of Offi cer thereof.
Section 9 Th e Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dol- lars for each Person .
Th e Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
A-8 APPENDIX
Section 3 He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the offi cers of the United States.
Section 4 Th e President, Vice President and all civil Offi cers of the United States, shall be removed from Offi ce on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
ARTICLE III
Section 1 The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. Th e Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their offi ces during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Offi ce.
Section 2 Th e judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, aris- ing under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases aff ecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;— to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;— between a State and Citizens of another State ;—between Citizens of diff erent States;—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of diff erent States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases aff ecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before men- tioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
Th e Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed, but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
Section 3 Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Th e Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the fi ve highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, aft er the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President .
Th e Congress may determine the time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution , shall be eligible to the Offi ce of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Offi ce who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty fi ve Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Offi ce, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Offi ce, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Offi cer shall then act as President, and such Offi cer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
Th e President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished dur- ing the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Offi ce, he shall take the following Oath or Affi rmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affi rm) that I will faithfully execute the Offi ce of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Section 2 The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Offi cers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Offi cers, as they think proper in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
Th e President shall have Power to fi ll up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
APPENDIX A-9
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Th ing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and Judicial Offi cers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affi rmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualifi cation to any Offi ce of public Trust under the United States.
ARTICLE VII Th e Ratifi cation of the Conventions of nine States, shall be suffi cient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratify- ing the Same.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelft h * IN WITNESS whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
ARTICLE IV
Section 1 Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Eff ect thereof.
Section 2 The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall fl ee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fl ed, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due .
Section 3 New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
Th e Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular States.
Section 4 The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.
ARTICLE V Th e Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it neces- sary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratifi ed by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner aff ect the fi rst and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the fi rst Article ; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suff rage in the Senate.
ARTICLE VI All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
Th is Constitution, and Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme
* Th e Constitution was submitted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention, was ratifi ed by the Convention of several states at various dates up to May 29, 1790, and became eff ective on March 4, 1789.
George Washington President and Deputy from Virginia
Delaware George Read Gunning Bedford, Jr. John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jacob Broom
Maryland James McHenry Daniel of St. Th omas Jenifer Daniel Carroll
Virginia John Blair James Madison, Jr.
North Carolina William Blount Richard Dobbs Spraight Hugh Williamson
South Carolina John Rutledge Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney Pierce Butler
Georgia William Few Abraham Baldwin
New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman
Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King
Connecticut William Samuel Johnson Roger Sherman
New York Alexander Hamilton
New Jersey William Livingston David Brearley William Paterson Jonathan Dayton
Pennsylvania Benjamin Franklin Th omas Miffl in Robert Morris George Clymer Th omas FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouverneur Morris
A-10 APPENDIX
AMENDMENT IX Th e enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
AMENDMENT X * Th e powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
AMENDMENT XI
[ADOPTED 1798] Th e Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.
AMENDMENT XII
[ADOPTED 1804] Th e Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the gov- ernment of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate;—Th e President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certifi cates and the votes shall then be counted;—Th e person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President.— Th e person having the greatest number of votes as Vice President, shall be the Vice President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a major- ity, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person consti- tutionally ineligible to the offi ce of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States.
Amendments to the Constitution AMENDMENT I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assem- ble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
AMENDMENT II A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
AMENDMENT III No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
AMENDMENT IV Th e right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and eff ects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, sup- ported by Oath or affi rmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
AMENDMENT V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same off ense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due pro- cess of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
AMENDMENT VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
AMENDMENT VII In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
AMENDMENT VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fi nes imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments infl icted.
* Th e fi rst ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratifi ed and their adoption was certifi ed on December 15, 1791.
APPENDIX A-11
Section 5 Th e Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
AMENDMENT XV
[ADOPTED 1870]
Section 1 Th e right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2 Th e Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XVI
[ADOPTED 1913] Th e Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the sev- eral States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
AMENDMENT XVII
[ADOPTED 1913] Th e Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. Th e electors in each State shall have the qualifi cations requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fi ll such vacancies: Provided , Th at the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fi ll the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
Th is amendment shall not be so construed as to aff ect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
AMENDMENT XVIII
[ADOPTED 1919, REPEALED 1933]
Section 1 Aft er one year from the ratifi cation of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited .
Section 2 Th e Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation .
Section 3 Th is article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratifi ed as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress .
AMENDMENT XIII
[ADOPTED 1865] Section 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XIV
[ADOPTED 1868]
Section 1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or prop- erty, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Section 2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial offi cers of a State, or the mem- bers of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabit- ants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citi- zens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Section 3 No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elec- tor of President and Vice President, or hold any offi ce, civil or mili- tary, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previ- ously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an offi cer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an exec- utive or judicial offi cer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4 Th e validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be ques- tioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held ille- gal and void.
A-12 APPENDIX
Section 2 Th e transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or posses- sion of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
Section 3 Th is article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratifi ed as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
AMENDMENT XXII
[ADOPTED 1951]
Section 1 No person shall be elected to the offi ce of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the offi ce of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the offi ce of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the offi ce of President when this Article was pro- posed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the offi ce of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the offi ce of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2 Th is article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratifi ed as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
AMENDMENT XXIII
[ADOPTED 1961]
Section 1 Th e District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress shall direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelft h article of amendment.
Section 2 Th e Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XXIV
[ADOPTED 1964]
Section 1 Th e right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President
AMENDMENT XIX
[ADOPTED 1920] Th e right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
AMENDMENT XX
[ADOPTED 1933]
Section 1 Th e terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratifi ed and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
Section 2 Th e Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a diff erent day.
Section 3 If, at the time fi xed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fi xed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualifi ed; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualifi ed, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualifi ed.
Section 4 Th e Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Section 5 Sections 1 and 2 shall take eff ect on the 15th day of October following the ratifi cation of this article.
Section 6 This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.
AMENDMENT XXI
[ADOPTED 1933]
Section 1 Th e eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
APPENDIX A-13
Th ereaft er, when the President transmits to the President pro tem- pore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his offi ce unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal offi cers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his offi ce. Th ereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within 48 hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within 21 days aft er receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within 21 days aft er Congress is required to assemble, determines by two- thirds vote of both houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his offi ce, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his offi ce.
AMENDMENT XXVI
[ADOPTED 1971]
Section 1 Th e right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.
Section 2 Th e Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropri- ate legislation.
AMENDMENT XXVII
[ADOPTED 1992] No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take eff ect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
Section 2 Th e Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropri- ate legislation.
AMENDMENT XXV
[ADOPTED 1967]
Section 1 In case of the removal of the President from offi ce or his death or res- ignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2 Whenever there is a vacancy in the offi ce of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take the offi ce upon confi rmation by a majority vote of both houses of Congress.
Section 3 Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his offi ce, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the con- trary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4 Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal offi cers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his offi ce, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the offi ce as Acting President.
Presidential Elections
Year Candidates Parties Popular
Vote Electoral
Vote Voter
Participation 1789 George Washington * 69 John Adams 34 Others 35 1792 George Washington * 132 John Adams 77 George Clinton 50 Others 5 1796 John Adams Federalist * 71 Th omas Jeff erson Democratic-Republican 68 Th omas Pinckney Federalist 59 Aaron Burr Dem.-Rep. 30 Others 48
* Electors selected by state legislatures.
A-14 APPENDIX
Year Candidates Parties Popular
Vote Electoral
Vote Voter
Participation 1800 Th omas Jeff erson Dem.-Rep. * 73 Aaron Burr Dem.-Rep. 73 John Adams Federalist 65 C. C. Pinckney Federalist 64 John Jay Federalist 1 1804 Th omas Jeff erson Dem.-Rep. * 162 C. C. Pinckney Federalist 14 1808 James Madison Dem.-Rep. * 122 C. C. Pinckney Federalist 47 George Clinton Dem.-Rep. 6 1812 James Madison Dem.-Rep. * 128 De Witt Clinton Federalist 89 1816 James Monroe Dem.-Rep. * 183 Rufus King Federalist 34 1820 James Monroe Dem.-Rep. * 231 John Quincy Adams Dem.-Rep. 1 1824 John Quincy Adams Dem.-Rep. 108,740 (30.5%) 84 26.9% Andrew Jackson Dem.-Rep. 153,544 (43.1%) 99 William H. Crawford Dem.-Rep. 46,618 (13.1%) 41 Henry Clay Dem.-Rep. 47,136(13.2%) 37 1828 Andrew Jackson Democratic 647,286 (56.0%) 178 57.6% John Quincy Adams National Republican 508,064 (44.0%) 83 1832 Andrew Jackson Democratic 688,242 (54.2%) 219 55.4% Henry Clay National Republican 473,462 (37.4%) 49 John Floyd Independent 11 William Wirt Anti-Mason 101,051 (7.8%) 7 1836 Martin Van Buren Democratic 762,198 (50.8%) 170 57.8% William Henry Harrison Whig 549,508 (36.6%) 73 Hugh L. White Whig 145,342 (9.7%) 26 Daniel Webster Whig 41,287 (2.7%) 14 W. P. Magnum Independent 11 1840 William Henry Harrison Whig 1,274,624 (53.1%) 234 80.2% Martin Van Buren Democratic 1,127,781 (46.9%) 60 J. G. Birney Liberty 7069 — 1844 James K. Polk Democratic 1,338,464 (49.6%) 170 78.9% Henry Clay Whig 1,300,097 (48.1%) 105 J. G. Birney Liberty 62,300 (2.3%) — 1848 Zachary Taylor Whig 1,360,967 (47.4%) 163 72.7% Lewis Cass Democratic 1,222,342 (42.5%) 127 Martin Van Buren Free-Soil 291,263 (10.1%) — 1852 Franklin Pierce Democratic 1,601,117 (50.9%) 254 69.6% Winfi eld Scott Whig 1,385,453 (44.1%) 42 John P. Hale Free-Soil 155,825 (5.0%) —
*Electors selected by state legislatures.
APPENDIX A-15
Year Candidates Parties Popular
Vote Electoral
Vote Voter
Participation 1856 James Buchanan Democratic 1,832,955 (45.3%) 174 78.9% John C. Frémont Republican 1,339,932 (33.1%) 114 Millard Fillmore American 871,731 (21.6%) 8 1860 Abraham Lincoln Republican 1,865,593 (39.8%) 180 81.2% Stephen A. Douglas Democratic 1,382,713 (29.5%) 12 John C. Breckinridge Democratics 848,356 (18.1%) 72 John Bell Union 592,906 (12.6%) 39 1864 Abraham Lincoln Republican 2,213,655 (55.0%) 212 * 73.8% George B. McClellan Democratic 1,805,237 (45.0%) 21 1868 Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,012,833 (52.7%) 214 78.1% Horatio Seymour Democratic 2,703,249 (47.3%) 80 1872 Ulysses S. Grant Republican 3,597,132 (55.6%) 286 71.3% Horace Greeley Dem.; Liberal Republican 2,834,125 (43.9%) 66 † 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes ‡ Republican 4,036,298 (48.0%) 185 81.8% Samuel J. Tilden Democratic 4,300,590 (51.0%) 184 1880 James A. Garfi eld Republican 4,454,416 (48.5%) 214 79.4% Winfi eld S. Hancock Democratic 4,444,952 (48.1%) 155 1884 Grover Cleveland Democratic 4,874,986 (48.5%) 219 77.5% James G. Blaine Republican 4,851,981 (48.2%) 182 1888 Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,439,853 (47.9%) 233 79.3% Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,540,309 (48.6%) 168 1892 Grover Cleveland Democratic 5,556,918 (46.1%) 277 74.7% Benjamin Harrison Republican 5,176,108 (43.0%) 145 James B. Weaver People’s 1,029,329 (8.5%) 22 1896 William McKinley Republican 7,104,779 (51.1%) 271 79.3% William Jennings Bryan Democratic People’s 6,502,925 (47.7%) 176 1900 William McKinley Republican 7,207,923 (51.7%) 292 73.2% William Jennings Bryan Dem.-Populist 6,358,133 (45.5%) 155 1904 Th eodore Roosevelt Republican 7,623,486 (57.9%) 336 65.2% Alton B. Parker Democratic 5,077,911 (37.6%) 140 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 402,400 (3.0%) — 1908 William H. Taft Republican 7,678,908 (51.6%) 321 65.4% William Jennings Bryan Democratic 6,409,104 (43.1%) 162 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 402,820 (2.8%) — 1912 Woodrow Wilson Democratic 6,293,454 (41.9%) 435 58.8% Th eodore Roosevelt Progressive 4,119,538 (27.4%) 88 William H. Taft Republican 3,484,980 (23.2%) 8 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 900,672 (6.0%) —
* Eleven secessionist states did not participate. † Greeley died before the electoral college met. His electoral votes were divided among the four minor candidates. ‡ Contested result settled by special election.
A-16 APPENDIX
Year Candidates Parties Popular
Vote Electoral
Vote Voter
Participation 1916 Woodrow Wilson Democratic 9,129,606 (49.4%) 277 61.6% Charles E. Hughes Republican 8,538,221 (46.2%) 254 A. L. Benson Socialist 585,113 (3.2%) — 1920 Warren G. Harding Republican 16,152,200 (60.4%) 404 49.2% James M. Cox Democratic 9,147,353 (34.2%) 127 Eugene V. Debs Socialist 917,799 (3.4%) — 1924 Calvin Coolidge Republican 15,725,016 (54.0%) 382 48.9% John W. Davis Democratic 8,386,503 (28.8%) 136 Robert M. La Follette Progressive 4,822,856 (16.6%) 13 1928 Herbert Hoover Republican 21,391,381 (58.2%) 444 56.9% Alfred E. Smith Democratic 15,016,443 (40.9%) 87 Norman Th omas Socialist 267,835 (0.7%) — 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 22,821,857 (57.4%) 472 56.9% Herbert Hoover Republican 15,761,841 (39.7%) 59 Norman Th omas Socialist 884,781 (2.2%) —v 1936 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,751,597 (60.8%) 523 61.0% Alfred M. Landon Republican 16,679,583 (36.5%) 8 William Lemke Union 882,479 (1.9%) — 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 27,244,160 (54.8%) 449 62.5% Wendell L. Willkie Republican 22,305,198 (44.8%) 82 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt Democratic 25,602,504 (53.5%) 432 55.9% Th omas E. Dewey Republican 22,006,285 (46.0%) 99 1948 Harry S Truman Democratic 24,105,695 (49.5%) 304 53.0% Th omas E. Dewey Republican 21,969,170 (45.1%) 189 J. Strom Th urmond State-Rights Democratic 1,169,021 (2.4%) 38 Henry A.Wallace Progressive 1,157,326 (2.4%) — 1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 33,778,963 (55.1%) 442 63.3% Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 27,314,992 (44.4%) 89 1956 Dwight D. Eisenhower Republican 35,575,420 (57.6%) 457 60.6% Adlai E. Stevenson Democratic 26,033,066 (42.1%) 73 Other — — 1 1960 John F. Kennedy Democratic 34,227,096 (49.9%) 303 62.8% Richard M. Nixon Republican 34,108,546 (49.6%) 219 Other — — 15 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson Democratic 43,126,506 (61.1%) 486 61.7% Barry M. Goldwater Republican 27,176,799 (38.5%) 52 1968 Richard M. Nixon Republican 31,770,237 (43.4%) 301 60.6% Hubert H. Humphrey Democratic 31,270,533 (42.7%) 191 George Wallace American Indep. 9,906,141 (13.5%) 46 1972 Richard M. Nixon Republican 46,740,323 (60.7%) 520 55.2% George S. McGovern Democratic 28,901,598 (37.5%) 17 Other — — 1
APPENDIX A-17
Year Candidates Parties Popular
Vote Electoral
Vote Voter
Participation 1976 Jimmy Carter Democratic 40,828,587 (50.0%) 297 53.5% Gerald R. Ford Republican 39,147,613 (47.9%) 241 Other — 1,575,459 (2.1%) — 1980 Ronald Reagan Republican 43,901,812 (50.7%) 489 52.6% Jimmy Carter Democratic 35,483,820 (41.0%) 49 John B. Anderson Independent 5,719,437 (6.6%) — Ed Clark Libertarian 921,188 (1.1%) — 1984 Ronald Reagan Republican 54,455,075 (59.0%) 525 53.3% Walter Mondale Democratic 37,577,185 (41.0%) 13 1988 George H. W. Bush Republican 48,886,097 (53.4%) 426 57.4% Michael S. Dukakis Democratic 41,809,074 (45.6%) 111 1992 William J. Clinton Democratic 44,908,254 (43%) 370 55.0% George H. W. Bush Republican 39,102,343 (37.5%) 168 H. Ross Perot Independent 19,741,065 (18.9%) — 1996 William J. Clinton Democratic 45,590,703 (50%) 379 48.8% Robert Dole Republican 37,816,307 (41%) 159 Ross Perot Reform 7,866,284 — 2000 George W. Bush Republican 50,456,167 (47.88%) 271 51.2% Al Gore Democratic 50,996,064 (48.39%) 266 * Ralph Nader Green 2,864,810 (2.72%) — Other 834,774 (less than 1%) — 2004 George W. Bush Republican 60,934,251 (51.0%) 286 50.0% John F. Kerry Democratic 57,765,291 (48.0%) 252 Ralph Nader Independent 405,933 (less than 1%) — 2008 Barack H. Obama Democratic 69,456,897 (51.0%) 365 61.7% John McCain Republican 59,934,814 (48.0%) 173
* One District of Columbia Gore elector abstained.
A-18 APPENDIX
Presidents and Vice Presidents President Vice President Term 1. George Washington John Adams 1789–1793 George Washington John Adams 1793–1797 2. John Adams Th omas Jeff erson 1797–1801 3. Th omas Jeff erson Aaron Burr 1801–1805 Th omas Jeff erson George Clinton 1805–1809 4. James Madison George Clinton (d. 1812) 1809–1813 James Madison Elbridge Gerry (d. 1814) 1813–1817 5. James Monroe Daniel Tompkins 1817–1821 James Monroe Daniel Tompkins 1821–1825 6. John Quincy Adams John C. Calhoun 1825–1829 7. Andrew Jackson John C. Calhoun 1829–1833 Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren 1833–1837 8. Martin Van Buren Richard M. Johnson 1837–1841 9. William H. Harrison (d. 1841) John Tyler 1841 10. John Tyler — 1841–1845 11. James K. Polk George M. Dallas 1845–1849 12. Zachary Taylor (d. 1850) Millard Fillmore 1849–1850 13. Millard Fillmore — 1850–1853 14. Franklin Pierce William R. King (d. 1853) 1853–1857 15. James Buchanan John C. Breckinridge 1857–1861 16. Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hamlin 1861–1865 Abraham Lincoln (d. 1865) Andrew Johnson 1865 17. Andrew Johnson — 1865–1869 18. Ulysses S. Grant Schuyler Colfax 1869–1873 Ulysses S. Grant Henry Wilson (d. 1875) 1873–1877 19. Rutherford B. Hayes William A.Wheeler 1877–1881 20. James A. Garfi eld (d. 1881) Chester A. Arthur 1881 21. Chester A. Arthur — 1881–1885 22. Grover Cleveland Th omas A. Hendricks (d. 1885) 1885–1889 23. Benjamin Harrison Levi P. Morton 1889–1893 24. Grover Cleveland Adlai E. Stevenson 1893–1897 25. William McKinley Garret A. Hobart (d. 1899) 1897–1901 William McKinley (d. 1901) Th eodore Roosevelt 1901 26. Th eodore Roosevelt — 1901–1905 Th eodore Roosevelt Charles Fairbanks 1905–1909 27. William H. Taft James S. Sherman (d. 1912) 1909–1913 28. Woodrow Wilson Th omas R. Marshall 1913–1917 Woodrow Wilson Th omas R. Marshall 1917–1921 29. Warren G. Harding (d. 1923) Calvin Coolidge 1921–1923 30. Calvin Coolidge — 1923–1925 Calvin Coolidge Charles G. Dawes 1925–1929
APPENDIX A-19
President Vice President Term 31. Herbert Hoover Charles Curtis 1929–1933 32. Franklin D. Roosevelt John N. Garner 1933–1937 Franklin D. Roosevelt John N. Garner 1937–1941 Franklin D. Roosevelt Henry A.Wallace 1941–1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt (d. 1945) Harry S Truman 1945 33. Harry S Truman — 1945–1949 Harry S Truman Alben W. Barkley 1949–1953 34. Dwight D. Eisenhower Richard M. Nixon 1953–1957 Dwight D. Eisenhower Richard M. Nixon 1957–1961 35. John F. Kennedy (d. 1963) Lyndon B. Johnson 1961–1963 36. Lyndon B. Johnson — 1963–1965 Lyndon B. Johnson Hubert H. Humphrey 1965–1969 37. Richard M. Nixon Spiro T. Agnew 1969–1973 Richard M. Nixon (resigned 1974) Gerald R. Ford 1973–1974 38. Gerald R. Ford Nelson A. Rockefeller 1974–1977 39. Jimmy Carter Walter F. Mondale 1977–1981 40. Ronald Reagan George H.W. Bush 1981–1985 Ronald Reagan George H.W. Bush 1985–1989 41. George H.W. Bush J. Danforth Quayle 1989–1993 42. William J. Clinton Albert Gore, Jr. 1993–1997 William J. Clinton Albert Gore, Jr. 1997–2001 43. George W. Bush Richard Cheney 2001–2005 George W. Bush Richard Cheney 2005–2008 44. Barack H. Obama Joseph R. Biden, Jr. 2008–
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Anti-Imperialist League (p. 504 ) Th is organization was formed in November 1898 to fi ght against the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War. Members opposed the acquisition of overseas colonies by the United States, believing it would subvert American ideals and institutions. Membership centered in New England; the cause was less popular in the South and West.
Antinomianism (p. 42 ) Religious belief rejecting traditional moral law as unnecessary for Christians who possessed saving grace and affi rming that an indi- vidual could experience divine revelation and salvation without the assistance of formally trained clergy.
Articles of Confederation (p. 138 ) Ratifi ed in 1781, this document was the United States’ fi rst constitution, providing a framework for national government. Th e articles sharply limited central authority by denying the national government any taxation or coercive power.
Ashcan School (p. 533 ) Th is school of early twentieth-century realist painters took as their subjects the slums and streets of the nation’s cities and the lives of ordinary urban dwellers. Th ey oft en celebrated life in the city but also advocated political and social reform.
Axis Powers (p. 642 ) During World War II, the alliance between Italy, Germany, and Japan was known as the “Rome–Berlin–Tokyo axis,” and the three members were called the Axis Powers. Th ey fought against the Allied Powers, led by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union.
baby boom (p. 688 ) Post-World War II Americans idealized the family. Th e booming birth rate aft er the war led children born to this generation to be com- monly referred to as “baby boomers.”
backcountry (p. 80 ) In the eighteenth century, the edge of settlement extend- ing from western Pennsylvania to Georgia. Th is region formed the second frontier as settlers moved westward from the Atlantic coast into the nation’s interior.
Bacon’s Rebellion (p. 69 ) An armed rebellion in Virginia (1675–1676) led by Nathaniel Bacon against the colony’s royal governor Sir William Berkeley. Although some of his followers called for an end of special privilege in government, Bacon was chiefl y interested in gaining a larger share of the lucrative Indian trade.
Bank of the United States (p. 162 ) National bank proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and established in 1791. It served as a central depository for the U.S. government and had the authority to issue currency.
Bank war (p. 237 ) Between 1832–1836, Andrew Jackson used his presidential power to fi ght and ultimately destroy the second Bank of the United States.
Baruch Plan (p. 668 ) In 1946, Bernard Baruch presented an American plan to control and eventually outlaw nuclear weapons. Th e plan called for United Nations control of nuclear weapons in three stages before the United States gave up its stockpile. Soviet insistence on immediate nuclear disarmament without inspection doomed the Baruch Plan and led to a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Battle of New Orleans (p. 198 ) Battle that occurred in 1815 at the end of the War of 1812 when U.S. forces defeated a British attempt to seize New Orleans.
Bay of Pigs (p. 710 ) In April 1961, a group of Cuban exiles, organized and sup- ported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), landed on the southern coast of Cuba in an eff ort to overthrow Fidel Castro. When the invasion ended in disaster, President Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure.
Benevolent empire (p. 273 ) Collection of missionary and reform societies that sought to stamp out social evils in American society in the 1820s and 1830s.
Abolitionist movement (p. 278 ) Reform movement dedicated to the imme- diate and unconditional end of slavery in the United States.
Adams–Onís Treaty (p. 204 ) Signed by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and Spanish minister Luis de Onís in 1819, this treaty allowed for U.S. annexation of Florida.
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church (p. 134 ) Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 as the fi rst independent black-run Protestant church in the United States. Th e AME Church was active in the promotion of abolition and the founding of educational institutions for free blacks.
affi rmative action (p. 792 ) Th e use of laws or regulations to achieve racial, ethnic, gender, or other types of diversity, as in hiring or school admissions. Such eff orts are oft en aimed at improving employment or educational opportunities for women and minorities.
Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) (p. 622 ) Created by Congress in 1933 as part of the New Deal, this agency attempted to restrict agricultural production by paying farmers subsidies to take land out of production. Th e object was to raise farm prices, and it did, but the act did nothing for tenant farmers and share- croppers. Th e Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1936.
Agricultural Revolution (p. 5 ) Th e gradual shift from hunting and gathering to cultivating basic food crops that occurred worldwide from 7,000 to 9,000 years ago. Th is transition resulted in sedentary living, population growth, and establish- ment of permanent villages.
Alamo (p. 296 ) In 1835, Americans living in the Mexican state of Texas fomented a revolution. Mexico lost the confl ict, but not before its troops defeated and killed a group of American rebels at the Alamo, a fort in San Antonio.
Albany Plan (p. 96 ) Plan of intercolonial cooperation proposed by prominent colonists including Benjamin Franklin at a conference in Albany, New York, in 1754. Th e plan envisioned the formation of a Grand Council of elected delegates from the colonies that would have powers to tax and provide for the common defense. It was rejected by the colonial and British governments, but was a proto- type for colonial union.
Alien and Sedition Acts (p. 172 ) Collective name given to four laws passed in 1798 designed to suppress criticism of the federal government and to curb liber- ties of foreigners living in the United States.
American Colonization Society (p. 260 ) Founded in 1817, this abolitionist organization hoped to provide a mechanism by which slavery could gradually be eliminated. Th e society advocated the relocation of free blacks (followed by freed slaves) to the African colony of Monrovia, present day Liberia.
American Federation of Labor (AFL) (p. 431 ) Founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886, the AFL was a loose alliance of national craft unions that orga- nized skilled workers by craft and worked for specifi c practical objectives such as higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions. Th e AFL avoided poli- tics, and while it did not expressly forbid black and women workers from joining, it used exclusionary practices to keep them out.
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (p. 770 ) Passed by Congress in 1991, this act banned discrimination against the disabled in employment and mandated easy access to all public and commercial buildings.
Antifederalist (p. 150 ) Critic of the Constitution who expressed concern that it seemed to possess no specifi c provision for the protection of natural and civil rights. Th e antifederalists forced Congress to accept a number of amendments known as the Bill of Rights.
Glossary
G-1
organizations from doing so. Th e ruling dealt a major blow to the Republican party’s earlier eff orts to provide protection for African Americans.
Clayton Antitrust Act (p. 554 ) An attempt to improve the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, this law outlawed interlocking directorates (companies in which the same people served as directors), forbade policies that created monopo- lies, and made corporate offi cers responsible for antitrust violations. Benefi ting labor, it declared that unions were not conspiracies in restraint of trade and out- lawed the use of injunctions in labor disputes unless they were necessary to protect property.
Coercive Acts (p. 115 ) Also known as the Intolerable Acts, the four pieces of legislation passed by Parliament in 1774 in response to the Boston Tea Party were meant to punish the colonies.
Columbian Exchange (p. 10 ) Th e exchange of plants, animals, culture, and diseases between Europe and the Americas from fi rst contact throughout the era of exploration.
committee of correspondence (p. 114 ) Vast communication network formed in Massachusetts and other colonies to communicate grievances and provide colonists with evidence of British oppression.
Committee on Public Information (CPI) (p. 577 ) Created in 1917 by President Wilson and headed by progressive journalist George Creel, this organi- zation rallied support for American involvement in World War I through art, advertising, and fi lm. Creel worked out a system of voluntary censorship with the press and distributed colorful posters and pamphlets. Th e CPI’s Division of Industrial Relations rallied labor to help the war eff ort.
Common Sense (p. 117 ) Revolutionary tract written by Th omas Paine in January 1776. It called for independence and the establishment of a republican government in America.
Compromise of 1850 (p. 318 ) Th is series of fi ve congressional statutes tem- porarily calmed the sectional crisis. Among other things, the compromise made California a free state, ended the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and strengthened the Fugitive Slave Law.
Compromise of 1877 (p. 383 ) Compromise struck during the contested Presidential election of 1876, in which Democrats accepted the election of Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican) in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the ending of Reconstruction.
Comstock Lode (p. 404 ) Discovered in 1859 near Virginia City, Nevada, this ore deposit was the richest discovery in the history of mining. Named aft er T. P. Comstock, a drift er who talked his way into partnership in the claim, between 1859 and 1879 the deposit produced silver and gold worth more than $306 million.
conquistadores (p. 16 ) Sixteenth-century Spanish adventurers, oft en of noble birth, who subdued the Native Americans and created the Spanish empire in the New World.
conservation (p. 549 ) As president, Th eodore Roosevelt made this principle one of his administration’s top goals. Conservation in his view aimed at protecting the nation’s natural resources, but called for the wise use of them rather than lock- ing them away. Roosevelt’s policies were opposed by those who favored preserva- tion of the wilderness over its development.
Consumer revolution (p. 89 ) Period between 1740 and 1770 when English exports to the American colonies increased by 360 percent to satisfy Americans’ demand for consumer goods.
containment (p. 669 ) First proposed by George Kennan in 1947, containment became the basic strategy of the United States throughout the Cold War. Kennan argued that fi rm American resistance to Soviet expansion would eventually com- pel Moscow to adopt more peaceful policies.
Contract with America (p. 780 ) In the 1994 congressional elections, Congressman Newt Gingrich had Republican candidates sign a document in
Beringia (p. 4 ) Land bridge formerly connecting Asia and North America that is now submerged beneath the Bering Sea.
Berlin airlift (p. 671 ) In 1948, in response to a Soviet land blockade of Berlin, the United States carried out a massive eff ort to supply the two million Berlin citi- zens with food, fuel, and other goods by air for more than six months. Th e airlift forced the Soviets to end the blockade in 1949.
Bill of Rights (p. 152 ) Th e fi rst ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1791 to preserve the rights and liberties of individuals.
birds of passage (p. 523 ) Temporary migrants who came to the United States to work and save money and then returned home to their native countries during the slack season. World War I interrupted the practice, trapping thousands of migrant workers in the United States.
Black Codes (p. 371 ) Laws passed by southern states immediately aft er the Civil War in an eff ort to maintain the pre-war social order. Th e codes attempted to tie freedmen to fi eld work and prevent them from becoming equal to white Southerners.
Bland–Allison Silver Purchase Act (p. 469 ) Th is act, a compromise between groups favoring the coinage of silver and those opposed to it, called for the partial coinage of silver. Th ose favoring silver coinage argued that it would add to the currency and help farmers and workers; those who opposed it pointed out that few other major countries accepted silver coinage. President Rutherford B. Hayes vetoed the Bland–Allison bill in 1878, but Congress overrode his veto.
bonanza farms (p. 409 ) Huge farms covering thousands of acres on the Great Plains. In relying on large size and new machinery, they represented a develop- ment in agriculture similar to that taking place in industry.
bonus army (p. 620 ) In June 1932, a group of twenty thousand World War I veterans marched on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of their “adjusted compensation” bonuses voted by Congress in 1924. Congress rejected their demands, and President Hoover, fearing that their ranks were infested with criminals and radicals, had the bonus army forcibly removed from their encamp- ment. It was a public relations disaster for Hoover.
Boston Massacre (p. 113 ) A violent confrontation between British troops and a Boston mob on March 5, 1770. Five citizens were killed when the troops fi red into the crowd. Th e incident infl amed anti-British sentiment in Massachusetts.
Boston Tea Party (p. 115 ) Raid on British ships in which Patriots disguised as Mohawks threw hundreds of chests of tea owned by the East India Company into Boston Harbor to protest British taxes.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (p. 700 ) In 1954, the Supreme Court reversed the Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896) that established the “sepa- rate but equal” doctrine. Th e Brown decision found segregation in schools inherently unequal and initiated a long and diffi cult eff ort to integrate the nation’s public schools.
Camp David accords (p. 751 ) In 1978, President Carter mediated a peace agreement between the leaders of Egypt and Israel at Camp David, a presidential retreat near Washington, D.C. Th e next year, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty based on the Camp David accords.
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (p. 405 ) Legislation passed in 1882 that excluded Chinese immigrant workers for ten years and denied U.S. citizenship to Chinese nationals living in the United States. It was the fi rst U.S. exclusionary law that was aimed at a specifi c racial group.
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) (p. 623 ) One of the most popular New Deal programs, the CCC was created by Congress to provide young men between ages 18 and 25 with government jobs in reforestation and other conserva- tion projects. It eventually employed over three hundred thousand.
Civil Rights Cases (p. 451 ) A group of cases in 1883 in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment barred state governments from dis- criminating on the basis of race but did not prevent private individuals or
G-2 GLOSSARY
GLOSSARY G-3
Dominion of New England (p. 70 ) Incorporation of the New England colonies under a single appointed royal governor that lasted from 1686–1689.
dry farming (p. 408 ) A farming technique developed to allow farming in the more arid parts of the West where settlers had to deal with far less rainfall than they had east of the Mississippi. Furrows were plowed approximately a foot deep and fi lled with a dust mulch to loosen soil and slow evaporation.
Eastern Woodland Cultures (p. 7 ) Term given to Indians from the Northeast region who lived on the Atlantic coast and supplemented farming with seasonal hunting and gathering.
Emancipation Proclamation (p. 354 ) On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed that the slaves of the Confederacy were free. Since the South had not yet been defeated, the proclamation did not immediately free anyone, but it made emancipation an explicit war aim of the North.
Embargo Act (p. 194 ) In response to a British attack on an American warship off the coast of Virginia, this 1807 law prohibited foreign commerce.
encomienda system (p. 19 ) An exploitative labor system designed by Spanish rulers to reward conquistadores in the New World by granting them local villages and control over native labor.
Enlightenment (p. 87 ) Philosophical and intellectual movement that began in Europe during the eighteenth century. It stressed the application of reason to solve social and scientifi c problems.
enumerated goods (p. 67 ) Certain essential raw materials produced in the North American colonies, such as tobacco, sugar, and rice specifi ed in the Navigation Acts , which stipulated that these goods could be shipped only to England or its colonies.
Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (p. 746 ) In 1972, Congress approved the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, a measure designed to guarantee women equal treatment under the law. Despite a three-year extension in the time allowed for ratifi cation, ERA supporters fell three states short of winning adoption.
“Era of good feeling” (p. 221 ) A descriptive term for the era of President James Monroe, who served two terms from 1817–1823. During Monroe’s administration, partisan confl ict abated and bold federal initiatives suggested increased nationalism.
Espionage Act of 1917 (p. 578 ) Th is law, passed aft er the United States entered World War I, imposed sentences of up to twenty years on anyone found guilty of aiding the enemy, obstructing recruitment of soldiers, or encouraging dis- loyalty. It allowed the postmaster general to remove from the mail any materials that incited treason or insurrection.
Exodusters (p. 406 ) A group of about six thousand African Americans who left their homes in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas in 1879, seeking freer lives in Kansas, where they worked as farmers or laborers.
Farewell Address (p. 171 ) In this 1796 speech, President George Washington announced his intention not to seek a third term in offi ce. He also stressed federal- ist interests and warned the American people to avoid political factions and for- eign entanglements that could sacrifi ce U.S. security.
Federal Reserve Act (p. 554 ) One of the most important laws in the history of the country, this act created a central banking system, consisting of twelve regional banks governed by the Federal Reserve Board. It was an attempt to pro- vide the United States with a sound yet fl exible currency. Th e Board it created still plays a vital role in the American economy today.
Federalist (p. 150 ) Supporter of the Constitution who advocated its ratifi cation.
Fifteenth Amendment (p. 379 ) Ratifi ed in 1870, this amendment prohibited the denial or abridgment of the right to vote by the federal government or state governments on the basis of race, color, or prior condition as a slave. It was intended to guarantee African Americans the right to vote in the South.
which they pledged their support for such things as a balanced budget amendment, term limits for members of Congress, and a middle-class tax cut.
cooperationists (p. 343 ) In late 1860, southern secessionists debated two strategies: unilateral secession by each state or “cooperative” secession by the South as a whole. Th e cooperationists lost the debate.
Copperheads (p. 356 ) Northern Democrats suspected of being indiff erent or hostile to the Union cause in the Civil War.
cotton gin (p. 263 ) Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, this device for separating the seeds from the fi bers of short-staple cotton enabled a slave to clean fi ft y times more cotton as by hand, which reduced production costs and gave new life to slav- ery in the South.
Coureurs de bois (p. 20 ) Fur trappers in French Canada who lived among the Native Americans.
“court-packing” scheme (p. 630 ) Concerned that the conservative Supreme Court might declare all his New Deal programs unconstitutional, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Congress to allow him to appoint additional jus- tices to the Court. Both Congress and the public rejected this “court-packing” scheme and it was defeated.
Crittenden compromise (p. 344 ) Faced with the specter of secession and war, Congress tried and failed to resolve the sectional crisis in the months between Lincoln’s election and inauguration. Th e leading proposal, introduced by Kentucky Senator John Crittenden, would have extended the Missouri Compromise line west to the Pacifi c.
Cuban missile crisis (p. 711 ) In October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war when President Kennedy insisted that Nikita Khrushchev remove the forty-two missiles he had secretly deployed in Cuba. Th e Soviets eventually did so, nuclear war was averted, and the crisis ended.
Cult of Domesticity (p. 274 ) Term used by historians to characterize the dominant gender role for white women in the antebellum period. Th e ideology of domesticity stressed the virtue of women as guardians of the home, which was considered their proper sphere.
Dartmouth College v. Woodward (p. 218 ) In this 1819 case, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protected charters given to corporations by states.
Dawes Severalty Act (p. 397 ) Legislation passed by Congress in 1887 that aimed at breaking up traditional Indian life by promoting individual land owner- ship. It divided tribal lands into small plots that were distributed among members of each tribe. Provisions were made for Indian education and eventual citizenship. Th e law led to corruption, exploitation, and the weakening of Native American tribal culture.
D-Day (p. 654 ) D-Day (June 6, 1944) was the day Allied troops crossed the English Channel and opened a second front in western Europe during World War II. Th e “D” stands for “disembarkation”: to leave a ship and go ashore.
Desert Storm (p. 773 ) Desert Storm was the code name used by the United States and its coalition partners in waging war against Iraq in early 1991 to liber- ate Kuwait.
détente (p. 739 ) President Nixon and Henry Kissinger pursued a policy of détente, a French word meaning a relaxation of tension, with the Soviet Union as a way to lessen the possibility of nuclear war in the 1970s.
“dollar diplomacy” (p. 566 ) Th is policy, adopted by President William Howard Taft and Secretary of State Philander C. Knox, sought to promote U.S. fi nancial and business interests abroad. It aimed to replace military alliances with economic ties, with the idea of increasing American infl uence and securing lasting peace. Under this policy, Taft worked in Latin America to replace European loans with American ones, assumed the debts of countries such as Honduras to fend off foreign bondholders, and helped Nicaragua secure a large loan in exchange for U.S. control of its national bank.
G-4 GLOSSARY
Fireside chats (p. 621 ) Radio addresses by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1944, in which he spoke to the American people about such issues as the banking crisis, Social Security, and World War II. Th e chats enhanced Roosevelt’s popularity among ordinary Americans.
First Continental Congress (p. 117 ) A meeting of delegates from twelve colonies in Philadelphia in 1774, the Congress denied Parliament’s authority to legislate for the colonies, condemned British actions toward the colonies, created the Continental Association, and endorsed a call to take up arms.
Food Administration (p. 579 ) A wartime government agency that encour- aged Americans to save food in order to supply the armies overseas. It fi xed prices to boost production, asked people to observe “meatless” and “wheatless” days to conserve food, and promoted the planting of “victory gardens” behind homes, schools, and churches.
Force acts (p. 380 ) Congress attacked the Ku Klux Klan with three Enforcement or “Force” acts in 1870–1871. Designed to protect black voters in the South, these laws placed state elections under federal jurisdiction and imposed fi nes and impris- onment on those guilty of interfering with any citizen exercising his right to vote.
Fourteen Points (p. 582 ) In January 1918, President Wilson presented these terms for a far-reaching, nonpunitive settlement of World War I. He called, among other things, for removal of barriers to trade, open peace accords, reduction of armaments, and the establishment of a League of Nations. While generous and optimistic, the Points did not satisfy wartime hunger for revenge, and thus were largely rejected by European nations.
Fourteenth Amendment (p. 371 ) Ratifi ed in 1868, this amendment pro- vided citizenship to ex-slaves aft er the Civil War and constitutionally protected equal rights under the law for all citizens. Its provisions were used by Radical Republicans to enact a congressionally controlled Reconstruction policy of the former Confederate states.
Freedmen’s Bureau (p. 371 ) Agency established by Congress in March 1865 to provide freedmen with shelter, food, and medical aid and to help them establish schools and fi nd employment. Th e Bureau was dissolved in 1872.
freedom ride (p. 714 ) Bus trips taken by both black and white civil rights advocates in the 1960s. Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), freedom rides in the South were designed to test the enforcement of federal regu- lations that prohibited segregation in interstate public transportation.
French Revolution (p. 163 ) A social and political revolution in France (1789–1799) that toppled the monarchy.
Fugitive Slave Law (p. 319 ) Passed in 1850, this federal law made it easier for slaveowners to recapture runaway slaves; it also made it easier for kidnappers to take free blacks. Th e law became an object of hatred in the North.
Ghost Dances (p. 396 ) A religious movement that arose in the late nineteenth century under the prophet Wavoka, a Paiute Indian. It involved a set of dances and rites that its followers believed would cause white men to disappear and restore lands to the Native Americans. Th e Ghost Dance religion was outlawed by the U.S. government, and army intervention to stop it led to the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Gibbons v. Ogden (p. 219 ) In this 1824 case, the Supreme Court affi rmed and expanded the power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce.
Glorious Revolution (p. 70 ) Replacement of James II by William and Mary as English monarchs in 1688, marking the beginning of constitutional monarchy in Britain. American colonists celebrated this moment as a victory for the rule of law over despotism.
Gold Rush of 1849 (p. 401 ) Individual prospectors made the fi rst gold strikes along the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1849, touching off a mining boom that helped shape the development of the West and set the pattern for subsequent strikes in other regions.
Gold Standard Act (p. 486 ) Passed by Congress in 1900, this law declared gold the nation’s standard of currency, meaning that all currency in circulation had to be redeemable in gold. Th e United States remained on the gold standard until 1933.
Great Awakening (p. 90 ) Widespread evangelical religious revival movement of the mid-1700s. Th e movement divided congregations and weakened the author- ity of established churches in the colonies.
Great Migration (p. 39 ) Migration of 16,000 Puritans from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1630s.
Great Society (p. 720 ) President Johnson called his version of the Democratic reform program the Great Society. In 1965, Congress passed many Great Society measures, including Medicare, civil rights legislation, and federal aid to education.
greenbacks (p. 348 ) Paper currency issued by the Union beginning in 1862.
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (p. 725 ) Aft er a North Vietnamese attack on an American destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass a resolution giving him the authority to use armed force in Vietnam.
Harlem Renaissance (p. 595 ) An African American cultural, literary, and artistic movement centered in Harlem, an area in New York City, in the 1920s. Harlem, the largest black community in the world outside of Africa, was consid- ered the cultural capital of African Americans.
Hartford Convention (p. 198 ) An assembly of New England Federalists who met in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814 to protest Madison’s foreign pol- icy in the War of 1812, which had undermined commercial interests in the North. Th ey proposed amending the Constitution to prevent future presidents from declaring war without a two-thirds majority in Congress.
Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty (p. 565 ) Th is 1903 treaty granted the United States control over a canal zone ten miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama. In return, the United States guaranteed the independence of Panama and agreed to pay Colombia a onetime fee of $10 million and an annual rental of $250,000.
headright (p. 34 ) System of land distribution in which settlers were granted a fi ft y-acre plot of land from the colonial government for each servant or dependent they transported to the New World. Th e system encouraged the recruitment of a large servile labor force.
Hepburn Act (p. 548 ) A law that strengthened the rate-making power of the Interstate Commerce Commission, again refl ecting the era’s desire to control the power of the railroads. It increased the ICC’s membership from fi ve to seven, empowered it to fi x reasonable railroad rates, and broadened its jurisdiction. It also made ICC rulings binding pending court appeals.
Homestead Act of 1862 (p. 402 ) Legislation granting 160 acres of land to anyone who paid a $10 fee and pledged to live on and cultivate the land for fi ve years. Although there was a good deal of fraud, the act encouraged a large migra- tion to the West. Between 1862 and 1900, nearly 600,000 families claimed home- steads under its provisions.
Homestead Strike (p. 435 ) In July 1892, wage-cutting at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Plant in Pittsburgh provoked a violent strike in which three company-hired detectives and ten workers died. Using ruthless force and strikebreakers, company offi cials eff ectively broke the strike and destroyed the union.
House of Burgesses (p. 34 ) An elective representative assembly in colo- nial Virginia. It was the fi rst example of representative government in the English colonies.
imperialism (p. 492 ) Th e policy of extending a nation’s power through mili- tary conquest, economic domination, or annexation.
implied powers (p. 162 ) Powers the Constitution did not explicitly grant the federal government, but that it could be interpreted to grant.
indentured servants (p. 55 ) Individuals who agreed to serve a master for a set number of years in exchange for the cost of boat transport to America. Indentured servitude was the dominant form of labor in the Chesapeake colonies before slavery.
GLOSSARY G-5
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (p. 527 ) Founded in 1905, this radical union, also known as the Wobblies, aimed to unite the American working class into one union to promote labor’s interests. It worked to organize unskilled and foreign-born laborers, advocated social revolution, and led several major strikes. Stressing solidarity, the IWW took as its slogan, “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (p. 764 ) Signed by President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev in Washington in late 1987, this agreement pro- vided for the destruction of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles and permitted on-site inspection for the fi rst time during the Cold War.
Iran–Contra affair (p. 759 ) Th e Iran–Contra aff air involved offi cials high in the Reagan administration secretly selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to fi nance the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Th is illegal transaction usurped the con- gressional power of the purse.
Iranian hostage crisis (p. 751 ) In 1979, Iranian fundamentalists seized the American embassy in Tehran and held fi ft y-three American diplomats hostage for over a year. Th e Iranian hostage crisis weakened the Carter presidency; the hostages were fi nally released on January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Reagan became president.
Iron Curtain (p. 666 ) British Prime Minister Winston Churchill coined the phrase “Iron Curtain” to refer to the boundary in Europe that divided Soviet- dominated eastern and central Europe from western Europe, which was free from Soviet control.
isolationism (p. 492 ) A belief that the United States should stay out of entan- glements with other nations. Isolationism was widespread aft er the Spanish- American War in the late 1890s and infl uenced later U.S. foreign policy.
itinerant preachers (p. 91 ) Traveling revivalist ministers of the Great Awakening movement. Th ese charismatic preachers spread revivalism throughout America.
Jay’s Treaty (p. 164 ) Controversial treaty with Britain negotiated by Chief Justice John Jay in 1794 to settle American grievances and avert war. Th ough the British agreed to surrender forts on U.S. territory, the treaty failed to realize key diplomatic goals and provoked a storm of protest in America.
Jim Crow laws (p. 386 ) Laws enacted by states to segregate the population. Th ey became widespread in the South aft er Reconstruction.
joint-stock company (p. 32 ) Business enterprise that enabled investors to pool money for commercial trading activity and funding for sustaining colonies.
Judicial review (p. 188 ) Th e authority of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of the statutes.
Kansas–Nebraska Act (p. 321 ) Th is 1854 act repealed the Missouri Compromise, split the Louisiana Purchase into two territories, and allowed its set- tlers to accept or reject slavery by popular sovereignty. Th is act enfl amed the slav- ery issue and led opponents to form the Republican party.
Kellogg–Briand Pact (p. 638 ) Also called the Pact of Paris, this 1928 agree- ment was the brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French premier Aristide Briand. It pledged its signatories, eventually including nearly all nations, to shun war as an instrument of policy. Derided as an “international kiss,” it had little eff ect on the actual conduct of world aff airs.
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (p. 173 ) Statements penned by Th omas Jeff erson and James Madison to mobilize opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, which they argued were unconstitutional. Jeff erson’s statement (the Kentucky Resolution) suggested that states should have the right to declare null and void con- gressional acts they deemed unconstitutional. Madison produced a more temperate resolution, but most Americans rejected such an extreme defense of states’ rights.
Knights of Labor (p. 431 ) Also known as the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. Founded in 1869, this labor organization pursued broad-gauged reforms as much as practical issues such as wages and hours. Unlike the
American Federation of Labor, the Knights of Labor welcomed all laborers regardless of race, gender, or skill.
Ku Klux Klan (p. 380 ) A secret terrorist society fi rst organized in Tennessee in 1866. Th e original Klan’s goals were to disfranchise African Americans, stop Reconstruction, and restore the prewar social order of the South. Th e Ku Klux Klan re-formed aft er World War II to promote white supremacy in the wake of the “Second Reconstruction.”
Lend-Lease (p. 644 ) Arguing that aiding Britain would help America’s own self-defense, President Roosevelt in 1941 asked Congress for a $7 billion Lend- Lease plan. Th is would allow the president to sell, lend, lease, or transfer war mate- rials to any country whose defense he declared as vital to that of the United States.
Levittown (p. 688 ) In 1947, William Levitt used mass production techniques to build inexpensive homes in suburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage. Levittown became a symbol of the movement to the suburbs in the years aft er World War II.
Lewis and Clark Expedition (p. 186 ) Overland expedition to the Pacifi c coast (1804–1806) led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Commissioned by President Th omas Jeff erson, the exploration of the Far West brought back a wealth of scientifi c data about the country and its resources.
Louisiana Purchase (p. 185 ) U.S. acquisition of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for $15 million. Th e purchase secured American control of the Mississippi River and doubled the size of the nation.
Loyalists (p. 120 ) Th roughout the confl ict with Great Britain, many colonists sided with the king and Parliament. Also called Tories, these people feared that American liberty might promote social anarchy.
Manhattan Project (p. 657 ) In early 1942, Franklin Roosevelt, alarmed by reports that German scientists were working on an atomic bomb, authorized a crash program to build the bomb fi rst. Th e Manhattan Project, named for the Corps of Engineers district originally in charge, spent $2 billion dollars and pro- duced the weapons that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Manifest Destiny (p. 298 ) Coined in 1845, this term referred to a doctrine in support of territorial expansion based on the beliefs that population growth demanded territorial expansion, that God supported American expansion, and that national expansion equaled the expansion of freedom.
Marbury v. Madison (p. 188 ) In this 1803 landmark decision, the Supreme Court fi rst asserted the power of judicial review by declaring an act of Congress, the Judiciary Act of 1789, unconstitutional.
March on Washington (p. 717 ) In August 1963, civil rights leaders organized a massive rally in Washington to urge passage of President Kennedy’s civil rights bill. Th e high point came when Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have a Dream” speech to more than 200,000 marchers in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Marshall Plan (p. 670 ) In 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a massive economic aid program to rebuild the war-torn economies of western European nations. Th e plan was motivated by both humanitarian concern for the conditions of those nations’ economies and fear that economic dislocation would promote communism in western Europe.
Mayfl ower Compact (p. 37 ) Agreement among the Pilgrims aboard the Mayfl ower in 1620 to create a civil government at Plymouth Colony.
McCarthyism (p. 677 ) In 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy began a sensa- tional campaign against communists in government that led to more than four years of charges and countercharges, ending when the Senate censured him in 1954. McCarthyism became the contemporary name for the red scare of the 1950s.
McCulloch v. Maryland (p. 219 ) Ruling on this banking case in 1819, the Supreme Court propped up the idea of “implied powers” meaning the Constitution could be broadly interpreted. Th is pivotal ruling also asserted the supremacy of federal power over state power.
G-6 GLOSSARY
Medicare (p. 720 ) Th e 1965 Medicare Act provided Social Security funding for hospitalization insurance for people over age 65 and a voluntary plan to cover doc- tor bills paid in part by the federal government.
mercantilism (p. 67 ) An economic theory that shaped imperial policy throughout the colonial period, mercantilism was built on the assumption that the world’s wealth was a fi xed supply. In order to increase its wealth, a nation needed to export more goods than it imported. Favorable trade and protective economic policies, as well as new colonial possessions rich in raw materials, were important in achieving this balance.
Mexican-American War (p. 302 ) Confl ict (1846–1848) between the United States and Mexico aft er the U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico still consid- ered its own. As victor, the United States acquired vast new territories from Mexico according to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Middle ground (p. 83 ) A geographical area where two distinct cultures meet and merge with neither holding a clear upper hand.
Missouri Compromise (p. 217 ) A sectional compromise in Congress in 1820 that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It also banned slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase territory above the latitude of 36°30´.
Monroe Doctrine (p. 221 ) A key foreign policy made by President James Monroe in 1823, it declared the western hemisphere off limits to new European colonization; in return, the United States promised not to meddle in European aff airs.
Montgomery bus boycott (p. 702 ) In late 1955, African Americans led by Martin Luther King, Jr., boycotted the buses in Montgomery, Alabama, aft er seam- stress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus. Th e boy- cott, which ended when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the protesters, marked the beginning of a new, activist phase of the civil rights movement.
moral diplomacy (p. 567 ) Policy adopted by President Woodrow Wilson that rejected the approach of “dollar diplomacy.” Rather than focusing mainly on eco- nomic ties with other nations, Wilson’s policy was designed to bring right princi- ples to the world, preserve peace, and extend to other peoples the blessings of democracy. Wilson, however, oft en ended up pursuing policies much like those followed by Roosevelt and Taft .
Moral Majority (p. 738 ) In 1979, the Reverend Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority to combat “amoral liberals,” drug abuse, “coddling” of criminals, homosexuality, communism, and abortion. Th e Moral Majority represented the rise of political activism among organized religion’s radical right wing.
muckrakers (p. 514 ) Unfl attering term coined by Th eodore Roosevelt to describe the writers who made a practice of exposing the wrongdoings of public fi gures. Muckraking fl ourished from 1903 to 1909 in magazines such as McClure’s and Collier’s , exposing social and political problems and sparking reform.
Mugwumps (p. 448 ) Drawing their members mainly from among the educated and upper class, these reformers crusaded for lower tariff s, limited federal govern- ment, and civil service reform to end political corruption. Th ey were best known for their role in helping to elect Grover Cleveland to the presidency in 1884.
National American Woman Suffrage Association (p. 450 , 541 ) Founded by Susan B. Anthony in 1890, this organization worked to secure women the right to vote. While some suff ragists urged militant action, it stressed careful organization and peaceful lobbying. By 1920 it had nearly two million members.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (p. 522 ) Created in 1909, this organization quickly became one of the most important civil rights organizations in the country. Th e NAACP pressured employers, labor unions, and the government on behalf of African Americans.
National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union (p. 472 ) One of the largest reform movements in American history, the Farmer’s Alliance sought to organize farmers in the South and West to fi ght for reforms that would improve
their lot, including measures to overcome low crop prices, burdensome mortgages, and high railroad rates. Th e Alliance ultimately organized a political party, the People’s (Populist) party.
National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry (p. 409 ) Founded by Oliver H. Kelly in 1867, the Grange sought to relieve the drabness of farm life by providing a social, educational, and cultural outlet for its members. It also set up grain elevators, cooperative stores, warehouses, insurance companies, and farm machinery factories. Although its constitution banned political involvement, the Grange oft en supported railroad regulation and other measures.
National Organization for Women (NOW) (p. 730 ) Founded in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) called for equal employment opportu- nity and equal pay for women. NOW also championed the legalization of abortion and passage of an equal rights amendment to the Constitution.
National Origins Quota Act (p. 603 ) Th is 1924 law established a quota sys- tem to regulate the infl ux of immigrants to America. Th e system restricted the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and Asia. It also reduced the annual total of immigrants.
National Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) (p. 402 ) Passed in 1902, this legisaltion set aside the majority of the proceeds from the sale of public land in six- teen Western states to fund irrigation projects in the arid states.
National Recovery Administration (NRA) (p. 622 ) A keystone of the early New Deal, this federal agency was created in 1933 to promote economic recovery and revive industry during the Great Depression. It permitted manufac- turers to establish industrywide codes of “fair business practices” setting prices and production levels. It also provided for minimum wages and maximum working hours for labor and guaranteed labor the right to organize and bargain collectively (Section 7a). Th e Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1935.
National Security Act (p. 671 ) Congress passed the National Security Act in 1947 in response to perceived threats from the Soviet Union aft er World War II. It established the Department of Defense and created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Council.
Nativism (p. 602 ) Refers to a policy or ideology of preferring native-born resi- dents to immigrants, restricting the rights of immigrants, and opposing new immigration.
natural rights (p. 136 ) Fundamental rights over which the government could exercise no control. An uncompromising belief in such rights energized the popu- lar demand for a formal bill of rights in 1791.
Navigation Acts (p. 67 ) A series of commercial restrictions passed by Parliament intended to regulate colonial commerce in such a way as to favor England’s accumulation of wealth.
Nazi Holocaust (p. 659 ) Th e slaughter of six million Jews and other persons by Hitler’s regime.
neoconservatism (p. 738 ) Former liberals who advocated a strong stand against communism abroad and free market capitalism at home became known as neoconservatives. Th ese intellectuals stressed the positive values of American soci- ety in contrast to liberals who emphasized social ills.
neutrality acts (p. 642 ) Reacting to their disillusionment with World War I and absorbed in the domestic crisis of the Great Depression, Americans backed Congress’s three neutrality acts in the 1930s. Th e 1935 and 1936 acts forbade sell- ing munitions or lending money to belligerents in a war. Th e 1937 act required that all remaining trade be conducted on a cash-and-carry basis.
New Deal (p. 614 ) In accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party in 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised a “new deal” for the American people. Aft er his election, the label was applied to his program of legislation passed to combat the Great Depression. Th e New Deal included measures aimed at relief, reform, and recovery. Th ey achieved some relief and considerable reform but little recovery.
GLOSSARY G-7
New Freedom (p. 553 ) Woodrow Wilson’s program in his campaign for the presidency in 1912, the New Freedom emphasized business competition and small government. It sought to rein in federal authority, release individual energy, and restore competition. It echoed many of the progressive social-justice objectives while pushing for a free economy rather than a planned one.
New Frontier (p. 708 ) Th e New Frontier was the campaign program advocated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election. He promised to revitalize the stagnant economy and enact reform legislation in education, health care, and civil rights.
new immigrants (p. 444 ) Starting in the 1880s, immigration into the United States began to shift from northern and western Europe, its source for most of the nation’s history, to southern and eastern Europe. Th ese new immigrants tended to be poor, non-Protestant, and unskilled; they tended to stay in close-knit communi- ties and retain their language, customs, and religions. Between 1880 and 1910, approximately 8.4 million of these so-called new immigrants came to the United States.
New Nationalism (p. 553 ) Th eodore Roosevelt’s program in his campaign for the presidency in 1912, the New Nationalism called for a national approach to the country’s aff airs and a strong president to deal with them. It also called for effi - ciency in government and society; it urged protection of children, women, and workers; accepted “good” trusts; and exalted the expert and the executive. Additionally, it encouraged large concentrations of capital and labor.
Niagara Movement (p. 522 ) A movement, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, that focused on equal rights and the education of African American youth. Rejecting the gradualist approach of Booker T. Washington, members kept alive a program of militant action and claimed for African Americans all the rights aff orded to other Americans. It spawned later civil rights movements.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (p. 670 ) In 1949, the United States, Canada, and ten European nations formed this military mutual- defense pact. In 1955, the Soviet Union countered NATO with the formation of the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance among those nations within its own sphere of infl uence.
Northwest Ordinance (p. 141 ) Legislation that formulated plans for govern- ments in America’s northwestern territories, defi ned a procedure for the territories’ admission to the Union as states, and prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River.
NSC-68 (p. 672 ) National Security Council planning paper No. 68 redefi ned America’s national defense policy. Adopted in 1950, it committed the United States to a massive military buildup to meet the challenge posed by the Soviet Union.
nullifi cation (p. 235 ) Th e supposed right of any state to declare a federal law inoperative within its boundaries. In 1832, South Carolina created a fi restorm when it attempted to nullify the federal tariff .
Ocala Demands (p. 474 ) Adopted by the Farmers’ Alliance at an 1890 meet- ing in Ocala, Florida, these demands became the organization’s main platform. Th ey called for the creation of a sub-treasury system to allow farmers to store their crops until they could get the best price, the free coinage of silver, an end to pro- tective tariff s and national banks, a federal income tax, the direct election of sena- tors by voters, and tighter regulation of railroads.
Old South (p. 248 ) Th e term refers to the slaveholding states between 1830 and 1860, when slave labor and cotton production dominated the economies of the southern states. Th is period is also known as the “antebellum era.”
Open Door policy (p. 507 ) Established in a series of notes by Secretary of State John Hay in 1900, this policy established free trade between the United States and China and attempted to enlist major European and Asian nations in recognizing the territorial integrity of China. It marked a departure from the American tradition of isolationism and signaled the country’s growing involvement in the world.
Operation Desert Storm (p. 773 ) Desert Storm was the code name the United States and its coalition partners used in the war against Iraq in 1991 to liberate Kuwait.
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (p. 742 ) A cartel of oil-exporting nations. In late 1973, OPEC took advantage of the October War and an oil embargo by its Arab members to quadruple the price of oil. Th is huge increase had a devastating impact on the American economy.
Ostend Manifesto (p. 322 ) Written by American offi cials in 1854, this secret memo—later dubbed a “manifesto”—urged the acquisition of Cuba by any means necessary. When it became public, Northerners claimed it was a plot to extend slavery and the manifesto was disavowed.
Overland Trail (p. 401 ) Th e route taken by thousands of travelers from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacifi c Coast in the last half of the nineteenth century. It was extremely diffi cult, oft en taking six months or more to complete.
Panic of 1837 (p. 240 ) A fi nancial depression that lasted until the 1840s.
parliamentary sovereignty (p. 107 ) Principle that emphasized the power of Parliament to govern colonial aff airs as the preeminent authority.
Peace of Paris of 1763 (p. 99 ) Treaty ending the French and Indian War by which France ceded Canada to Britain.
Pearl Harbor (p. 647 ) On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, sinking several ships and killing more than twenty-four hundred American sailors. Th e event marked America’s entrance into World War II.
Pendleton Act (p. 470 ) Passed by Congress in 1883 with the backing of President Chester A. Arthur, this act sought to lessen the involvement of politi- cians in the running of the government. It created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to administer competitive exams to candidates for civil service jobs and to appoint offi ceholders based on merit. It also outlawed forcing political con- tributions from appointed offi cials. Th e measure served as the basis for later expansion of a professional civil service.
People’s (or Populist) party (p. 474 ) Th is political party was organized in 1892 by farm, labor, and reform leaders, mainly from the Farmers’ Alliance. It off ered a broad-based reform platform refl ecting the Ocala Demands. It nomi- nated James B. Weaver of Iowa for president in 1892 and William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska in 1896. Aft er 1896, it became identifi ed as a one-issue party focused on free silver and gradually died away.
Perfectionism (p. 275 ) Th e doctrine that a state of freedom from sin is attain- able on earth.
Philippine-American War (p. 505 ) A war fought from 1899 to 1903 to quell Filipino resistance to U.S. control of the Philippine Islands. Although oft en forgot- ten, it lasted longer than the Spanish-American War and resulted in more casual- ties. Filipino guerilla soldiers fi nally gave up when their leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured.
placer mining (p. 404 ) A form of mining that required little technology or skill, placer mining techniques included using a shovel and a washing pan to sepa- rate gold from the ore in streams and riverbeds. An early phase of the mining industry, placer mining could be performed by miners working as individuals or in small groups.
Plessy v. Ferguson (p. 451 ) A Supreme Court case in 1896 that established the doctrine of “separate but equal” and upheld a Louisiana law requiring that blacks and whites occupy separate rail cars. Th e Court applied it to schools in Cumming v. County Board of Education (1899). Th e doctrine was fi nally over- turned in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
popular sovereignty (p. 318 ) Th e concept that the settlers of a newly orga- nized territory have the right to decide (through voting) whether or not to accept slavery. Promoted as a solution to the slavery question, popular sovereignty became a fi asco in Kansas during the 1850s.
Potsdam Conference (p. 664 ) Th e fi nal wartime meeting of the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union was held at Potsdam, outside Berlin, in July, 1945. Truman, Churchill, and Stalin discussed the future of
G-8 GLOSSARY
Europe, but their failure to reach meaningful agreements soon led to the onset of the Cold War.
pragmatism (p. 542 ) A doctrine that emerged in the early twentieth century, built largely on the ideas of Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James. Pragmatists were impatient with theories that held truth to be abstract; they believed that truth should work for the individual. Th ey also believed that people were not only shaped by their environment but also helped to shape it. Ideas that worked, according to pragmatists, became truth.
preemption (p. 207 ) Th e right of fi rst purchase of public land. Settlers enjoyed this right even if they squatted on the land in advance of government surveyors.
progressivism (p. 515 ) Movement for social change between the late 1890s and World War I. Its origins lay in a fear of big business and corrupt government and a desire to improve the lives of countless Americans. Progressives set out to cure the social ills brought about by industrialization and urbanization, social disorder, and political corruption.
Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) party (p. 537 ) Also known as the “Bull Moose” party, this political party was formed by Th eodore Roosevelt in an attempt to advance progressive ideas and unseat President William Howard Taft in the election of 1912. Aft er Taft won the Republican party’s nomination, Roosevelt ran on the Progressive party ticket.
prohibition (p. 600 ) Th e ban of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Th e Eighteenth Amendment, adopted in 1919, established prohibition. It was repealed by the Twenty-fi rst Amendment in 1933. While prohibition was in eff ect, it reduced national consumption of alcohol, but it was inconsistently enforced and was oft en evaded, especially in the cities.
Protestant Reformation (p. 21 ) Sixteenth-century religious movement to reform and challenge the spiritual authority of the Roman Catholic Church, asso- ciated with fi gures such as Martin Luther and John Calvin.
Pullman Strike (p. 476 ) Beginning in May 1894, this strike of employees at the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago was one of the largest strikes in American history. Workers struck to protest wage cuts, high rents for company housing, and layoff s; the American Railway Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, joined the strike in June. Extending into twenty-seven states and territories, it eff ectively paralyzed the western half of the nation. President Grover Cleveland secured an injunction to break the strike on the grounds that it obstructed the mail and sent federal troops to enforce it. Th e Supreme Court upheld the use of the injunction in In re Debs (1895).
Puritans (p. 37 ) Members of a reformed Protestant sect in Europe and America that insisted on removing all vestiges of Catholicism from popular religious practice.
Quakers (p. 46 ) Members of a radical religious group, formally known as the Society of Friends, that rejected formal theology and stressed each person’s “inner light,” a spiritual guide to righteousness.
Quasi-War (p. 171 ) Undeclared war between the United States and France in the late 1790s.
Radical Reconstruction (p. 372 ) Th e Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into fi ve military districts. Th ey required the states to guarantee black male suff rage and to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of their readmission to the Union.
Radical Republicans (p. 369 ) Th e Radical Republicans in Congress, headed by Th addeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, insisted on black suff rage and federal protection of civil rights of African Americans. Th ey gained control of Reconstruction in 1867 and required the ratifi cation of the Fourteenth Amendment as a condition of readmission for former Confederate states.
Red Scare (p. 599 ) A wave of anticommunist, antiforeign, and antilabor hysteria that swept over America at the end of World War I. It resulted in the deportation of many alien residents and the violation of the civil liberties of many of its victims.
Redeemers (p. 383 ) A loose coalition of prewar Democrats, Confederate Army veterans, and southern Whigs who took over southern state governments in the 1870s, supposedly “redeeming” them from the corruption of Reconstruction. Th ey shared a commitment to white supremacy and laissez-faire economics.
republicanism (p. 132 ) Concept that ultimate political authority is vested in the citizens of the nation. Th e character of republican government was dependent on the civic virtue of its citizens to preserve the nation from corruption and moral decay.
Roe v. Wade (p. 746 ) In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women had a constitutional right to abortion during the early stages of pregnancy. Th e decision provoked a vigorous right-to-life movement that opposed abortion.
Roosevelt Corollary (p. 566 ) President Th eodore Roosevelt’s 1904 foreign policy statement, a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted that the United States would intervene in Latin American aff airs if the countries them- selves could not keep their aff airs in order. It eff ectively made the United States the policeman of the western hemisphere. Th e Roosevelt Corollary guided U.S. policy in Latin America until it was replaced by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy in the 1930s.
Royal African Company (p. 61 ) Slaving company created to meet colonial planters’ demands for black laborers.
Sanitary Commission (p. 360 ) An association chartered by the Union government during the Civil War to promote health in the northern army’s camps though attention to cleanliness, nutrition, and medical care.
Scopes trial (p. 603 ) Also called the “monkey trial,” the 1924 Scopes trial was a contest between modern liberalism and religious fundamentalism. John T. Scopes was on trial for teaching Darwinian evolution in defi ance of a Tennessee state law. He was found guilty and fi ned $100. On appeal, Scopes’s conviction was later set aside on a technicality.
Second Continental Congress (p. 117 ) Th is meeting took place in Philadelphia in May 1775, in the midst of rapidly unfolding military events. It organized the Continental Army and commissioned George Washington to lead it, then began requisitioning men and supplies for the war eff ort.
Second Great Awakening (p. 270 ) A series of evangelical Protestant reviv- als that swept over America in the early nineteenth century.
second party system (p. 242 ) A historian’s term for the national two-party rivalry between Democrats and Whigs. Th e second party system began in the 1830s and ended in the 1850s with the demise of the Whig party and the rise of the Republican party.
Sedition Act (p. 578 ) A wartime law that imposed harsh penalties on anyone using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. govern- ment, fl ag, or armed forces.
Selective Service Act (p. 576 ) Th is 1917 law provided for the registration of all American men between the ages of 21 and 30 for a military draft . By the end of World War I, 24.2 million men had registered; 2.8 million had been inducted into the army. Th e age limits were later changed to 18 and 45.
Seneca Falls Convention (p. 281 ) Th e fi rst women’s rights convention held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, and co-sponsored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Delegates at the convention draft ed a “Declaration of Sentiments,” patterned on the Declaration of Independence, but which declared that “all men and women are created equal.”
settlement houses (p. 457 ) Located in poor districts of major cities, these were community centers that tried to soft en the impact of urban life for immigrant and other families. Oft en run by young, educated women, they provided social ser- vices and a political voice for their neighborhoods. Chicago’s Hull House, founded by Jane Addams in 1889, became the most famous of the settlement houses.
Seven Years’ War (p. 97 ) Worldwide confl ict (1756–1763) that pitted Britain against France for control of North America. With help from the American
GLOSSARY G-9
colonists, the British won the war and eliminated France as a power on the North American continent. Also known in America as the French and Indian War.
sharecropping (p. 375 ) Aft er the Civil War, the southern states adopted a sharecropping system as a compromise between former slaves who wanted land of their own and former slave owners who needed labor. Th e landowners provided land, tools, and seed to a farming family, who in turn provided labor. Th e resulting crop was divided between them, with the farmers receiving a “share” of one-third to one-half of the crop.
Shays’s Rebellion (p. 144 ) Armed insurrection of farmers in western Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays, a veteran of the Continental Army. Intended to prevent state courts from foreclosing on debtors unable to pay their taxes, the rebellion was put down by the state militia. Nationalists used the event to justify the calling of a constitutional convention to strengthen the national government.
Sherman Antitrust Act (p. 471 ) Passed by Congress in 1890, this act was the fi rst major U.S. attempt to deal legislatively with the problem of the increasing size of business. It declared illegal “every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce.” Penalties for viola- tions were strict, ranging from fi nes to imprisonment and even the dissolution of guilty trusts. Th e law was weakened when the Supreme Court, in United States v. E. C. Knight and Co. (1895), drew a sharp distinction between manufacturing and commerce and ruled that manufacturing was excluded from its coverage. Nonetheless, the law shaped all future antitrust legislation.
Sherman Silver Purchase Act (p. 471 ) An act that attempted to resolve the controversy over silver coinage. Under it, the U.S. Treasury would purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver each month and issue legal tender (in the form of Treasury notes) for it. Th e act pleased opponents of silver because it did not call for free coinage; it pleased proponents of silver because it bought up most of the nation’s silver production.
social Darwinism (p. 455 ) Adapted by English social philosopher Herbert Spencer from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, this theory held that the “laws” of evolution applied to human life, that change or reform therefore took centuries, and that the “fi ttest” would succeed in business and social relationships. It pro- moted the ideas of competition and individualism, saw as futile any intervention of government into human aff airs, and was used by infl uential members of the economic and social elite to oppose reform.
Social Gospel (p. 457 ) Preached by a number of urban Protestant ministers, the Social Gospel focused as much on improving the conditions of life on Earth as on saving souls for the hereaft er. Its adherents worked for child-labor laws and measures to alleviate poverty.
Social Security Act (p. 624 ) Th e 1935 Social Security Act established a system of old age, unemployment, and survivors’ insurance funded by wage and payroll taxes. It did not include health insurance and did not originally cover many of the most needy groups and individuals.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (p. 702 ) An orga- nization founded by Martin Luther King, Jr., to direct the crusade against segregation. Its weapon was passive resistance that stressed nonviolence and love, and its tactic direct, though peaceful, confrontation.
Spanish Armada, The (p. 24 ) Spanish fl eet sent to invade England in 1588.
spectral evidence (p. 70 ) In the Salem witch trials, the court allowed reports of dreams and visions in which the accused appeared as the devil’s agent to be introduced as testimony. Th e accused had no defense against this kind of “ evidence.” When the judges later disallowed this testimony, the executions for witchcraft ended.
Stamp Act of 1765 (p. 110 ) Placed a tax on newspapers and printed matter produced in the colonies, causing mass opposition by colonists.
Stamp Act Congress (p. 111 ) Meeting of colonial delegates in New York City in October 1765 to protest the Stamp Act, a law passed by Parliament to raise reve- nue in America. Th e delegates draft ed petitions denouncing the Stamp Act and other taxes imposed on Americans without colonial consent.
Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) (p. 739 ) In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union culminated four years of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) by signing a treaty limiting the deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABM) and an agreement to freeze the number of off ensive missiles for fi ve years.
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) (p. 755 ) Popularly known as “Star Wars,” President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) proposed the construction of an elaborate computer-controlled, antimissile defense system capable of destroying enemy missiles in outer space. Critics claimed that SDI could never be perfected.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (p. 703 ) A radical group advocating black power. SNCC’s leaders, scornful of integration and interracial cooperation, broke with Martin Luther King, Jr., to advocate greater militancy and acts of violence.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) (p. 727 ) Founded in 1962, the SDS was a popular college student organization that protested shortcomings in American life, notably racial injustice and the Vietnam War. It led thousands of campus protests before it split apart at the end of the 1960s.
Sunbelt (p. 774 ) Th is region consists of a broad band of states running across the South from Florida to Texas, extending west and north to include California and the Pacifi c Northwest. Beginning in the 1970s, this area experienced rapid economic growth and major gains in population.
supply-side economics (p. 753 ) Advocates of supply-side economics claimed that tax cuts would stimulate the economy by giving individuals a greater incentive to earn more money, which would lead to greater investment and even- tually larger tax revenues at a lower rate. Critics replied that supply-side economics would only burden the economy with larger government defi cits.
Taft–Hartley Act (p. 675 ) Th is 1947 anti-union legislation outlawed the closed shop and secondary boycotts. It also authorized the president to seek injunctions to prevent strikes that posed a threat to national security.
tariff of abominations (p. 230 ) An 1828 protective tariff , or tax on imports, motivated by special interest groups. It resulted in a substantial increase in duties that angered many southern free traders.
Teapot Dome scandal (p. 603 ) A 1924 scandal in which Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes in exchange for leasing government-owned oil lands in Wyoming (Teapot Dome) and California (Elks Hill) to private oil businessmen.
Teller Amendment (p. 499 ) In this amendment, sponsored by Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado, the United States pledged that it did not intend to annex Cuba and that it would recognize Cuban independence from Spain aft er the Spanish-American War.
temperance movement (p. 272 ) Temperance—moderation or abstention in the use of alcoholic beverages—attracted many advocates in the early nineteenth century. Th eir crusade against alcohol, which grew out of the Second Great Awakening, became a powerful social and political force.
Ten Percent Plan (p. 368 ) Reconstruction plan proposed by President Abraham Lincoln as a quick way to readmit the former Confederate States. It called for full pardon of all Southerners except Confederate leaders, and readmis- sion to the Union for any state aft er 10 percent of its voters in the 1860 election signed a loyalty oath and the state abolished slavery.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (p. 621 ) A New Deal eff ort at regional planning created by Congress in 1933, this agency built dams and power plants on the Tennessee River. Its programs for fl ood control, soil conservation, and refores- tation helped raise the standard of living for millions in the Tennessee River valley.
Tet offensive (p. 731 ) In February 1968, the Viet Cong launched a major off ensive in the cities of South Vietnam. Although caught by surprise, American and South Vietnam forces successfully quashed this attack, yet the Tet off ensive was a blow to American public opinion and led President Johnson to end the esca- lation of the war and seek a negotiated peace.
G-10 GLOSSARY
Vesey conspiracy (p. 254 ) A plot to burn Charleston, South Carolina, and thereby initiate a general slave revolt, led by a free African American, Denmark Vesey, in 1822. Th e conspirators were betrayed before the plan was carried out, and Vesey and thirty-four others were hanged.
Virgin of Guadalupe (p. 20 ) Apparition of the Virgin Mary that has become a symbol of Mexican nationalism.
Virginia Plan (p. 144 ) Off ered by James Madison and the Virginia delegation at the Constitutional Convention, this proposal called for a new government with a strong executive offi ce and two houses of Congress, each with representation proportional to a state’s population. Madison’s plan also recommended giving the national government veto power over bills passed by the state legislatures. Smaller states countered with the New Jersey Plan that gave each state equal representa- tion in Congress.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 (p. 720 ) Th e 1965 Voting Rights Act eff ectively banned literacy tests for voting rights and provided for federal registrars to assure the franchise to minority voters. Within a few years, a majority of African Americans had become registered voters in the southern states.
Wade–Davis Bill (p. 369 ) In 1864, Congress passed the Wade–Davis bill to counter Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for Reconstruction. Th e bill required that a majority of a former Confederate state’s white male population take a loyalty oath and guarantee equality for African Americans. President Lincoln pocket-vetoed the bill.
Wagner Act (p. 627 ) Th e 1935 Wagner Act, formally known as the National Labor Relations Act, created the National Labor Relations Board to supervise union elections and designate winning unions as offi cial bargaining agents. Th e board could also issue cease-and-desist orders to employers who dealt unfairly with their workers.
War Hawks (p. 195 ) Congressional leaders who, in 1811 and 1812, called for war against Britain to defend the national honor and force Britain to respect America’s maritime rights.
War Industries Board (WIB) (p. 579 ) An example of the many boards and commissions created during World War I, this government agency oversaw the production of all American factories. It determined priorities, allocated raw materials, and fi xed prices; it told manufacturers what they could and could not produce.
War of 1812 (p. 196 ) War between Britain and the United States. U.S. justifi ca- tions for war included British violations of American maritime rights, impress- ment of seamen, provocation of the Indians, and defense of national honor.
war on poverty (p. 719 ) Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address. A new Offi ce of Economic Opportunity (OEO) oversaw a variety of programs to help the poor, including the Job Corps and Head Start.
war on terror (p. 788 ) Initiated by President George W. Bush aft er the attacks of September 11, 2001, the broadly defi ned war on terror aimed to weed out ter- rorist operatives and their supporters throughout the world.
Watergate scandal (p. 741 ) A break-in at the Democratic National Committee offi ces in the Watergate complex in Washington was carried out under the direction of White House employees. Disclosure of the White House involve- ment in the break-in and subsequent cover-up forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974 to avoid impeachment.
Whigs (p. 106 ) In mid-eighteenth century Britain, the Whigs were a political fac- tion that dominated Parliament. Generally they were opposed to royal infl uence in government and wanted to increase the control and infl uence of Parliament. In America, a Whig party—named for the British Whigs who opposed the king in the late seventeenth century—coalesced in the 1830s around opposition to Andrew Jackson. In general, the American Whigs supported federal power and internal improvements but not territorial expansion. Th e Whig party collapsed in the 1850s.
Whiskey Rebellion (p. 170 ) Protests in 1794 by western Pennsylvania farmers resisting payment of a federal tax on whiskey. Th e uprising was forcibly
Thirteenth Amendment (p. 371 ) Ratifi ed in 1865, this amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude.
Three-fi fths rule (p. 146 ) Constitutional provision that for every fi ve slaves a state would receive credit for three free voters indetermining seats for the House of Representatives.
Trail of Tears (p. 234 ) In the winter of 1838–1839, the Cherokee were forced to evacuate their lands in Georgia and travel under military guard to present-day Oklahoma. Due to exposure and disease, roughly one-quarter of the sixteen thousand forced migrants died en route.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (p. 303 ) Signed in 1848, this treaty ended the Mexican-American War. Mexico relinquished its claims to Texas and ceded an additional 500,000 square miles to the United States for $15 million.
Treaty of Paris (p. 504 ) Signed by the United States and Spain in December 1898, this treaty ended the Spanish-American War. Under its terms, Spain recog- nized Cuba’s independence and assumed the Cuban debt; it also ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States. At the insistence of the U.S. representatives, Spain also ceded the Philippines. Th e Senate ratifi ed the treaty on February 6, 1899.
Treaty of Paris of 1783 (p. 127 ) Agreement establishing American independence aft er the Revolutionary War. It also transferred territory east of the Mississippi River, except for Spanish Florida, to the new republic.
Treaty of Tordesillas (p. 18 ) Treaty negotiated by the pope in 1494 to resolve competing land claims of Spain and Portugal in the New World. It divided the world along a north–south line in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, granting to Spain all lands west of the line and to Portugal lands east of the line.
Truman Doctrine (p. 669 ) In 1947, President Truman asked Congress for money to aid the Greek and Turkish governments that were then threatened by communist rebels. Arguing for the appropriations, Truman asserted his doctrine that the United States was committed to support free people everywhere who were resisting subjugation by communist attack or rebellion.
trunk lines (p. 419 ) Four major railroad networks that emerged aft er the Civil War to connect the eastern seaports to the Great Lakes and western rivers. Th ey refl ected the growing integration of transportation across the country that helped spur large-scale industrialization.
trust (p. 423 ) A business-management device designed to centralize and make more effi cient the management of diverse and far-fl ung business operations. It allowed stockholders to exchange their stock certifi cates for trust certifi cates, on which dividends were paid. John D. Rockefeller organized the fi rst major trust, the Standard Oil Trust, in 1882.
Turner’s thesis (p. 411 ) Put forth by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper, “Th e Signifi cance of the Frontier in American History,” this thesis asserted that the existence of a frontier and its settlement had shaped American character; given rise to individualism, independence, and self-confi dence; and fos- tered the American spirit of invention and adaptation. Later historians, especially a group of “new Western historians,” modifi ed the thesis by pointing out the envi- ronmental and other consequences of frontier settlement, the role of the federal government in peopling the arid West, and the clash of races and cultures that took place on the frontier.
Underground Railroad (p. 254 ) A network of safe houses organized by abo- litionists (usually free blacks) to aid slaves in their attempts to escape slavery in the North or Canada.
Underwood Tariff Act (p. 554 ) An early accomplishment of the Wilson admin- istration, this law reduced the tariff rates of the Payne-Aldrich law of 1909 by about 15 percent. It also levied a graduated income tax to make up for the lost revenue.
undocumented aliens (p. 776 ) Once derisively called “wetbacks,” undocu- mented aliens are illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico and Central America.
unilateralism (p. 789 ) A national policy of acting alone without consulting others.
GLOSSARY G-11
suppressed when President George Washington called an army of fi ft een thousand troops to the area, where they encountered almost no resistance.
Wilmot Proviso (p. 316 ) In 1846, shortly aft er outbreak of the Mexican-American War, Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania intro- duced this controversial amendment stating that any lands won from Mexico would be closed to slavery.
Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) (p. 448 ) Founded by Frances E. Willard, this organization campaigned to end drunkenness and the social ills that accompanied it. Th e largest women’s organization in the country, by 1898 it had ten thousand branches and fi ve hundred thousand members. Th e WCTU illustrated the large role women played in politics and reform long before they won the right to vote.
Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) (p. 523 ) Founded in 1903, this group worked to organize women into trade unions. It also lobbied for laws to safeguard female workers and backed several successful strikes, especially in the garment industry. It accepted all women who worked, regardless of skill, and while it never attracted many members, its leaders were infl uential enough to give the union considerable power.
Works Progress Administration (WPA) (p. 623 ) Congress created this New Deal agency in 1935 to provide work relief for the unemployed. Federal works projects included building roads, bridges, and schools; the WPA also funded projects for artists, writers, and young people. It eventually spent $11 billion on projects and provided employment for 8.5 million people.
Wounded Knee Massacre (p. 396 ) In December 1890, troopers of the Seventh Cavalry, under orders to stop the Ghost Dance religion among the Sioux, took Chief Big Foot and his followers to a camp on Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. It is uncertain who fired the first shot, but
violence ensued and approximately two hundred Native American men, women, and children were killed.
XYZ Affair (p. 172 ) A diplomatic incident in which American peace commis- sioners sent to France by President John Adams in 1797 were insulted with bribe demands from their French counterparts, dubbed X, Y, and Z in American news- papers. Th e incident heightened war fever against France.
Yalta Conference (p. 655 ) Yalta, a city in the Russian Crimea, hosted this wartime conference of the Allies in February 1945 in which the Allies agreed to fi nal plans for the defeat of Germany and the terms of its occupation. Th e Soviets agreed to allow free elections in Poland, but the elections were never held.
yellow journalism (p. 498 ) In order to sell newspapers to the public before and during the Spanish-American War, publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer engaged in blatant sensationalization of the news, which became known as “yellow journalism.” Although it did not cause the war with Spain, it helped turn U.S. public opinion against Spain’s actions in Cuba.
yeoman farmers (p. 59 , 258 ) Southern small landholders who owned no slaves, and who lived primarily in the foothills of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains. Th ey were self-reliant and grew mixed crops, although they usually did not produce a substantial amount to be sold on the market.
Yorktown (p. 125 ) Virginia market town on a peninsula bounded by the York and James rivers, where Lord Cornwallis’s army was trapped by the Americans and French in 1781.
Young America (p. 292 ) In the 1840s and early 1850s, many public fi gures— especially younger members of the Democratic party—used this term to describe a movement that advocated territorial expansion and industrial growth in the name of patriotism.
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TEXT CREDITS 385 Unknown, MANY THOUSAND GO, SONG LYRICS (1867). Atlantic Monthly, June 1867; 446 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 454 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 471 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 477 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 503 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 514 Frank Baum, Th e Wonderful Wizard of Oz; 551 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 552 Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), “New World Lessons for Old World Peoples,” 1912; 554 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 579 Upton Sinclair, Th e Jungle, 1906; 596 Advertisement in New York World, May 1, 1915; 618 Data from G.M. Gathorne-Hardy, Th e Fourteen Points and the Treaty of Versailles (Oxford Pamphlets on World Aff airs, no. 6, 1939), pp. 8–34; Th omas G. Paterson et al, American Foreign Policy: A History Since 1900, 2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 282–293; 654 Data compiled from C.D. Bremer, “American Bank Failure” (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935), p. 42; 655 John M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936, 1971; 728 Lyrics from the song, “Little Boxes” by Malvina Reynolds © Copyright 1962 Schroder Music Co. (ASCAP) Renewed 1990 Used by permis- sion. All rights reserved; 729 Compiled from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, Bicentennial Edition, Washington, DC, 1975; 762 from, Still the Golden Door, David M. Reimer Copyright © 1992 Columbia University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher; 765 U.S. Department of Defense.
CHAPTER 16 367 © Everett Collection Inc / Alamy 369 National Archives and Records Administration 370 Chicago History Museum 375 The New York Historical Society 378 Valentine Richmond History Center 380 © North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy 381 Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center 384 © CORBIS 386 Library of Congress 387 © GL Archive / Alamy
CHAPTER 17 391 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 395 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 396 Library of Congress 397 © World History Archive / Alamy 398 Montana Historical Society, Photograph Archives, Helena MT 400 © North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy 404 Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History 408 Library of Congress 410 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 18 415 Th e Th omas J. Watson Library, Th e Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Art Resource, NY 417 Minnesota Historical Society/CORBIS All Rights Reserved 422 Th e Granger Collection, New York 425 © Th e Print Collector / Alamy 426 PARIS PIERCE / Alamy 429 CORBIS All Rights Reserved 432 Library of Congress 434 Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh 435 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 19 439 © Th e Museum of the City of New York, Th e Byron Collection 440 © G.E. Kidder Smith/CORBIS 442 Library of Congress 446 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 452 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved 453 Library of Congress 454 CORBIS All Rights Reserved 456 © CORBIS 458L Getty Images/Time Life Pictures 458R Hull-House Collection, HHC-0074-0508-0106-001, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, Special Collections 461 Library of Congress
CHAPTER 20 467 Solomon D. Butcher / Nebraska State Historical Society 471 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 474 Wisconsin Historical Society 475 Kansas State Historical Society, Copy and Reuse Restrictions Apply 477 The Granger Collection, New York 479L Bettmann / CORBIS All Rights Reserved 484 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 486 © Everett Collection Inc / Alamy
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CHAPTER 22 515 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 516 Culver Pictures / Th e Art Archive at Art Resource, NY 521 Library of Congress 522L © Archive Pics / Alamy 522R MPI/Stringer/ Getty Images 525
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CHAPTER 24 563 From the May 8, 1915, edition of the New York Tribune 568 © Lordprice Collection / Alamy 570 Hulton Archive / Getty Images 571 © Niday Picture Library / Alamy 574 U.S. Government Printing Offi ce 576 Library of Congress 577 Chicago History Museum 579 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 581 Chicago History Museum/Getty Images 582 © World History Archive / Alamy
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CHAPTER 31 737 AP Images 740 © Bettmann/CORBIS 742 Th e Granger Collection, New York-All rights reserved. 747 REUTERS/Jeff Mitchell US 750 Everett Collection 751 Bettmann / CORBIS All Rights Reserved 753 © Bettmann/CORBIS 754 Bettmann/UPI / CORBIS All Rights Reserved 756 AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi 761 Bettmann / CORBIS All Rights Reserved 764 AP Photo/Lana Harris
CHAPTER 32 769 Getty Images/Time Life Pictures 771 AP Photo/Jockel Finck 773 AP Photo/Dusan Vranic 775 Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images 778 AP Photo/Stephan Savoia 781 Trippett /Sipa Press 786 Lawrence Bender Prod./Participant Prod./Album/Newscom 788 Spencer Platt/Staff/ Getty Images 789 Jeff Greenberg / PhotoEdit Inc. 790 AP Images 793 AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File
Key terms and the text pages on which the term is defi ned are highlighted in boldface type. Terms and defi nitions also appear in the Glossary, pp. G-1–G- 11 .
A Abbott, Grace, 521 Ablowitz, Rebecca, 450 Abortion, 746 , 747 , 754 , 760 – 763 Abzug, Robert, 659 Acheson, Dean, 668 , 669 , 671 , 674 , 677 , 681 , 731 ACT UP, 747 Adams, Henry, 476 Adams, John, 553 Adams, Jr., Charles Francis, 465, 502 Adams, Samuel Hopkins, 549 Adams, Sherman, 697 Adamson Act, 555 Addams, Jane, 445 , 451 , 457 , 458 , 459 , 504 , 522 , 526 , 539 , 569 Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain), 480 Advertising, 530; brand names, chain stores, mail-order, 428;
marketing, billboards, 427 Affi rmative action , 792 Afghanistan, 752 – 753 , 764 , 788 African Americans: advances and retreats 1990–2010, 776; Black
activism begins, 701–703; “Black Power,” 728–729; Buff alo soldiers in the West, 398–399; civil rights during Kennedy’s administration, 714–717; Eleanor Roosevelt and, 632, 633; Harlem Renaissance, 595, 598; under Johnson, 720; and Ku Klux Klan, 600–602; Madam C. J. Walker, 556–557; Marcus Garvey, 596–597; Mary McLeod Bethune, 557, 628; migration northward 1910–1920 (fi g.), 580; moving West, 407–408; New Deal benefi ts for, 628–629; Niagara Movement, NAACP, 521–522; Plessy v. Ferguson , 460–463; in professions, 453–454; progress under Th eodore Roosevelt, 546; and Second Great Migration, 723; in Spanish-American War of 1898, 500–502; wartime jobs, Great Migration, 580–581; women working, 520; work in 1920s, 592; working 1870–1890, 429; on the World War II home front, 649, 651–652; and zoning laws, 531
Age of Innocence (Wharton), 595 Agencies: major New Deal (table), 634 – 635 Agnew, Spiro, 732 , 749 Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) , 622 Agriculture: in 1920s, 592 Aguinaldo, Emilio, 506 , 507 AIDS epidemic, 747 , 748 – 749 Air traffi c controllers strike, 754
Airplanes: Wright brothers, 485 al Qaeda, 785 , 792 Alabama (ship), 494 Alaska, 494 , 506 Albania, 783 Alcoholism: Prohibition, 600; and purity crusade, 540; and rise of
cities, 441 Alcott, Louisa May, 480 Aldrich, Nelson W., 550 , 551 Alfred, Gloria, 761 Alger, Horatio, 480 Alito, Samuel, 792 All Quiet Along the Western Front (Remarque), 642 Allen, Frederick Lewis, 594 Amador, José María, 403 Amalgamated Iron and Steel Workers, 434 America First Committee, 644 American Expeditionary Force (AEF), 572 American Federation of Labor (AFL) , 431 , 525 , 526 , 592 , 627 American G.I, Forum, 652 American Independent Party, 732 American League (baseball), 449 American Legion, 599 American Medical Association (AMA), 539 , 549 , 696 American Protective Association, 444 American Psychological Association (APA), 574 American Railway Association, 419 American Railway Union, 543 American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers
(ASCAP), 531 American Sugar Refi ning, 424 American Telephone and Telegraph Company, 424 – 425 American Tobacco Company, 509 , 547 , 552 American Women Suff rage Association, 542 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 770 America’s Road to War 1914-1917 (Millis), 642 Amos ‘n Andy (radio show), 590 Amoskeag Company, 530 Anarchism, 477 Anderson, Marian, 629 , 633 Anderson, Maxwell, 585 , 595 Anderson, Sherwood, 595 Andropov, Yuri, 764 Angel Island, 524 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 682 , 683 Anne of Green Gardens (Montgomery), 532 Anniston, Alabama, 699 Anthony, Susan B., 450 , 542 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, 789
Index
I-1
I-2 INDEX
Anti-Imperialist League , 504 Anti-Saloon League, 600 Antitrust, 423 Antitrust legislation, 471 Antiwar movement, 726 – 727 Apache Indians, 393 , 395 , 399 Appeal to Reason , 578 Arab oil embargo, 742 – 743 Arabic (ship), 564 , 570 Arapahoe Indians, 390 , 393 , 395 , 399 Architecture: skycrapers, 440 Aristide, Jean-Bertrand, 782 Armstrong, Louis, 532 Army: Buff alo soldiers in the West, 398 – 399 Arrogance of Power, Th e (Fulbright), 724 Arroyo, Jose, 777 Arthur, Chester A., 469 Articles of Confederation (text of), A-3–A- 5 Arts: experimentation in the, 532–533; fl owering in 1920s,
595 , 598 Ashcan School , 533 Ashcroft , John, 788 Asia, cold war in, 672 – 673 Asian Americans, 776 – 777 Assemblies of God, 692 Assembly-line technology, 518 Assimilation or diversity, 777 – 778 Association of Multiethnic Americans, 778 Atkinson, Ti-Grace, 730 Atlanta Compromise, 453 Atomic bombs, 657 , 661 , 666 , 668 , 671 , 673 Attlee, Clement, 664 Austria-Hungary, 569 Automobile industry, 588–591; in 1950s, 691; 1970s, 1980s, 744;
United Auto Workers (UAW), 628 “Axis of evil,” 789 Axis Powers , 642
B Babbitt (Lewis), 595 Baby and Child Care (Spock), 692 Baby Boom , 688 Baer, George F., 547 Baez, Joan, 728 Bailey, James A., 449 Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company , 542 Baker, Josephine, 556 Baker, Newton D., 545 Baker, Ray Stannard, 577 Baker v. Carr , 717 Bakke v. Regents of University of California , 792 Bakker, Tammy, 757
Balkan Wars, 782 – 783 Ball, George, 725 Ballinger, Richard A., 551 Baltimore and Ohio (B & O), 419 , 421 Balzac, Honore, 490 – 491 Bancroft , Hubert Howe, 404 Banks and banking: failures 1929–1933 (fi g.), 620; Roosevelt’s
saving of, 621–622; system, 554 Banks, Louis, 618 Bannock Indians, 391 , 395 Bara, Th eda, 594 Barbed wire, 409 Barnett, Ross, 714 – 716 Barnum, Phineas T., 390 , 449 Barrios, 524 Barry, Leonora M., 432 – 435 Barton, Bruce, 590 Baruch, Barnard M., 579 , 668 Baruch Plan , 668 Baseball, 449 Battle of San Juan Hill, 491 Battle of the Bulge, 654 Baum, Frank, 482 – 483 Bay of Pigs , 710 Bear Stearns, 791 Beatniks, 693 Beckwith, Bob, 789 Beecher, Henry Ward, 457 Begin, Menachem, 751 Belarus, 782 Bell, Alexander Graham, 414 , 424 Bell Telephone Company, 424 Bellamy, Edward, 456 – 457 , 457 Belleau Wood, 576 Bellotti v. Braid , 762 Bellows, George W., 533 Bemis, Edward, 545 Bemis, Samuel F., 492 Ben Hur (Wallace), 480 Berkman, Alexander, 434 , 600 Berlin, crisis over, 709 Berlin airlift , 671 , 672 Berlin blockade, 670 – 671 Berlin Wall, 771 Bernays, Edward, 590 Bessemer steel, 416 , 421 Bethlehem Steel, 423 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 557 , 628 , 629 Big Foot (Sioux), 396 Billington, Ray Allen, 410 “Billion-Dollar Congress,” 472 Billy the Kid, 403 bin Laden, Osama, 785, 792 Binet, Alfred, 574 Biogenetic laws, 493
INDEX I-3
Birds of passage , 523 Birmingham, Alabama, 715 , 717 Birth of a Nation , 531 Black, Hugo, 631 , 717 Black activism, 701 – 703 Black Beauty (Sewell), 480 Black Codes , 407 Black Hills, Dakota Territory, 395 Black Hills Gold Rush of 1875, 396 , 404 Black Kettle (Sioux), 394 Black Panther Party, 729 “Black Power,” 728 – 729 Black Star Line (BSL), 597 Blackmun, Harry, 762 Blaine, James G., 470 , 492 , 494 , 496 Bland–Allison Silver Purchase Act , 469 Bliss, Tasker H., 583 Bliss, William Dwight Porter, 457 Blitzkreig (lightning war), 644 Blough, Roger, 714 Bolden, Charles “Buddy,” 532 Bolger, Ray, 483 Bolsheviks, 578 , 599 , 600 Bonanza farms , 410 Bonheur, Rosa, 575 Bonus army , 620 Borah, William E., 584 , 643 Borjas, George J., 775 Bosnia, 782 – 783 Bosnia-Herzegovina, 782 Boston Red Sox, 449 Boulder (Hoover) Dam, 619 Bourke-White, Margaret, 660 Bow, Clara, 594 Boxer Rebellion, 507 Boxing, 449 Bozeman Trail, 395 Bracker, Milton, 658 – 659 Bradley, Omar, 654 , 659 , 674 , 731 Branch, Taylor, 702 Brandeis, Louis D., 553 , 555 Brazil, 721 Breaker boys, 521 Breedlove, Sarah, 556 Brennan, Jr., William J., 717 Brezhnev, Leonid, 739 , 764 Briand, Aristide, 638 Brice, Fanny, 532 British Guiana, 494 Bronco-Buster, Th e (Remington), 510 Brooklyn Bridge, 422 Brooks, Harriet, 520 Brooks Brothers, 490 Brown, H. Rap, 729 Brown, Henry Billings, 462
Brown, James, 729 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 462–463, 700 , 714 Brownmiller, Susan, 730 Brussels Treaty, 670 Bryan, William Jennings, 482 – 483 , 484 , 485 , 498 , 504 , 550 , 563 ,
567 , 570 , 608 , 609 – 611 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 752 Buchanan v. Worley , 522 Buckley, Christopher A., 446 , 447 Buckley, William, 738 Buff alo, 392 , 396 Buff alo soldiers in the West, 398 – 399 Bundy, McGeorge, 709 , 721 , 725 Burchfi eld, Charles, 595 Bureau of Construction and Repair, 497 Bureau of Corporations, 547 Burgess, John W., 493 Burns, Lucy, 542 Bush, George H. W., 738, 746, 749, 752–753, 768–769, 779,
780, 786; ending Cold War, 770–772; Gulf War 1990–1991, 772 – 774
Bush, George W.: election of, 783–785; second term, 790–791; war on terror, 788 – 790
Butler, John W., 608 Butler Act, 608 Byington, Margaret, 445 Byrd, Harry, 718 Byrnes, James, 649
C C. Turner Joy (ship), 724 Cable, Washington, 480 Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Canary), 404 Califano, Joseph, 750 California: Indians’ treatment in, 393; racism against
Chinese, 405 Call of the Wild, Th e (London), 481 Calley, Jr., William, 726 Cambodia, 740 Camp David accords , 751 Camp Dwellers, 393 Campbell, Helen, 459 Canary, Martha Jane, 404 Cannon, Joseph, 550 , 551 Cape Canaveral, 695 Caraway, Hattie W., 630 Caribbean policy, 565 , 567 Carlisle Indian School, 397 Carmichael, Stokely, 728 – 729 Carnegie, Andrew, 422 – 423 , 431 , 504 Carnegie Steel Company, 422 Carranza, Venustiano, 568
I-4 INDEX
Carson, Pirie, and Scott department store, 440 Carter, Jimmy, 509 , 738 , 743 , 746 , 749 – 750 , 751 , 752 – 753 ,
756 – 757 , 782 Casey, William, 759 Castle Garden, 442 , 443 Castro, Fidel, 683 , 710 , 711 , 749 Cather, Willa, 595 Catholicism: Father Coughlin, 624; John F. Kennedy, 708 Catt, Carrie Chapman, 542 Cattell, James McKeen, 574 Cattle bonanza in the West, 405 – 407 Cattle Butchers’ Union, 433 Census Bureau, 424 Centennial Exposition of 1876, 414 – 416 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 671 , 682 , 683 , 710 , 749 ,
755 , 788 Central Pacifi c Railroad, 403 , 418 , 420 , 452 Centralia, Washington, 600 Cervera, Pascual, 502 , 503 Chain stores, 428 , 590 Chambers, Whittaker, 676 , 677 Chandler, Alfred D., 417 Charity Organization Society of New York, 539 Cháteau-Th ierry, 576 Chavefsky, Paddy, 692 Chávez, César, 729 Checkpoint Charlie, 709 Cheney, Dick, 770 Chernenko, Konstantin, 764 Chernobyl, Soviet Ukraine, 745 Cherokee Indians, 392 Cheyenne Indians, 390 , 393 , 395 , 397 , 399 Chiang Kai-shek, 645 , 647 , 673 , 681 Chicago, 417 , 440 , 531 , 580 , 594 , 621 Chicago Auditorium, 440 Chicago Bureau of Charities, 458 – 459 Chicanos, 729 Child labor, 480 , 539 , 542 , 555 Children: working, 429 , 539 Children’s Bureau, 521 , 552 China, 508–509, 510, 672–673, 681–682, 782; 400 million
customers of, 508–509; end of Cold War, 771–772; immigration to U.S., 524; Nixon’s visit, 739
Chinese: and gold rushes, 405 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 , 405 , 430 Chinese immigrants, 777 Chinook Indians, 393 Chippewa Indians, 392 Chisholm, Texas, 406 Chivington, John M., 394 – 395 Christianity: American annexation of Hawaii, 496;
Anglo-Saxon’s duties toward ‘inferior’ races, 493; the Christian right, 756–757; and Scopes Trial, 603, 608–611; and Social Gospel, 457
Christopher, Warren, 782
Christowe, Stoyan, 442 Chrysler, 628 Churchill, Winston, 644 , 647 , 648 , 655 , 657 , 664 – 668 , 680 , 683 Cigar Makers’ Union, 432 Cigarettes, 509 Cimarron (Ferber), 410 Cincinnati College of Music, 449 Cincinnati Red Stockings, 449 Cities and towns: immigrant populations in, 444; life in jazz age,
592–593; lure of the city, 439–441; new urban culture, 530–533; overcrowded cities, 438–439; reform in, 544 – 546
Citizenship, 506 City Lights Bookshop, 696 Civil rights: as political issue, 698–700; Black activism begins,
701–703; desegregating schools, 700–701; during Kennedy’s administration, 714–717; Nixon’s policy, 739
Civil Rights Act of 1875, 460 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 718 , 730 Civil Rights Cases , 451 Civil unions, 748 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) , 623, 625 Clark, J. Reuben, 640 Clark, James, 720 Clark, Tom, 675 Clark Memorandum, 640 Clarke, Edward H., 452 Classical music, 449 Clayton Antitrust Act , 553 Clear Air Act, 739 , 745 Clemenceau, Georges, 582 Clemens, Samuel Longhorn, 480 Cleveland, 580 Cleveland, Grover, 470 , 475 , 476 , 477 , 478 , 484 , 494 ,
495 – 496 , 498 Cleveland, Ohio, 545 Cliff Dwellers (Bellows), 533 Cliff ord, Clark, 682 – 683 , 731 Clinton, Bill, 509, 745, 746, 748, 785, 786, 792; fi rst term of,
778–780; scandal in White House, 780–781; and the world, 781 – 783
Clinton, Hillary, 780 , 781 Clinton High School, Tennessee, 701 Clubs, 452 Coal mining, 477 – 478 , 547 – 548 , 592 Cody, William F. “Buff alo Bill,” 397 , 400 Coff ee, Linda, 760 , 761 – 762 , 762 Coin’s Financial School (Harvey), 481 Coit, Stanton, 457 Colburn, Irving W., 518 Cold War, 690, 752; in Asia, 672–673; begins, 666–668;
containment, 668–671; Eisenhower wages, 684–685; ending, 771–772; expands, 671–674; at home, 674–680; Kennedy intensifi es, 708 – 713
College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB), 575 Collier, John, 629
INDEX I-5
Collins, Judy, 728 Colored Farmers’ National Alliance, 473 Colt six-shooters, 393 Columbia, 565 , 567 Columbia Records, 531 Comanche Indians, 390 , 393 , 395 , 396 , 399 Commentary magazine, 738 Commerce: department stores, 426–427; Great Depression,
614–624; sellers, wage earners, 428 – 430 Commission for Civil Rights, 701 Committee on Industrial Organization (CIO), 627 Committee on Public Information (CPI) , 577 , 578 Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, 644 Commodity prices, selected (fi g.), 473 Commons, John R., 456 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 772 Communism, 599 , 673 , 676 , 677 – 679 Community Action Program, 719 Comstock, Anthony, 448 Comstock, Henry T.P., 404 Comstock Law, 448 , 521 Comstock Lode , 404 , 405 Conditions of Women and Children Wage-Earners in the U.S. , 540 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 714 Conkling, Roscoe, 469 Connor, Eugene “Bill,” 717 Conservation, 549 Constitutional amendments (text of), A-9–A- 13 Consumer’s League, 632 Containment , 669 Contraception, 521 Contract with America , 780 Coolidge, Calvin, 597 , 603 , 604 , 640 Cooperative Union, 473 Copeland, Aaron, 595 Corliss engine, 414 , 415 , 416 Cornell, 451 Corporations, 693 Corregidor, 647 Corsair (ship), 421 Cosey, Jacob S., 476 , 477 Cosey’s Army, 476 , 477 Coughlin, “Bathhouse John,” 446 Coughlin, Father Charles, 624 , 627 , 630 Council of National Defense, 579 Court of Indian Off enses, 397 “ Court-packing” scheme , 630 Courts: See Supreme Court Cowboys, 405 , 406 , 407 , 484 Cox, Archibald, 741 Cox, James M., 585 Crack in the Picture Window, Th e (Keats), 692 Crane, Stephen, 480 Crazy Horse (Sioux), 395 , 396 “Creationism,” 611
Crédit Mobilier, 418 Creek Indians, 410 Creel, George, 577 , 639 – 640 Crime: and African Americans 1990–2010, 776; in mining
camps, 404–405; and new currents of social thought, 456 – 457
Crocker, Charles, 420 Croker, Richard, 446 , 447 Cronkite, Walter, 731 Crow Indians, 393 , 394 Cuba, 498 , 502 , 507 , 567 , 683 , 711 – 712 Cuban Americans, 775 Cuban missile crisis , 711 , 712 – 713 Culture: drive-in, 691; of work, 430 – 435 Cumming v. County Board of Education , 451 Cummins, Albert B., 548 Curtis, George William, 448 Custer, George Armstrong, 396 , 398 – 399 , 404 Custer’s Last Stand, 396 “Cyber-Monday” shopping, 427 Czechoslovakia, 643 , 666 , 670 Czolgosz, Leon, 484
D Daley, Richard, 732 Dallek, Robert, 738 Dalrymple, Oliver, 409 Danish West Indies, 565 Darrow, Charles, 456 , 608 – 611 Darwin, Charles, 455 , 492 , 608 Daughterty, Harry, 603 Davidson Mountain, 404 Davis, Jeff erson, 452 Davis, John W., 606 Davis, Katherine B., 594 Dawes Severalty Act , 397 Day, William R., 503 D-Day , 654 , 655 de Gaulle, Charles, 648 , 680 De Leon, Daniel, 543 De Lima v. Bidwell , 506 Deadwood, Dakota Territory, 404 Dean, Howard, 790 Dean, John, 741 Death rate, 531 Debs, Eugene V., 476 , 537 , 543 , 550 , 553 , 578 , 585 , 608 Debt: and Great Depression, 616 Declaration of Independence (text of), A-1–A- 3 Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, 597 Democracy and Education (Dewey), 543 Democratic Party: under Clinton, 778–780; party loyalty to, 468;
and silver, 484
I-6 INDEX
Dempsey, Jack, 594 Denis, Ruth St., 532 Department of Homeland Security, 788 Department stores, 426 – 427 Dependent Pensions Act, 470 Depression of 1890s, 459 , 466 – 467 Desdunes, Rodolphe L., 460 Desegregating schools, 700 – 701 Desert Land Act of 1877, 402 Desert Shield, 772 Détente , 739 , 751 – 752 Detroit, 580 Deutsch-Amerikanischer Nationalbund, 445 Dewey, George, 502 , 504 , 506 Dewey, John, 522 , 543 Dewey, Th omas E., 654 , 671 , 675 Díaz, Porfi rio, 568 Diem, Ngo Dinh, 680 – 681 , 709 , 710 , 724 Dien Bien Phu, 680 , 731 Dingley Tariff , 485 Dirksen, Everett M., 718 , 720 Diversity or assimilation, 777 – 778 Divorce, 521 Dixiecrats, 675 , 699 Dobrynin, Anatoly, 711 Dodd, Samuel C.T., 423 Dodge, Grenville M., 420 Dole, Robert, 780 Dollar diplomacy , 566 Dolliver, Senator, 551 Dominican Republic, 566 , 567 “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” 792 Dooley v. U.S. , 506 Dorr, Rheta Childe, 450 Dos Passos, John, 585 , 595 Douglas, William O., 631 , 717 Dove, Arthur, 533 Downes v. Bidwell , 506 Draft , the, 576 Drake, Edwin L., 423 Dreiser, Th eodore, 481 Drive-in culture, 691 Drugs, cleaning up, 548 – 549 Dry farming , 409 Du Bois, W. E. B., 452 , 453 , 454 , 459 , 522 , 581 , 595 , 597 Du Pont, 518 , 547 , 642 Duc, Quang, 710 Dukakis, Michael, 770 Duke, James B., 428 , 509 Dulles, John Foster, 680 , 681 , 684 Duncan, Isadora, 532 Dust Bowl, 622 , 623 Dutch East Indies, 648 Dylan, Bob, 728
E Eagleburger, Lawrence, 768 – 769 Earnings, 530 Earth Day, 745, Earth in the Balance (Gore), 786 East Louisiana Railway, 460 Eastern Trunk Line Association, 421 Eastman, George, 424 Eastman Kodak, 518 E.C. Knight Co., 471 Economics: See also Commerce, Trade; depression of 1890s,
459, 466–467; dollar diplomacy, 566; Federal Reserve Act, 553; Great Depression, 614–624; the great infl ation, 743–744; Great Recession, 792; Panic of 1893, 421, 476, 478; patterns of growth, weakness, 590–592; postwar boom, 690–693, 696; Reagan’s treatment of, 753–754; Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 471–472, 478; silver vs. gold, 481–482, 484, 486; stagfl ation, 742–745
Ederle, Gertrude, 594 Edison, Th omas A., 414 , 424 , 425 Edison Speaking Machine Company, 531 Education: desegregating schools, 700–701; growing importance
of, 450–451; higher, 451–453; “No Child Left Behind,” 785; rise of the professions, 539
Edwards v. Aguillard , 611 Egypt, 742 Ehrlichman, John, 741 Eight-hour day, 555 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 648, 654, 659, 670, 675, 678–679,
682–683, 684, 691, 692, 694, 695, 700–701, 708, 739; modern Republicanism, 697–698; wages Cold War, 680 – 681 , 684 – 685
El Salvador, 751 Elections, 700–701; of 1880, 469–470; of 1884, 470; of 1890, 472; of
1896, 481, 484–485; of 1900, 486; of 1904, 548; of 1908, 550; of 1912, 537, 552–553; of 1916, 571; of 1920, 585; of 1924, 604–606; of 1928, 606–607; of 1932, 620–621; of 1936, 630; of 1940, 645; of 1944, 654; of 1948, 675–676; of 1952, 678–679; of 1956, 697–698; of 1960, 706–708; of 1964, 718–719, 720; of 1968, 732; of 1972, 741; of 1976, 751; of 1980, 752–753; of 1984, 759; of 1988, 770; of 1992, 778–779; of 1996, 780; of 2000, 783–784; of 2004, 790–791; of 2008, 793; presidential (table), A-13–A-17; state reforms of, 545; voter participation in presidential 1876–1920, 544; of women, 630
Elections, Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, 720 Elevators, 440 Eliot, Charles W., 452 Eliot, T.S., 533 , 595 Elkins Act, Th e, 548 Ellis Island, 442 – 443 El-Sheikh, Maha, 777 Ely, Richard T., 456 , 546 Emergency Fleet Corporation, 579 Emori, Susumi, 653 Empires, world colonial (fi g.), 506
INDEX I-7
Energy Policy and Conservation Act, 1975, 744 – 745 Engel, George, 434 Engel v. Vitale , 717 , 738 England: and Lusitania (ship), 562–563; and U.S. in World War II,
647 – 648 Enron, 785 Entrepreneurs: robber barons, 416 Environmental movement, 744 – 745 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 739 Epperson v. Arkansas , 611 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 718 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) , 746 Erie Railroad, 419 , 421 , 476 Escobeda v. Illinois , 717 Espionage Act of 1917 , 578 “Ethnic cleansing,” 782 – 783 Ethnic Heritage Studies Act of 1972, 729 Ethnic nationalism, 729 – 730 Etzioni, Amitai, 777 Europe: alliances, battlefronts 1914–1917 (fi g.), 573; division aft er
World War II, 666; end of Cold War (fi g.), 772; Marshall Plan 1948–1952 (fi g.), 669; aft er Treaty of Versailles 1919 (fi g.), 584; aft er World War II (fi g.), 667
“Evil Empire,” 755 Evolution, 608 – 611 , 792 ExComm, 711 Exodusters , 407 , 409 Explorer satellite, 695
F Factory Investigating Commission, 529 Fair Deal, 696 – 697 Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), 651 , 696 , 699 Fair Labor Standards Act, 627 Falaba (ship), 570 Fall, Albert, 603 Falwell, Jerry, 738 , 756 Families: changing American, 745; nuclear, 691 – 692 Family in Jerome Camp (Sugimoto), 653 Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, 791 Farewell to Arms (Hemingway), 585 Farm Security Administration (FSA), 623 Farmers’ Alliance, 410 , 473 – 474 Farming: AAA programs, 622–623; agricultural land use in 1880s
(fi g.), 409; better times on, 519–520; bonanza in the West, 407–410; discontent on the farm, 409–410; the farm problem, 472; Farmer’s Alliance, 472–474; National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), 729; new methods, 408–409; victory gardens, 579
Faubus, Orval, 700 – 701 Federal Aid Roads Act, 517 Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916, 555 Federal Reserve Act , 553 , 627
Federal Reserve Board, 615 , 744 , 752 Females. See Women Feminism, 540 – 542 , 593 , 730 – 731 Feminist Mystique, Th e (Friedan), 730 Femme couverte doctrine, 450 Ferber, Edna, 410 Ferdinand, Franz, 568 , 569 Ferguson, John H., 461 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 696 Ferraro, Geraldine, 759 Fetterman, William J., 395 Field, Cyrus W., 424 Field, Marshall, 427 , 428 Field, Stephen J., 403 Fift een Amendment, 472 Fift y Years and Other Poems (Johnson), 595 Fire: Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 528 – 529 Fireside chats , 621 First Amendment, 609 Fish, Hamilton, 494 Fisk University, 453 Fiske, John, 493 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 593 Fitzgerald, John F., 478 Five and Ten Cent Store, 428 Five Power Agreement, 641 Flanders, Ralph, 680 Flight: Wright brothers, 485 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 527 Folk, Joseph W., 514 , 545 Food: cleaning up, 548 – 549 Food Administration , 579 Foote, Edward Bliss, 450 Ford, Gerald R., 738 , 743 , 749 , 752 Ford, Henry, 424 , 485 , 516 – 517 , 530 , 569 , 588 – 589 , 649 Ford Motor Company, 516–517, 523 , 527 , 589 , 709 Foreign policy under Wilson, 566 – 568 Forney–McCumberg Tariff Act, 605 Fort Kearney, 401 Fort Laramie, 401 Fort Riley, Kansas, 399 Foster, John W., 495 Four Power Treaty, 641 Four-Square Gospel, 603 Fourteen Points , 582 , 583 , 584 Fourteenth Amendment , 451, 460, 461, 609, A- 11 France, 644 Frankfurter, Felix, 580 , 631 , 717 Frasch, Herman, 423 Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, 791 Free coinage, 481 Free Speech movement, 727 Freedom ride , 714 French Indochina, 645 Freud, Sigmund, 574
I-8 INDEX
Frey, William H., 745 – 746 Frick, Henry Clay, 422 , 434 Friedan, Betty, 730 Friedman, Milton, 738 Frohman, Charles, 562 , 563 Frontier thesis, 410 – 411 Frost, Robert, 533 Fuchs, Klaus, 677 Fuel Administration, 579 Fulbright, William, 710 , 724 , 731
G Gaddy, Levonne, 778 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 714 Gale, Zona, 595 Games, popular, 448 – 449 Gandhi, Mahatma, 702 Garfi eld, Harry A., 579 Garfi eld, James A., 469 – 470 , 470 Garland, Hamlin, 449 , 472 , 480 Garland, Judy, 483 Garner, John Nance, 643 Garrett, Pat, 403 Garrison, William Lloyd, 522 Garvey, Andrew, 446 – 447 Garvey, Marcus, 596 – 597 Gary, Elbert H., 517 Gay liberation movement, 746 – 748 Gay rights, 745 , 792 General Electric, 518 General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 480 , 541 General Motors, 628 George, David Lloyd, 583 George, Henry, 455 , 456 , 457 , 459 , 474 , 545 German Literary Defense Committee, 569 Germany, 641, 644, 771–772; Berlin airlift , 670–671;
crisis over Berlin, 709; division aft er World War II, 666; and Lusitania (ship), 562–563; moving toward World War I, 568–572; subject of antiwar propaganda, 577 – 578
Geronimo (Apache), 399 Gershwin, George, 595 Ghost Dances , 396 Gideon v. Wainwright , 717 Gilded Age, 435 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 450 Gilman, Daniel Coit, 452 Gingrich, Newton Leroy “Newt,” 780 Ginsberg, Allen, 696 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 746 Gladden, Washington, 457 Glasgow, Ellen, 595
Glaspie, April, 768 Glass-making, 518 Glidden, Joseph F., 409 Global warming, 786–787 Godkin, E. I., 448 , 504 Gold: Gold Standard Act, 484; lure of for immigrants, 405;
Republicans and, 481; vs. Silverites, 478 Gold Rush of 1849 , 401 , 404 Gold standard, 476 Gold Standard Act , 486 Goldberg, Arthur J., 713 , 717 Goldman, Emma, 600 Goldwater, Barry, 720 , 725 , 732 , 736 , 738 Gompers, Samuel, 431 , 432 , 504 , 525 , 526 , 554 , 579 Good Neighbor Policy, 566 , 640 , 641 Goodnight, Charles, 406 Goodwin, Richard, 713 GOP (“Grand Old Party”), 603 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 764 , 771 – 772 Gordon, Katherine, 692 Gordon, Richard, 692 Gore, Al, 783 , 784, 786–787 Gore, Jr., Albert, 779 Gould, Jay, 420 – 421 , 431 Graham, Billy, 696 , 740 Grand Pueblos Indians, 392 Grandlin Bonanza, 409 Grant, Madison, 602 Grant, Ulysses S., 494 Grateful Dead, the, 728 Great Depression, 607; causes, great crash, 614–616; eff ect of,
616–618; fi ghting the, 619 – 624 Great Gatsby, Th e (Fitzgerald), 595 Great Migration, 580 – 581 Great Plains, 391 – 392 Great Recession, 792 Great Salt Lake, 393 , 401 , 420 Great Society , 720 , 721 , 723 , 726 Great White Way, Th e (Th ain), 591 Greece, 669 Greeley, Horace, 390 , 392 Green Berets, 709 Green Party, 784 “Greenhouse gases,” 745 Greenwich Village, 532 – 533 Grierson, Benjamin H., 399 Griffi th, D. W., 531 Griswold v. Connecticut , 761 Gromyko, Andrei, 668 Guam, 501 , 504 , 506 Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 502 Guinn v. United States , 522 Guiteau, Charles J., 469 Gulf & Western, 744 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution , 724 – 725
INDEX I-9
Gulf War 1990–1991, 772 – 774 Gullo, Annah, 528 Gunther, Max, 692 Gurkin, Michael, 442 Gutman, Herbert G., 430
H Haass, Richard, 768 Haeckel, Ernst, 493 Haig, Alexander, 755 Haiti, 782 Halberstam, David, 709 Haldeman, H. R., 741 Haley, Jack, 483 Hamilton, Alice, 429 , 526 , 539 Hammer v. Dagenhart , 542 Handy, W. C., 532 Hanna, Mark, 484 Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, 405 Harding, Warren G., 585 , 600 , 603 – 604 , 640 Harlan, John Marshall, 462 Harlem Renaissance , 595, 598 Harriman, Averell, 667 Harriman, E. H., 509 Harriman, Edward H., 547 , 566 Harrington, Michael, 718 – 719 Harris, Frank, 480 – 481 Harris, Joel Chandler, 480 Harrison, Benjamin, 410 , 470 , 471 , 475 , 478 , 494 Hart, Schaff ner and Marx, 526 – 527 Harte, Bret, 480 Hartley, Marsden, 533 Harvard, 452 , 454 Harvey, William H., 481 Haskell Institute, 397 Hatch, Edward, 399 Hatch Act, 409 Hawaii, 504, 506, 647; American annexation of, 495 – 496 Hawley–Smoot Tariff , 640 Hay, John, 500 , 507 , 565 Hay–Bunau–Varilla Treaty , 565 Hayes, Rutherford B., 447 , 469 Hay–Herrán Convention, 565 Haymarket Riot, 431 , 433 – 434 Hay–Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, 565 Haywood, William “Big Bill,” 527 , 578 H-bomb, 671 , 683 Hearst, William Randolph, 498 Held, Jr., John, 593 Heline, Oscar, 614 Heller, Walter, 713 , 714 Hell’s Kitchen, New York City, 457
Hemingway, Ernest, 585 , 595 Henri, Robert, 533 Henry Street Settlement, 457 Hepburn Act , 548 Herbart, Johann Friedrich, 451 Herberg, Will, 692 Herbert, Victor, 531 Herrán, Th omas, 565 Herring, George, 726 Hickok, “Wild Bill,” 404 Higgs, Robert, 416 Higher education, 451 – 453 Highway Act of 1956, 697 Hill, James J., 547 Hill, Joe, 527 Hillman, Sidney, 654 Hippies, 728 Hires, Charles, 414 Hispanics, 723 , 729 , 775 – 776 Hiss, Alger, 676 , 677 History of Labour in the United States (Commons), 456 Hitler, Adolf, 641 , 642 – 643 , 644 , 647 , 648 , 654 , 658 , 666 , 670 HIV (human immunodefi ciency virus), 748 – 749 Ho Chi Minh, 680, 710 Ho Chi Minh Trail, 726 Hoar, George F., 504 Hobby, Oveta Culp, 697 Hobson, Winslow, 511 Hoff man, Abbie, 728 Holbrooke, Richard, 783 Holden v. Hardy , 433 Hollow Men, Th e (Eliot), 595 Holmes, Jr., Oliver Wendell, 546 Holocaust , 658–660, 659 Home Insurance Building, Chicago, 440 Home Missionary Society, 493 Homestead Act of 1862 , 402 , 468 Homestead Strike , 435 Homesteading, 467 Hoover, Herbert C., 603 , 605 , 606 , 607 , 617 , 619 – 620 , 640 Hoovervilles, 617 Hope, Bob, 740 Hopi Indians, 392 Hopkins, Harry, 623 , 624 , 629 , 633 Hopkins, John, 452 Hopper, Edward, 595 Hopwood, Cheryl, 792 House, Edward M., 568 House of Mirth, Th e (Wharton), 595 House of Morgan, 421 House on Henry Street, Th e (Wald), 457 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 676 , 677 Housing: Settlement houses, 457; Tenements, 441 How Crops Feed (Johnson), 409 How Crops Grow (Johnson), 409
I-10 INDEX
Howe, Frederic C., 454 , 545 , 569 Howells, William Dean, 416 , 441 , 480 , 504 Hubbard, Elbert, 562 Hucklberry Finn (Twain), 480 Hudson, Rock, 748 Huerta, Victoriano, 568 Hughes, Charles Evans, 545 , 568 – 572 , 600 , 630 , 641 Hull, Cordell, 640 , 647 , 655 Hull House, 457 , 458 , 459 , 539 Humphrey, George, 697 Humphrey, Hubert, 718 , 720 , 731 – 732 Hungary, 771 Huntington, Collis P., 403 Hurricane Katrina, 776 Hussein, Saddam, 768 , 769 , 772 , 773 , 774 , 789 , 790 Hutchins, Robert M., 644
I I Love Lucy (television show), 693 IBM, 744 Ickes, Harold, 623 , 629 , 675 If Christ Came to Chicago (Stead), 459 Iliff , John F., 402 Illinois Factory Act of 1893, 458 Immigration: between 1900–1920, 522–523; between
1901–1920, 519; and coal mining, 477–478; driven by gold, 405; Ellis Island, 442–443; foreign-born population 1890 (fig.), 445; during Great Recession, 793; immigrants and the city, 444–446; restriction of, 602–603; revival 1990–2010, 774–775; Second Great Migration, 722–723; to United States 1870–1900 (fig.), 444
Immigration Act of 1965, 722 – 723 Imperialism , 492 In re Debs , 433 , 477 Incandescent lamps, 425 Income taxes, 552 Inconvenient Truth, An (Gore), 786 Independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs), 739 Indian Intercourse Act, 394 Indian Reorganization Act, 629 Indochina, 680 – 681 Industrial Relocation Offi ce, 444 Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) , 527 , 530, 578 Industrialization, 414–416; benefi ts and costs, 435; business of
invention, 424–425; changes aft er 1900, 515–519; second industrial revolution, 589–592; sellers, wage earners, labor, 428–435; shopping, 426–427; steel and oil industries, 421–424; Taylorism, managing machines, 518 – 519
Industry: machine culture, 414 – 416 Infl uence of Sea Power Upon History, Th e (Mahan), 497 Inhofe, Jim, 787 Inside the Vicious Heart (Abzug), 659
Insull, Samuel, 590 “Intelligent design,” 611 , 792 Intercollegiate Athletic Association, 531 Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 683 , 694 , 695 , 708 ,
709 , 782 Interest of America in Sea Power, Th e (Mahan), 497 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty , 764 Intermediate range missiles (IRBMs), 683 International Harvester Corporation, 523 Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 469 Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), 469 , 548 , 551 Interstate highway system, 697 – 698 Inventions: business of, 424–425; farming, 409 – 410 IQ tests, 602 – 603 Iran, 683 , 684 Iran-Contra aff air , 759 Iranian hostage crises , 751 Iranian Revolution, 743 Iraq, 772 Irish Benevolent Society, 445 Iron Curtain , 666 Irrigation, 519 – 520 Irvine, Alexander, 457 Isakowsky, Tillie, 451 Isolationism , 492 , 641 – 644 Israel, 682 – 683 , 742 , 743 , 758 Isthmian Canal Commission, 565 Italy, 641 It’s Up To the Women (Roosevelt), 633
J Jackson, Andrew, 554 Jackson, Henry, 694 – 695 Jackson, Kenneth, 691 James, William, 542 – 543 , 574 Jameson, Roscoe, 581 Japan, 566, 645, 648, 649; collision course with U.S., 639–640,
641; end of World War II, 656–658; relocation of Japanese Americans, 652 – 653
Japanese Americans, 524 , 525 Jazz, 595 Jazz Singers, Th e (Motley), 598 Jednota Ceskyck Dam (Society of Czech Women), 445 Jewett, Sarah Orne, 480 Jews, and the Holocaust, 658 – 660 Jicarilla Apache Indians, 393 Jim Crow laws, 451 , 454 – 455 , 460 – 463 , 521 – 522 Job Corps, 719 Joe, California, 405 John Birch Society, 717 Johns Hopkins University, 452 , 456 Johnson, Andrew, 468
INDEX I-11
Johnson, Fenton, 581 Johnson, Hiram, 545 , 546 , 551 Johnson, James Weldon, 595 Johnson, Lyndon, 695, 697, 701, 708, 714, 718, 718–721, 742;
escalates Vietnam War, 721, 724–726; Second Great Migration, 722–723; triumph of reform, 720–721; Vietnam undermines, 731
Johnson, Samuel, 409 Johnson, Tom L., 545 Johnston, Francis Eastman, 441 Jones, Mary Harris “Mother,” 527 Jones, Samuel M., 545 Joplin, Scott, 449 Jordan, David Starr, 403 , 451 Joseph (Nez Percé), 396 J.P. Morgan and Company, 421 Judson, Phoebe, 401 – 402 Jungle, Th e (Sinclair), 515 , 548 , 549 Jupiter missiles, 711
K Kael, Pauline, 614 Kaiser, Henry J., 649 Kalakaua, King, 495 Kallen, Horace, 778 Kane, Woodbury, 490 Kansas: Frank Baum and, 482 – 483 Kasson, John A., 492 Kaufman, Irving, 677 Kazakhstan, 782 Kearns, Doris, 726 Keating–Owen Act, 542 , 555 Keats, John, 692 Kelley, Florence, 457 – 458 , 538 , 569 Kelley, Oliver H., 409 Kellogg, Frank B., 584 , 638 Kellogg, John H., 450 Kellogg–Briand Pact , 638 , 639 , 641 Kelly, John, 446 , 447 Kelly, William, 421 Kenna “Hinky Dink,” 446 Kennan, George, 668 – 669 , 669 , 671 , 672 Kennedy, Edward, 785 Kennedy, Jacqueline, 713 , 718 Kennedy, John F., 478, 721; assassination of, 717–718; civil rights,
714–717; intensifi es Cold War, 708–713; New Frontier, 713–714; vs. Nixon, 706 – 708
Kennedy, Robert F., 711 , 713 , 714 , 719 – 720 , 722 – 723 , 731 , 732 Kennedy–Nixon debate, 706 – 708 Kent State University shootings, 740 Kerouac, Jack, 693 , 696 Kerr, Clark, 736
Kerry, John, 791 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruholla, 751 , 759 Khrushchev, Nikita, 683 , 684 , 709 , 711 , 712 Kickapoo Indians, 399 Kicking Bear (Sioux), 391 Killian, James, 695 Kilrain, Jake, 449 Kim II-Sung, 674 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 701 – 702 , 703 , 708 , 716 – 717 , 720 , 728 , 729 King, Rodney, 776 Kinsey, Alfred C., 594 Kiowa Indians, 390 , 393 , 395 , 396 , 397 , 399 Kissinger, Henry, 739 , 740 , 743 , 751 Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 485 Klamath Indians, 393 Knights of Labor , 431, 433, 527 Knowland, William, 681 Knox, Frank, 651 Knox, Philander C., 566 Kodak cameras, 424 Koop, C. Everett, 748 Korean War, 673 – 674 , 690 Kosovo, 782 – 783 Krag-Jorgensen rifl es, 500 Krol, John Cardinal, 762 Ku Klux Klan, 597 , 600 – 602 , 606 Kuwait, 768 – 769 , 772 , 773 , 774 Kyoto Protocol, 786, 789
L La Follette, Robert M., 545 – 546 , 548 , 550 – 551 , 572 , 606 La Follette’s Magazine , 569 Labor: in 1920s, 592; child, 480, 539, 542, 555; and industrial
development, 416; New Deal legislation, 627; organizing, 525–527; rise of organized, 627–628; strikes. see Strikes, labor; unions, 526–527, 554, 627; unrest, strikes, 432–435; wage earners, 428–430; in World War I, 579–582
Labor unions: development of, 431 – 432 Ladies Home Journal , 450 LaFeber, Walter, 492 LaGuardia, Fiorello, 651 Lahr, Bert, 483 Land: conserving the, 549–550; grants to railroads, 402, 418;
Homestead Act of 1892, 402; movement to the West, 400–403; Oklahoma District rush, 410; for settlement, 401 – 402
Landon, Alfred M., 630 Lange, Dorothy, 619 Lansing, Robert, 570 , 584 Las Gorras Blancas , 403 Latin America, 565–566; cooperation with U.S., 640 – 641 Lazarus, Emma, 443 League for the Protection of the Family, 480
I-12 INDEX
League of Nations, 640 , 641 , 642 League of Women Voters, 632 Lean Bear (Cheyenne), 390–391 Lease, Mary E., 474 , 475 , 519 Lebanon, 758 Lee, Alice, 448 Lee, Ivy L., 527 Lee, Robert E., 418 Legislation, major New Deal (table), 634 – 635 Lehman Brothers, 791 Leisure, popular pastimes, 531 – 532 Lemke, William, 630 Lend-Lease , 644 , 648 , 667 Lenin, V. I., 572 , 578 Levitt, William, 688 Levittown , 688 – 690 Lewinsky, Monica, 780 , 781 Lewis, David, 598 Lewis, Drew, 754 Lewis, John L., 627 , 628 Lewis, John Solomon, 407 Lewis, Sinclair, 595 Liberian Rehabilitation project, 597 Liberty Bonds, 578 Liberty League, 630 Lichtman, Allan J., 606 Lieberman, Joseph, 780 Life expectancy, 531 Life on the Mississippi (Twain), 480 “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” 581 Lighting: incandescent lamps, 425 Liliuokalani, Queen, 495 Limbaugh, Rush, 787 Lincoln, Abraham, 390 , 459 , 522 , 706 Lindbergh, Charles, 594 , 644 , 645 Lindsay, Ben, 543 Lindsay, Vachel, 533 Lippman, Walter, 564 Literature: from 1870–1904, 480–481; in 1920s, 595, 598; about
World War I, 585 Little, Frank, 578 Little Bighorn, battle of, 391 , 396 Little Rock Nine, 701 Little Women (Alcott), 480 Lochner v. New York , 433 Lodge, Henry Cabot, 583 , 584 , 602 Lodge Corollary, 566 Lôme, Enrique Dupuy de, 498 London, Jack, 481 Lonely Crown, Th e (Reisman), 693 Long, Huey, 624 , 626 , 627 , 630 Looking Backward (Bellamy), 456 , 457 Loomis, Samuel Lane, 440 Los Angeles, 531 , 776 Lovett, Robert, 682 – 683
Lowell, Amy, 533 Loyalty Review Board, 676 Ludlow, Colorado, 555 Ludlow, Louis, 642 Lusitania (ship), 562 – 563 Lynching, 454 – 455
M MacArthur, Douglas, 620 , 647 , 648 , 649 , 657 , 672 , 674 Macedonia, 783 Machine culture, 414 – 416 Machinery Hall, Centennial Exposition, 414 Mackay, John W., 404 Macune, Charles W., 473 Macy, Rowland Hussey, 426 , 427 , 428 Macy’s, 426 , 427 Madam Walker Th eatre Center, 557 Maddox (ship), 724 Madero, Francisco I., 568 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (Crane), 480 Mahan, Alfred, 496 , 497 Maher, Bridget, 745 – 746 Mail, parcel post, 519 Main Street (Lewis), 595 Maine (ship), 498 , 499 , 501 Main-Traveled Roads (Garland), 472 Manchuria, Japanese seizure of, 641 Manhattan Island, 441 Manhattan Project , 657 , 668 Mann Act, 539 – 540 , 540 Mann–Elkins Act of 1910, 551 Mao Tse-Tung, 509 , 673 , 674 , 681 March on Washington , 716, 717 Marin, John, 533 Marketing, 427 , 590 Marriage, 745; in 1950s, 692; and divorce, 521; Femme couverte
doctrine, 450 Marshall, George C., 648 , 668 , 669 , 671 , 673 , 677 , 682 , 683 Marshall, Th urgood, 700 , 714 Marshall Plan , 669 , 671, 690; 1948–1952 (fi g.), 667 Martinet, Louis A., 460 Marx, Karl, 543 Mass production, 519 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 451 Masters, Edgar Lee, 533 Mauser rifl es, 500 McAdoo, William G., 606 McCain, John, 791 McCarthy, Eugene, 731 McCarthy, Joseph R., 677 , 678 , 679 , 680 , 690 McCarthyism , 677 McClure, Samuel S., 514 – 515
INDEX I-13
McClure’s Magazine , 514 – 515 McCone, John, 711 McCord, James, 741 McCormick Harvester works, 433 – 434 McCorvey, Norma, 760 , 761 – 762 , 762 , 763 McCoy, Joseph G., 405 McDowell, Mary, 526 McFarlane, Robert, 759 McGovern, George S., 741 McGuff ey, William Holmes, 451 McGuff ey’s Eclectic Readers , 451 McKay, Claude, 581 , 598 McKinley, William, 469 , 481 , 485 – 486 , 498 – 499 , 501 , 503 , 505 ,
507 , 508 , 510 , 511 , 550 , 605 McKinley Tariff Act, 470 , 478 , 494 , 495 McManes, James, 446 McNamara, Robert, 709 , 721 , 725 , 731 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 603 McTeague (Norris), 480 Meat Inspection Act of 1906, 549 Medicaid, 720 , 762 Medicare , 720, 792 Medicine, 448, 539; cleaning up drugs, 549 Mellon, Andrew, 605 Melting Pot, Th e (Zangwill), 459 Mencken, H. L., 593 , 595 , 608 , 611 Menlo Park, New Jersey, 425 Menominee Indians, 392 Meredith, James, 714 Mescalero Apache Indians, 399 Metropolitan Opera, 449 Mexican Americans, 581, 629, 775; “Zoot suit” riots, 652 Mexico: immigration to U.S., 524; undocumented aliens, 776;
Wilson’s troubles with, 568 Microbiology, 448 Middle class people, 618 Midway Islands, 494 Military-industrial complex, 684 Miller, Arthur, 428 Millis, Walter, 642 Mills, C. Wright, 693 Milosevic, Slobodon, 783 Mind, measuring, 574 – 575 Mining: bonanza in the West, 403–405; diffi culties under
Wilson, 555; iron, 422; in Midwest, 477–478; ‘square deal’ in coalfi elds, 547 – 548
Minneapolis, 417 Minor v. Happersett , 468 Minorities: New Deal help for, 628 – 629 Minuteman missiles, 695 , 709 , 752 Miranda v. Arizona , 717 Miss Lulu Bett (Gale), 595 Missouri Pacifi c, 618 Mitchell, John, 547 , 739 , 741 , 742 Model A, 588 , 590
Model T, 517 , 588 , 590 Mondale, Walter, 753 , 759 “Monkey Trial,” 608 , 611 Monroe, Harriet, 533 Monroe Doctrine, 492 , 493 , 566 , 567 , 640 Montgomery, Alabama, 701 – 702 Montgomery, Lucy M., 532 Montgomery bus boycott , 702 Montgomery Ward, 428 Moody, Dwight I., 448 Moon, sending man to, 713 Moral diplomacy , 567 Moral Majority , 738 , 756 Morgan, Anne, 526 Morgan, Frank, 483 Morgan, J. Pierpont, 421 , 422 – 423 , 423 , 425 , 478 , 508 , 517 , 526 ,
536 , 547 , 551 , 590 , 605 Mormons, 400 , 401 Morrill, Justin Smith, 452 Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862, 451 , 452 Mortality, 531 Morton, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll,” 532 Mossadeq, Mohammad, 682 , 683 Mothers Congress of 1898, 480 Mother’s Day, 521 Motion pictures, 590 Motley, Archibald, 598 Movie theaters, 531 – 532 Muck, Karl, 578 Muckrakers , 514 Mugwumps , 448 Muller v. Oregon , 543 Munn v. Illinois , 469 Murphy, Charles F., 446 Murray, Philip, 628 Music: phonographs, 425; sentimental ballads, symphony
orchestras, 449 Mussolini, Benito, 641 , 648 MX missiles, 752 My Lai massacre, 726
N N. W. Ayer and Son, 428 Nader, Ralph, 784 Nagasaki, Japan, 661 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 683 Nast, Th omas, 448 Nation magazine, 448 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 695, 787 National American Woman Suff rage Association , 450 , 542 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) , 522 , 541 , 555 , 557 , 598 , 701 – 702 , 729
I-14 INDEX
National Association of Colored Women, 540 – 541 National Association of Manufacturers, 539 National Bank of Haiti, 566 National Biscuit Company, 424 National Child Labor Committee, 539 , 542 National City Bank, 547 National Civic Federation, 459 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 531 National Commission on the Conservation of Natural
Resources, 550 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 540 National Conference of Jewish Women, 540 National Conference of Social Work, 540 National Congress of Mothers, 540 National Conservation Congress, 550 National Consumers League, 459 National Council of La Raza, 777 National Council of Woman, 480 National Defense Education Act (NDEA), 695 National Education Association (NEA), 539 , 744 National Farm Bureau Federation, 539 National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), 729 National Farmers’ Alliance, 473 National Farmers’ Alliance and Industrial Union , 472 National Federation of Settlements: rise of the professions, 539 National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry , 409 , 410 National Labor Relations Board, 627 National Labor Union, 431 National Municipal League, 545 National Negro Business League, 556 National Organization for Women (NOW) , 730 , 746 National Origins Quota Act , 603 National parks, forests (fi g.), 549 National Reclamation Act (Newlands Act) , 402 National Recovery Administration (NRA) , 622 , 631 National Security Act , 671 National Security Council (NSC), 671 , 759 , 769 National Security Strategy (NSS), 789 National Steel, 423 National Urban League, 522 National Women’s Party (NWP), 593 National Youth Administration (NYA), 623 , 629 Nationalism: Wilson’s new, 554 – 555 Native Americans: See also specifi c tribe ; Buff alo soldiers in the
West, 398–399; Dawes Severalty Act, 397; end of tribal life, 396–400; fi nal battles on Plains, 395–396; Indian policies, 394–395; Lean Bear’s changing West, 390–391; New Deal benefi ts, 629; overview of aft er Civil War, 392–393; Plains Indians, 393
Nativism , 602 Natzwiller-Struthof death camp, 658 – 659 Navajo Indians, 393 , 395 Naval Advisory Board, 496 Navy: rebuilding, 496–497; in Spanish-American War of 1898,
502 – 503
Nazi Party, 641 Negro Business League, 557 Negro Silent Protest Parade, 557 Negro World weekly, 597 Nelson, Donald, 649 Neoconservatism , 738 Neutrality Acts , 642 Neutrality policy, 569 New Deal , 614 , 621 – 627 , 628 – 630 New England Conservatory, 449 New Freedom , 515 , 553 – 554 New Frontier , 708 New Haven Railroad, 547 New immigrants , 444 New Jersey: Standard Oil’s move to, 423 New Mexico: land grants and, 403 New Nationalism, 515, 553 New Orleans, 460 , 776 New York Central Railroad, 419 New York City, 440 , 442 , 531 , 592 New York County Courthouse, 446 – 447 New York Journal newspaper, 498 New York Symphony, 532 New York World newspaper, 498 Newlands Act of 1902, 520 Newspapers: advertising, 428; muckrakers, 514 – 515 Newton, Huey, 729 Nez Percé Indians, 396 Niagara Movement , 521 – 522 Nicaragua, 566 , 567 , 751 , 755 Nichols, Jess D., 590 Nichols, Roger L., 397 Nicolau, Valeriano Weyler y, 498 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 692 Nimitz, Chester, 648 , 657 Nine Power Treaty, 641 Nineteenth Amendment, 542, 593, A- 11 Nisei, 652 – 653 Nitze, Paul, 672 Nixon, Richard M., 509, 743, 749; vs. Kennedy, 706–708;
presidency’s accomplishments, 738–741; return of, 731–733; Watergate scandal, 741 – 742
Nobel Peace Prize, 2007, 787 “No Child Left Behind,” 785 Nordhausen death camp, 659 Norris, J. Frank, 603 North, Douglass C., 400 North, Oliver, 759 , 764 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 779 – 780 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) , 670 , 783 North of Boston (Frost), 533 Northern Pacifi c Railroad, 400 , 421 , 476 Northern Securities Company, 424 , 547 Northwestern University Settlement, 458 NSC-68 , 672 , 674
INDEX I-15
Nuclear families, 691 – 692 , 745 Nuclear power, 744 – 745 Nunn, Sam, 748 Nye, Gerald, 642
O Obama, Barack: challenges new and old, 792–794; and Great
Recession, 791 – 792 Obama, Michelle, 792 Ocala Demands , 474 Ocala platform 1890 (fi g.), 475 O’Connor, Sandra Day, 745 , 754 , 792 Octopus, Th e (Norris), 480 Oden, Th omas G., 603 O’Donnell, Kenneth, 713 Offi ce of Economic Opportunity (OEO), 719 Ohrdruf death camp, 659 Oil: growth of industry, 423–424; war and, 742 – 743 O’Keeff e, Georgia, 533 Olds, Ransom E., 516 Oliver, James, 409 Olney, Richard, 494 Olson, Floyd, 624 On the Road (Kerouac), 693 O’Neill, Bucky, 490 O’Neill, Eugene, 595 On-line appendix, A- 1 Open Door Policy , 507 , 510 , 566 , 641 Operation Ajax, 683 Operation Desert Storm , 773 , 774 Orcutt, Susan, 466 Organization Man, Th e (White), 693 Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) , 742 Organized labor, rise of, 627 – 628 Origin of Species, Th e (Darwin), 492 Orlando, Vittorio, 583 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 717 , 718 Other America, Th e (Harrington), 718 – 719 Otis, Elisha, 414 Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis
(Strong), 493 Overland Trail , 401 Ovington, Mary, 522
P Pacheco, Romualdo, 403 Pacifi c, World War II in the (fi g.), 650 Pacifi c Northwest: Native American groups in, 393 Pacifi sm, 642
Pago Pago, 496 Paiute Indians, 391 Pakistan, 782 Palestine, 682 – 683 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 758 Palmer, A. Mitchell, 599 , 600 Panama, 721 – 722 Panama Canal, 565 Pan-American Conference, 640 Panic of 1893, 421 , 476 , 478 Parcel post, 519 Parker, Quanah (Comanche), 393 Parks, Rosa, 701 – 702 Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, Th e (Shahn), 601 Pasteur, Louis, 424 , 448 Patent medicines, 549 Patents issued, by decade 1850–1899 (fi g.), 424 Patriot Act, 788 Patten, Gilbert, 532 Patterson, Ben, 473 Patton, George, 654 , 659 Paul, Alice, 542 , 593 Pavlov, Ivan, 574 Pawnee Indians, 393 , 397 Payne–Aldrich Act, 551 Peace Corps, 709 Peale, Norman Vincent, 692 Pearl Harbor , 646, 647 , 648 Pendleton Act , 470 Pennington, Ann, 532 Pennsylvania Railroad, 419 , 422 Pensions, 470 Pentagon, 785 , 788 Peonage, 521 People’s (or Populist) Party , 474 – 475 Perkins, Frances, 528 , 529 , 626 , 629 , 633 , 675 Perot, H. Ross, 779 Perrett, Geoff rey, 588 Pershing, John J., 568 , 572 Persian Gulf, 770 , 773 Pettengill, Lillian, 459 Philadelphia, 440 , 531 Philadelphia Negro, Th e (Du Bois), 453 Philippine-American War , 505, 506 Philippines, 507 Phillippines, 501 , 502 , 504 , 511 , 649 Phoenix, 774 Phonographs, 424 , 531 Physiographic map of U.S. (fi g.), 392 Pike, Zebulon, 391 Pikes Peak, 404 Pinchback, P. B. S., 501 Pinchot, Giff ord, 520 , 536 , 537 , 546 , 549 , 551 Pit, Th e (Norris), 480 Pittsburgh, 422 , 431 , 441
I-16 INDEX
Pittsburgh Pirates, 449 Placer mining , 404 Plain Home Talk of Love, Marriage, and Parentage (Foote), 450 Plains Apache Indians, 390 Plains Indians, life of, 393 Plains, sodbusters on the, 407 – 408 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey , 762 Platt Amendment, Cuban Constitution, 507 Playboy magazine, 756 – 757 Plessy, Homer A., 460 , 461 Plessy v. Ferguson , 451 , 460 – 463 Plunkitt, George Washington, 447 , 457 Pluristic society, 459 Podhoretz, Norman, 738 Poe, Edgar Allan, 575 Poindexter, John, 759 Poland, 643 , 655 Polaris missiles, 695 , 709 Policy Planning Staff , 668 Polish National Alliance (PNA), 445 Polish Women’s Alliance, 445 Politics: in the 1890s, 468–469; civil rights as issue, 699 – 700 Polk, Leonidas L., 473 , 474 Poll taxes, 468 Pollack v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co. , 478 Pollock, Jackson, 696 Poor People’s March, 729 Population: Baby Boom, 688; decline in fertility rates, 450; rise in
cities, 438; shift s 1990–2010, 774–778; urban and rural 1870–1900 (fi g.), 447
Populism, 474 – 476 , 478 , 484 , 485 , 538 Potsdam Conference , 664 , 665 – 666 , 666 Pound, Ezra, 533 , 595 Poverty: Johnson’s war on, 719; and progress, 455 – 457 Powderly, Terence V., 431 Powell, Colin, 773 Power Elite (Mills), 693 Power stations, 425 Powers, Gary Francis, 684 Prager, Robert, 578 Pragmatism, 542 Pragmatism (James), 543 Pratt, Richard H., 397 Prayer in school, 717 Presidential elections (table), A-13–A- 17 Presidents (chronological table), A-18–A- 19 President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), 695 Price, Th e (Miller), 428 Princeton University, 449 Principles of Scientifi c Management, Th e (Taylor), 518 Printer’s Ink , 427 Prioleau, George W., 501 – 502 Professions, rise of, 539 Progress and Poverty (George), 455 , 545 Progressive (or “Bull Moose”) Party , 552, 537
Progressivism , 515 Progressivism, characteristics of, 537 – 543 Prohibition , 540, 600 Project RACE, 777 Propaganda, 577 – 578 Prosperity: aft er World War II, 690 – 691 Proposition 13, California, 738 Prostitution, 540 Protestantism: evangelical, 538; WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon
Protestants), 448 Prudential Building, 440 Psychology, measuring the mind, 574 – 575 Public Works Administration (PWA), 623 , 625 Publishing: and new science of marketing, 427; rotary
press, 428 Pueblo Indians, 392 – 393 Puerto Ricans, 775 Puerto Rico, 498 , 501 , 504 , 506 Pulitzer, Joseph, 498 Pullen, Frank W., 502 Pullman, George, 419 Pullman strike , 476 , 484 , 608 Pure Food and Drug Act, 549 Putin, Vladimir V., 782
Q Quartz mining, 404 Quayle, Dan, 769
R Race and racism: See also Slavery; 454–455; assimilation or
diversity, 777–778; “Black Power,” 728–729; Booker T. Washington, higher education, 452–454; Buff alo soldiers in the West, 398–399; immigration quotas, 443; Marcus Garvey, 596–597; Plessy v. Ferguson , 460–463; in Spanish-American War of 1898, 501–502
Radford, Arthur, 680 Radio, 590 , 621 Railroad Administration, 579 Railroads, 531; 1870 and 1890 (fi g.), 420; empire on rails,
416–421; and farm problems, 472; federal land grants to (fi g.), 418; land grants to, 402; regulation of, 469, 548; trunk lines, 419
Rainey, Gertrude “Ma,” 532 Rain-in-the-Face (Sioux), 396 Randolph, A. Philip, 651 , 652 Raulston, Judge, 609 – 610 , 611 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 457 Rayburn, Sam, 697 , 713
INDEX I-17
Reagan, Nancy, 737 Reagan, Ronald, 745; America’s shift to the right, 736–738; and
Christian right, 756–757; Reagan revolution, 752–755; and the world, 755 , 758 , 764
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (Wiggins), 532 Reconstruction, 454 Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), 619 , 623 Red Badge of Courage (Crane), 480 Red Cloud (Oglala Teton Sioux), 395 Red River War of 1874–1875, 396 , 399 Red Scare , 578, 599 , 600 Reed, Th omas B., 470 , 472 , 481 , 504 Reed, Walter, 507 Rehnquist, William, 762 , 781 , 792 Religion: in 1950s, 692; and crisis of social welfare, 458–459;
school prayer, 717 Relocation camps, 652 – 653 Remarque, Erich Maria, 642 Remington, Frederick, 510 Republic Steel, 423 Republican Party, 786: America’s shift to the right, 736–738;
Eisenhower’s modern, 697–698; and George H.W. Bush, 770; and gold, 481; GOP (“Grand Old Party”), 603; party loyalty to, 468; splits, 536–537; Th eodore Roosevelt, 546 – 548
Resolution Trust Corporation, 770 Reuther, Walter, 628 Revenue Act of 1916, 555 Reynolds, Malvina, 690 Rhee, Syngman, 674 Ribicoff , Abraham, 713 Rice, Elmer, 595 Rice, Joseph, 451 Riesman, David, 693 River Rouge auto plant, 588 Roaring Twenties, 593 – 594 Robber barons, 416 Roberts, John, 792 Roberts, Kenneth, 602 Roberts, Oral, 757 Robertson, Pat, 757 Robins, Margaret Dreier, 525 Rockefeller, John D., 423 – 424 , 428 , 451 , 509 , 517 , 532 , 547 ,
557 , 599 Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 519 Roe, Jane, 760 , 761 Roe v. Wade , 746 , 747 , 760 – 763 , 792 Roebuck, Alvah C., 428 Rommel, Erwin, 647 Romney, Mitt, 787 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 629 , 632 – 633 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 528, 555, 566, 614, 632, 640, 642, 643,
644, 645, 647, 648, 649, 653–654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 667, 668, 675, 696, 736; emergence of, 620–621; the Hundred Days, 621–622; and reform, 624–627; and relief, 623–624; Supreme Court fi ght, 630 – 631
Roosevelt, Th eodore, 448, 484, 490–491, 492, 493, 502, 510–511, 514, 515, 531, 536–537, 539, 546–548, 550, 552, 558, 563, 564–565, 570, 605; Panama Canal, 565; Progressivism at its height, 548 – 550
Roosevelt Corollary , 566 , 640 Root, Elihu, 546 , 564 – 565 , 583 Root, John, 440 Root–Takahira Agreement, 566 Rose, Reginald, 692 Rosenbergs, Ethel and Julius, 677 Rosenfeld, Morris, 449 “Rosie the Riveter,” 651 Ross, Edward, 546 Rostow, Walt W., 709 , 710 Rotary press, 428 Rothko, Mark, 696 Rough Riders, 490 – 491 , 502 , 510 Rubber, 649 Rubin, Jerry, 728 Rural Electrifi cation Administration (REA), 627 Rusk, Dean, 673 , 708 , 711 , 721 Russell, Richard, 718 Russia, 647 , 666 , 667 Russian Republic, 772 Rutgers University, 449 Ruth, Babe, 594
S Sacco, Nicola, 600 , 601 Sadat, Anwar, 751 Salisbury, Lord, 494 SALT II treaty, 752 SALT talks, 739 Samoan Islands, 496 Sampson, William T., 502 San Juan Hill, 398 – 399 , 502 Sandburg, Carl, 500 , 501 , 533 Sandinista revolution, Nicaragua, 751 Sanger, Margaret, 521 Sankey, Ira B., 448 Santa Fe Railroad, 476 Santorum, Rick, 787 Sarajevo, 782 – 783 Satellites, 694 – 695 Saudi Arabia, 770 , 772 – 774 Saving and loan cleanup, 770 Schiller Building, 440 Schlafl y, Phyllis, 746 Schlesinger, Arthur, 712 Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), 575 School and Society (Dewey), 543 School prayer, 717
I-18 INDEX
Schools, desegregating, 700 – 701 Schurz, Carl, 505 Schwab, Charles M., 422 Schwarzkopf, Norman, 770 , 773 Scopes, John Th omas, 608 – 611 Scopes Trial , 603 , 608 – 611 Scott, Th omas A., 419 , 422 Scotts Run, West Virginia, 632 Scowcraft , Brente, 768 , 771 Sea Wolf, Th e (London), 481 Sears, Richard W., 428 Sears, Roebuck and Company, 428 Seas, freedom of the, 569 – 570 Seattle, 617 Second Child Labor Act, 542 Second Great Migration, 722 – 723 Sedition Act , 578 Selassie, Haile, 641 Selective Service Act , 576 Seminole Indians, 410 Separate Car Law, 460 September 11 attacks, 785 , 788 Serbia, 782 – 783 Serling, Rod, 692 Settlement houses , 457 Seventeenth Amendment, 552, A- 11 Seward, William Henry, 493 – 494 , 508 , 511 “Seward’s Folly” (Alaska), 494 Sewell, Anna, 480 Sex in Education (Clarke), 452 Sexuality: in 1920s, 593, 594–595; in 1960s, 728; Gay liberation
movement, 746–748; Roe v. Wade , 760–763; women’s liberation, 730 – 731
Shahn, Ben, 601 Shame of the Cities, Th e (Steff ens), 538 Shapiro, Annie, 526 – 527 Share the Wealth clubs, 624 Shasta Indians, 393 Shaw, Anna Howard, 542 Sheik with Sheba (Held), 594 Shepard, Matthew, 748 Sheppard–Towner Act of 1921, 593 Sheppard–Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection
Act, 521 Sherman, James S., 551 Sherman Anti-Trust Act , 471 , 547 , 552 Sherman Silver Purchase Act , 471 – 472 , 478 Shopping, 426 – 427 , 691 Shoshone Indians, 391 , 395 Shriver, Sargent, 719 Shultz, George, 739 Siegfeld, Florenz, 532 Sierra Nevada, 404 Silver, 471 , 481 – 482 , 484 Simmons, William J., 600 – 601
Simon, Th eodore, 574 Simpson, Jeremiah, 474 Sims, William S., 576 Sinclair, Upton, 515 , 548 , 549 , 624 Sino-Soviet split, 709 Sioux Indians, 393 , 395 , 396 , 399 , 400 Sioux War of 1865–1867, 395 Sirhan, Sirhan, 732 Sirica, Judge, 741 Sister Carrie (Dreiser), 481 “Sit-ins,” 703 Sitting Bull (Oglala Teton Sioux), 396 Six Days’ War of 1967, 742 Sixteenth Amendment, 552, 553, A- 11 Skliris, Leonidas G., 523 Skyscrapers, 440 – 441 , 592 Slaughterhouse Cases , 460 Sloan, John, 533 Smeal, Eleanor, 746 Smith, Bessie, 532 Smith, Gerald L. K., 630 Smith, Margaret Chase, 680 Smith, Alfred E., 606 , 607 Social Darwinism , 455 , 456 Social Democratic Party, 543 Social Gospel , 457 Social Security, 791 , 792 Social Security Act , 624 , 626 , 627 , 631 Social welfare, crisis in, 458 – 459 Socialist Labor Party, 543 Social-justice movement, 539 – 540 Society for the Suppression of Vice, 448 Sodbusters, 407 – 408 Solar power, 744 Solomon Islands, 649 Somalia, 782 Somoza, Anastasio, 751 Son of the Middle Border (Garland), 472 Sorenson, Th eodore, 713 Souls of Black Folk, Th e (Du Bois), 522 South Carolina and Jim Crow laws, 454 – 455 South End House, 457 Southeast Asia and Vietnam War (fi g.), 724 Southern Alliance, 473 Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , 702 Southern Railway, 421 Soviet Union, 648 , 661 , 666 , 669 , 694 – 695 , 751 – 752 , 769 ,
772 , 782 Spanish-American War of 1898, 398 – 399 , 486 , 490 – 491 , 496 ,
497 – 503 Spanish-speaking Southwest, 403 Spencer, Herbert, 455 Spiegel, Adolf K. G. E. von, 570 Split-Level Trap, Th e (Gordon, Gordon & Gunther), 693 Spock, Benjamin, 692
INDEX I-19
Spoon River Anthology (Masters), 533 Sports, spectator, 594 Springfi eld rifl es, 500 Sputnik satellite, 683 , 694 – 695 , 703 St. Louis, 417 , 580 Stalin, Joseph, 655 , 657 , 664 – 666 , 667 , 670 , 673 , 674 ,
679 , 683 Stalingrad, battle of, 648 Standard Oil, 423 , 424 , 451 , 509 , 514 , 515 , 517 , 518 , 527 , 547 , 548 ,
552 , 616 Standish, Burt, 532 Stanford, Jane, 452 Stanford, Leland, 403 , 451 Stanford University, 451 , 452 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 542 “Star wars,” 755 Starr, Kenneth, 780 – 781 START I, II, 772 Statue of Liberty, 442 Stead, William T., 459 Steamships, 416 Steel, 628, 714; Bessemer, 416; growth of industry, 421 – 423 Steff ens, Lincoln, 514 , 515 , 538 , 545 Stein, William, 574 Stephens, Uriah S., 431 Stevens, John L., 495 Stevenson, Adlai, 692 , 698 Stewart, A. Th omas, 608 , 609 Stimpson, Henry L., 641 , 657 , 661 Stock Exchange crash, 615 – 616 Stonewall Inn, 746 – 747 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 455 , 549 Strategic Arms Initiative (SDI) , 755 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) , 739 , 752 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) , 755 Strategy of Peace, Th e , 708 Stratemeyer, Edward L., 532 Streetcars, 440 Strikes, labor, 431 , 524 – 525 , 527 , 547 , 675 , 754 Strong, Josiah, 493 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) ,
703 , 714 Student revolt of 1960s, 726 – 729 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) , 727 Submarines, 570 , 573 Suburbs, life in, 691 – 692 Suez Canal, 420 , 647 Suez war, 683 Suff rage, women’s, 450 , 468 , 540 – 542 , 555 Sugar, 495 Sugimoto, Henry, 653 Sullivan, John L., 449 Sullivan, Louis H., 440 Sumner, William Graham, 455 Sunbelt , 774
Sununu, John, 769 “Superfund,” 745 Supply-side economics , 753 Supreme Court: AAA case, 623; Bailey v. Drexel Furniture
Company , 542; Bellotti v. Braid , 762; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 700; Buchanan v. Worley , 522; and Bush’s election, 784; De Lima v. Bidwell, Dooley v. U.S., Downes v. Bidwell , 506; decisions aff ecting black civil rights 1875–1900, 455; Edwards v. Aguillard , 611; Epperson v. Arkansas , 611; Griswold v. Connecticut , 761; Guinn v. United States , 522; Hammer v. Dagenhart , 542; Minor v. Happersett , 468; Muller v. Oregon , 543; Munn v. Illinois , 469; Northern Securities Company case, 547; NRA case, 622; Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey , 762; Plessy v. Ferguson , 460–463; Pollack v. Farmer’s Loan and Trust Co. , 478; In re Debs , 477; reforms under Kennedy, 717; Roe v. Wade , 760–763; Roosevelt’s “court-packing” scheme, 630–631; United States v. E. C. Knight , 471; Washbash case, 469
Sussex (ship), 570 Swift , Gustavus F., 424 , 428 Swift and Company, 518 Sylvis, William H., 431 Symphony orchestras, 449 Syria, 742 Szep, Paul Michael, 742
T Taft , Helen H., 550 Taft , Robert A., 644 , 677 Taft , William Howard, 506, 524, 536, 537, 546, 547, 566, 583, 604;
ordeal of, 550 – 553 Taft –Hartley Act , 675 , 696 Taft –Katsura Agreement, 566 Taliban, 785 , 788 Tammany Hall, 446 , 606 Tanguay, Eva, 532 Tarbell, Ida, 450 , 514 , 577 Tariff Commission Act, 555 Tariff s: Dingley Tariff , 485; McKinley Tariff Act, 470; Underwood
Tariff Act, 553; Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act, 498 Taxation: Bush cuts to, 784–785; under Harding, 605; income
taxes, 552; Reagan’s cutting of, 753 – 754 Taylor, A. J. P., 642 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 518 , 527 Taylor, Maxwell, 710 Teacher training, 451 Teapot Dome Scandal , 603 , 604 Technology, and second industrial revolution, 589 – 590 Telegraph, 416 , 424 Telephone, 424 Television, 692 , 706 – 708 Teller, Edward, 694
I-20 INDEX
Teller Amendment , 499 Tenant faming, 519 Tenement dwellers, 440 Tenements, 441 Tennessee, 608 – 611 , 717 Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 547 , 552 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) , 621 , 622 , 624 , 631 Terman, Lewis M., 574 Territories: government, 402–403; Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, Puerto
Rico, 506 Tesla, Nikola, 425 Test ban treaty, 683 , 712 Tet off ensive , 731 Teton Sioux Indians, 396 Texas longhorns, 405 Textiles, 592; Amoskeag Company, 530 Th ain, Howard, 591 Th atcher, Margaret, 770 Th eory of the Leisure Class, Th e (Veblen), 456 Th ernstrom, Stephan, 431 Th irteenth Amendment, 461 Th is Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), 595 Th o, Le Duc, 740 Th omas, Norman, 644 Th omson, J. Edgar, 419 , 422 Th oreau, Henry David, 702 Th ree Mile Island, 745 Th ree Soldiers (Dos Passos), 585 Tiananmen Square, China, 771 Tillman, Ben “Pitchfork,” 478 Timber and Stone Act of 1878, 402 Timber Culture Act of 1873, 402 To Secure Th ese Rights report, 699 Tobacco, 517; cigarettes to China, 509 Todd, Helen, 451 Tojo, Hideki, 647 Tolle, John, 761 Tourgée, Albion W., 460 , 461 , 462 Townsend, Francis, 624 , 627 Townsend Plan, 624 Toynbee Hall, 457 Tracy, Benjamin F., 496 , 497 Trade: Great Depression, 614–624; and industrial
development, 416 Trading-with-the-Enemy Act of 1917, 578 Trains, and Plessy v. Ferguson , 460 – 463 Transamerica Corporation, 744 Transatlantic cables, 424 Trash along wagon train routes, 401 Traveler from Altruria (Howells), 480 Treaty of Paris , 501, 502 Treaty of Versailles, 582 – 584 , 641
Triangle Shirtwaist Company, 526 , 528 – 529 Truman, Harry, 654, 656, 661, 664–666, 667, 670, 671, 674,
675–677, 680, 681, 696, 699–700, 792; foreign policy under, 682 – 683
Truman Doctrine , 669 – 670 Trunk lines , 419 Trusts , 423 , 517 – 518 , 547 Tulane, 451 Tunney, Gene, 594 Turkey, 669 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 410 Turner’s thesis , 411 Tuskegee, 452 – 453 , 453 Twain, Mark, 480 , 504 Tweed, William, 446 , 447 , 457 Tweed Ring, 446 Twenty-One Demands, 566 Tyco International, 785 Tydings, Millard, 677 Typographical Union, 432
U U-2 spy episode, 684 , 711 U-boats, 563 – 564 , 570 , 571 , 572 , 645 , 649 Udall, Stuart, 713 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe), 455 Underwood Tariff Act , 553 Undocumented aliens , 776 Unemployment 1929–1942 (fi g.), 616 Unilateralism , 789 Union Pacifi c Railroad, 420 , 421 , 476 Union Party, 630 Unions, 526 – 527 , 554 , 627 , 675 United Auto Workers (UAW), 628 , 744 United Mine Workers, 477 , 547 , 555 , 627 United Nations, 668 , 673 , 773 United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA),
596 – 597 United States physiographic map (fi g.), 392 United States Steel Corporation, 423 United States v. E. C. Knight , 471 University of Alabama, 716 University of California, Berkeley, 726 – 727 University of Chicago, 543 University of Michigan, 727 – 728 University of Mississippi, 714 , 716 Uprising of the 20 , 000 , 528 Urban League, 598 , 729 Urban shantytowns, 617
INDEX I-21
Urbanization: growth of cities, 439 – 441 U.S. Cavalry, 398 U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 539 U.S. Constitution (text of), A-5–A-9; amendments (text of),
A-9–A- 13 U.S. Steel Company, 509 , 517 , 547 , 552 , 628 Ute Indians, 391 , 393 , 395
V Valentino, Rudolph, 594 Van Devanter, Willis, 630 , 631 Van Doren, Charles, 692 Van Vorst, Bessie, 435 Van Vorst, Marie and Bessie, 459 Vance, Cyrus, 752 Vandenberg, Arthur M., 669 Vanderbilt, Alfred G., 562 , 563 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 419 Vanderbilt University, 451 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo, 600 , 601 Vaudeville, 532 Vaughn, Harry, 675 Veblen, Th orstein, 456 Veiller, Lawrence, 539 Venezuela, 494 Verdun, 576 Veterans of Future Wars, 642 Vice crusaders, 539 – 540 Vice Presidents (chronological table), A-18–A- 19 Victor Talking Machine Company, 531 Victory gardens, 579 Vietnam, 709 – 710 Vietnam War, 721 – 726 , 724 – 725 , 731 , 739 – 741 , 743 Vietnamese Americans, 777 Vigilantism, 578 Villa, Francisco “Pancho,” 568 , 572 Villa Lewaro, 557 Villard, Oswald Garrison, 522 , 555 Virgin Islands, 565 Virginia City, 404 Vittum, Harriet, 438 , 449 , 458 Volcker, Paul, 744 Volstead Act, 600 Voluntarism, 619 – 620 Von Braun, Wernher, 695 Voting: See also Suff rage; voter participation in presidential
1876–1920, 544 Voting Rights Act of 1957, 718 Voting Rights Act of 1965 , 720 , 721
W W. Duke & Sons Company, 508 Wade, Henry, 760 Wages, 428 – 430 , 627 Wagner Act , 627 , 631 , 675 Wagon trains, 394 , 401 Wainwright Building, St. Louis, 440 Wald, Lillian, 457 , 509 , 569 Walesa, Lech, 771 Walker, Alice, 557 Walker, Madam C. J., 556 – 557 Wallace, George C., 716 , 732 Wallace, Henry A., 622 , 654 , 676 Wallace, Lew, 480 Walling, William E., 522 Wanamaker, John, 427 , 428 War Industries Board (WIB) , 579 War Labor Board (WLB), 580 War on poverty , 719 War on terror , 785, 788 , 789 – 791 War Production Board (WPB), 649 War Shipping Board, 579 Ward, Aaron Montgomery, 428 Ware, James E., 441 Warehouse Act, Th e, 555 Warren, Earl, 700 , 717 Warren Commission, 718 Wars and warfare: See also specifi c war ; Balkan Wars, 782–783;
Gulf War 1990–1991, 772–774; Hitler moves on Europe, 642–643; Kellogg–Briand Pact, 638; Korean War, 673–674; with Native Americans on Plains, 395–396; and oil, 742–743; Philippine-American War, 505–506; Red River War of 1874–1875, 396; September 11 attacks, 785, 788; Sioux War of 1865–1867, 395; Spanish-American War of 1898, 490–491, 497–503; war on terror, 785, 788–791
Washbash case, 469 Washington, Booker T., 452 , 453 , 504 , 522 , 546 , 556 Washington, George, 492 Washington Disarmament Conference, 641 WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), 448 Waste Land, Th e (Eliot), 595 Watergate scandal , 741 – 742 Watkins, James, 748 Watson, Th omas E., 473 , 484 Watt, James, 754 Watts riots, 728 Weaver, James B., 475 , 478 Weaver, Robert, 714 Webb, Walter Prescott, 392 Weber, Max, 533 Webster’s Spellers , 451
I-22 INDEX
Weddington, Sarah, 760 , 762 Weinberger, Caspar, 755 Welch, Joseph, 679 – 680 Welfare, 627 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 557 West: Buff alo soldiers in, 398–399; cattle bonanza in, 405–407;
aft er the Civil War, 390–391; farming bonanza on Plains, 407–410; meaning of the, 410–411; mining bonanza, 403–405; movement to the, 400–403; Spanish-speaking Southwest, 403
Westinghouse Electric Company, 425 Westinghouse railroad air brake, 414 Westmoreland, William, 726 Wharton, Edith, 595 What Price Glory? (Anderson), 585 Wheeler, Burton, 630 White, Byron, 762 White, William Allen, 644 White Collar (Mills), 693 White Shadows (McKay), 598 Whitman, Walt, 417 , 480 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 414 , 416 Whyte, William, 693 Wiggins, Kate Douglas, 532 Wild West Show, 400 Wiley, Harvey W., 549 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 568 Willard, Frances E., 448 Williams v. Mississippi , 468 Willkie, Wendell, 644 Wilson, Charles E., 697 Wilson, Edith Bolling, 584 Wilson, Luzena, 401 Wilson, William B., 555 Wilson, Woodrow, 423, 443, 508, 515, 519, 524, 537, 542, 545, 550,
557, 558, 562, 565, 566, 578, 585, 605, 640, 642; foreign policy under, 566–568; leading to World War I, 568–572; New Freedom of, 553–554; Treaty of Versailles, 582 – 584
Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act, 478 , 498 Winfrey, Ophrah, 557 Winnebago Indians, 392 “Wisconsin Idea,” 546 Woman Who Toils, Th e (Van Vorsts), 459 Women: in 1920s, 593; and changes in family life, 449–450;
employment in World War I, 580; gains and setbacks for, 745–746; growing assertiveness among, 450; high education, 452; in mining camps, 405; Roe v. Wade , 760–763; and shopping, 427; suff rage, 540–542; in unions, 432; working 1870–1890, 429; working 1901–1920, 520–521; working early 1930s, 629; working in the 1890s, 479–480; on the World War II home front, 649
Women and Economics (Gilman), 450
Women Wage-Earners (Campbell), 459 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) , 448 , 540 Women’s liberation, 730 – 731 Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) , 521, 523 , 525 – 526 ,
540 , 633 Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum), 482 – 483 Wood, Leonard, 507 , 600 Woods, Robert A., 457 Woodstock concert, 728 Woolworth, F. W., 428 Woolworth’s stores, 591 Work: in the 1890s, 479–480; child labor, 451, 521, 542; confl ict in
workplace, 524–527; culture of, 430–435; eight-hour day, 555; federal relief programs, 624–627; rise of the professions, 539; Roosevelt and relief, 623–624; Triangle Fire, 528–529; wage earners, 428–430; women, 520–521, 630; in World War I, 579 – 581
Workers, Th e (Wyckoff ), 459 Worker’s compensation laws, 545 Works Progress Administration (WPA) , 623 World Series, 449 World Trade Center (WTC), 785 World Trade Organization (WTO), 509 World War I: alliances, battlefronts, 572–573; bureaucracy of,
578–579; labor in, 579–582; Lusitania (ship), 562–563; moving toward, 568–572; testing recruits, 574–575; trench warfare, 576–577; Western front, U.S. participation 1918 (fi g.), 576
World War II: ending of, 654–661; in Europe, N. Africa (fi g.), 656; home front, 649–654; in the Pacifi c (fi g.), 650; road to, 644–647; turning tide against allies, 647 – 649
WorldCom, 785 Worthington, Howard, 614 Wounded Knee Massacre , 396 , 397 , 399 Wovoka (Paiute), 396 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 440 Wright, Wilbur and Orville, 485 Wriston, Henry W., 703 Wyckoff , Walter, 459 Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, 406 – 407
Y Yale University, 532 Yale-in-China Medical College, 509 Yalta Conference , 655 Yellow fever, 507 Yellow journalism , 498 Yeltsin, Boris, 772 , 782 Yerkin, Daniel, 666
INDEX I-23
Yiddish (Jewish) Th eater, 446 Yippie movement, 728 Young Men’s Christian Association, 509 Yugoslavia, 782 – 783 Yurok Indians, 393 Yzaguirre, Raul, 777
Z Zangwill, Israel, 459 , 778 Zen Buddhism, 693 Zimmermann, Arthur, 572 Zoning laws, 531 “Zoot suit” riots, 652 Zuni Indians, 392
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- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Maps, Figures, and Tables
- Features
- About the Authors
- Supplements
- Chapter 16 THE AGONY OF RECONSTRUCTION
- Robert Smalls and Black Politicians During Reconstruction
- The President vs. Congress
- Wartime Reconstruction
- Andrew Johnson at the Helm
- Congress Takes the Initiative
- Congressional Reconstruction Plan Enacted
- The Impeachment Crisis
- Reconstructing Southern Society
- Reorganizing Land and Labor
- Black Codes: A New Name for Slavery?
- Republican Rule in the South
- Claiming Public and Private Rights
- Retreat from Reconstruction
- Rise of the Money Question
- Final Efforts of Reconstruction
- A Reign of Terror Against Blacks
- Spoilsmen vs. Reformers
- Reunion and the New South
- The Compromise of 1877
- “Redeeming” a New South
- The Rise of Jim Crow
- Conclusion: Henry McNeal Turner and the “Unfinished Revolution”
- FEATURE ESSAY: “Forty Acres and a Mule”
- Chapter 17 THE WEST: EXPLOITING AN EMPIRE
- Lean Bear’s Changing West
- Beyond the Frontier
- Crushing the Native Americans
- Life of the Plains Indians
- “As Long as Waters Run”: Searching for an Indian Policy
- Final Battles on the Plains
- The End of Tribal Life
- Settlement of the West
- Men and Women on the Overland Trail
- Land for the Taking
- Territorial Government
- The Spanish-Speaking Southwest
- The Bonanza West
- The Mining Bonanza
- Gold from the Roots Up: The Cattle Bonanza
- Sodbusters on the Plains: The Farming Bonanza
- New Farming Methods
- Discontent on the Farm
- The Final Fling
- Conclusion: The Meaning of the West
- FEATURE ESSAY: Blacks in Blue: The Buffalo Soldiers in the West
- Chapter 18 THE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY
- A Machine Culture
- Industrial Development
- An Empire on Rails
- “Emblem of Motion and Power”
- Building the Empire
- Linking the Nation via Trunk Lines
- Rails Across the Continent
- Problems of Growth
- An Industrial Empire
- Carnegie and Steel
- Rockefeller and Oil
- The Business of Invention
- The Sellers
- The Wage Earners
- Working Men, Working Women, Working Children
- Culture of Work
- Labor Unions
- Labor Unrest
- Conclusion: Industrialization’s Benefits and Costs
- FEATURE ESSAY: Shopping in a New Society
- Chapter 19 TOWARD AN URBAN SOCIETY, 1877–1900
- The Overcrowded
- The Lure of the City
- Skyscrapers and Suburbs
- Tenements and the Problems of Overcrowding
- Strangers in a New Land
- Immigrants and the City
- The House That Tweed Built
- Social and Cultural Change, 1877–1900
- Manners and Mores
- Leisure and Entertainment
- Changes in Family Life
- Changing Views: A Growing Assertiveness among Women
- Educating the Masses
- Higher Education
- The Spread of Jim Crow
- The Stirrings of Reform
- Progress and Poverty
- New Currents in Social Thought
- The Settlement Houses
- Crisis in Social Welfare
- Conclusion: The Pluralistic Society
- FEATURE ESSAY: Ellis Island: Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
- LAW AND SOCIETY: Plessy v. Ferguson: The Shaping of Jim Crow
- Chapter 20 POLITICAL REALIGNMENTS IN THE 1890s
- Hardship and Heartache
- Politics of Stalemate
- The Party Deadlock
- Experiments in the States
- Reestablishing Presidential Power
- Republicans in Power: The Billion-Dollar Congress
- Tariffs, Trusts, and Silver
- The 1890 Elections
- The Rise of the Populist Movement
- The Farm Problem
- The Fast-Growing Farmers’ Alliance
- The People’s Party
- The Crisis of the Depression
- The Panic of 1893
- Coxey’s Army and the Pullman Strike
- The Miners of the Midwest
- A Beleaguered President
- Breaking the Party Deadlock
- Changing Attitudes
- “Everybody Works But Father”
- Changing Themes in Literature
- The Presidential Election of 1896
- The Mystique of Silver
- The Republicans and Gold
- The Democrats and Silver
- Campaign and Election
- The McKinley Administration
- Conclusion: A Decade’s Dramatic Changes
- FEATURE ESSAY: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Chapter 21 TOWARD EMPIRE
- Roosevelt and the Rough Riders
- America Looks Outward
- Catching the Spirit of Empire
- Reasons for Expansion
- Foreign Policy Approaches, 1867–1900
- The Lure of Hawaii and Samoa
- The New Navy
- War with Spain
- A War for Principle
- “A Splendid Little War”
- “Smoked Yankees”
- The Course of the War
- Acquisition of Empire
- The Treaty of Paris Debate
- Guerrilla Warfare in the Philippines
- Governing the Empire
- The Open Door
- Conclusion: Outcome of the War with Spain
- FEATURE ESSAY: The 400 Million Customers of China
- Chapter 22 THE PROGRESSIVE ERA
- Muckrakers Call for Reform
- The Changing Face of Industrialism
- The Innovative Model T
- The Burgeoning Trusts
- Managing the Machines
- Society’s Masses
- Better Times on the Farm
- Women and Children at Work
- The Niagara Movement and the NAACP
- “I Hear the Whistle”: Immigrants in the Labor Force
- Conflict in the Workplace
- Organizing Labor
- Working with Workers
- Amoskeag
- A New Urban Culture
- Production and Consumption
- Living and Dying in an Urban Nation
- Popular Pastimes
- Experimentation in the Arts
- Conclusion: A Ferment of Discovery and Reform
- FEATURE ESSAY: The Triangle Fire
- Chapter 23 FROM ROOSEVELT TO WILSON IN THE AGE OF PROGRESSIVISM
- The Republicans Split
- The Spirit of Progressivism
- The Rise of the Professions
- The Social-Justice Movement
- The Purity Crusade
- Woman Suffrage, Women’s Rights
- A Ferment of Ideas: Challenging the Status Quo
- Reform in the Cities and States
- Interest Groups and the Decline of Popular Politics
- Reform in the Cities
- Action in the States
- The Republican Roosevelt
- Busting the Trusts
- “Square Deal” in the Coalfields
- Roosevelt Progressivism at its Height
- Regulating the Railroads
- Cleaning up Food and Drugs
- Conserving the Land
- The Ordeal of William Howard Taft
- Party Insurgency
- The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair
- Taft Alienates the Progressives
- Differing Philosophies in the Election of 1912
- Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom
- The New Freedom in Action
- Wilson Moves Toward the New Nationalism
- Conclusion: The Fruits of Progressivism
- FEATURE ESSAY: Madam C. J. Walker: African American Business Pioneer
- Chapter 24 THE NATION AT WAR
- The Sinking of the Lusitania
- A New World Power
- “I Took the Canal Zone”
- The Roosevelt Corollary
- Ventures in the Far East
- Taft and Dollar Diplomacy
- Foreign Policy Under Wilson
- Conducting Moral Diplomacy
- Troubles Across the Border
- Toward War
- The Neutrality Policy
- Freedom of the Seas
- The U-Boat Threat
- “He Kept Us Out of War”
- The Final Months of Peace
- Over There
- Mobilization
- War in the Trenches
- Over Here
- The Conquest of Convictions
- A Bureaucratic War
- Labor in the War
- The Treaty of Versailles
- A Peace at Paris
- Rejection in the Senate
- Conclusion: Postwar Disillusionment
- FEATURE ESSAY: Measuring the Mind
- Chapter 25 TRANSITION TO MODERN AMERICA
- Wheels for the Millions
- The Second Industrial Revolution
- The Automobile Industry
- Patterns of Economic Growth
- Economic Weaknesses
- City Life in the Jazz Age
- Women and the Family
- The Roaring Twenties
- The Flowering of the Arts
- The Rural Counterattack
- The Fear of Radicalism
- Prohibition
- The Ku Klux Klan
- Immigration Restriction
- The Fundamentalist Challenge
- Politics of the 1920s
- Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover
- Republican Policies
- The Divided Democrats
- The Election of 1928
- Conclusion: The Old and the New
- FEATURE ESSAY: Marcus Garvey: Racial Redemption and Black Nationalism
- LAW AND SOCIETY: The Scopes “Monkey” Trial: Contesting Cultural Differences
- Chapter 26 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT AND THE NEW DEAL
- The Struggle Against Despair
- The Great Depression
- The Great Crash
- Effect of the Depression
- Fighting the Depression
- Hoover and Voluntarism
- The Emergence of Roosevelt
- The Hundred Days
- Roosevelt and Recovery
- Roosevelt and Relief
- Roosevelt and Reform
- Challenges to FDR
- Social Security
- Labor Legislation
- Impact of the New Deal
- Rise of Organized Labor
- The New Deal Record on Help to Minorities
- Women at Work
- End of the New Deal
- The Election of 1936
- The Supreme Court Fight
- The New Deal in Decline
- Conclusion: The New Deal and American Life
- FEATURE ESSAY: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Quest for Social Justice
- Chapter 27 AMERICA AND THE WORLD, 1921–1945
- A Pact Without Power
- Retreat, Reversal, and Rivalry
- Retreat in Europe
- Cooperation in Latin America
- Rivalry in Asia
- Isolationism
- The Lure of Pacifism and Neutrality
- War in Europe
- The Road to War
- From Neutrality to Undeclared War
- Showdown in the Pacific
- Turning the Tide Against the Axis
- Wartime Partnerships
- Halting the German Blitz
- Checking Japan in the Pacific
- The Home Front
- The Arsenal of Democracy
- A Nation on the Move
- Win-the-War Politics
- Victory
- War Aims and Wartime Diplomacy
- Triumph and Tragedy in the Pacific
- Conclusion: The Transforming Power of War
- FEATURE ESSAY: The Face of the Holocaust
- Chapter 28 THE ONSET OF THE COLD WAR
- The Potsdam Summit
- The Cold War Begins
- The Division of Europe
- Withholding Economic Aid
- The Atomic Dilemma
- Containment
- The Truman Doctrine
- The Marshall Plan
- The Western Military Alliance
- The Berlin Blockade
- The Cold War Expands
- The Military Dimension
- The Cold War in Asia
- The Korean War
- The Cold War at Home
- Truman’s Troubles
- Truman Vindicated
- The Loyalty Issue
- McCarthyism in Action
- The Republicans in Power
- Eisenhower Wages the Cold War
- Entanglement in Indochina
- Containing China
- Covert Actions
- Waging Peace
- Conclusion: The Continuing Cold War
- FEATURE ESSAY: America Enters the Middle East
- Chapter 29 AFFLUENCE AND ANXIETY
- Levittown: The Flight to the Suburbs
- The Postwar Boom
- Postwar Prosperity
- Life in the Suburbs
- The Good Life?
- Areas of Greatest Growth
- Critics of the Consumer Society
- Farewell to Reform
- Truman and the Fair Deal
- Eisenhower’s Modern Republicanism
- The Struggle over Civil Rights
- Civil Rights as a Political Issue
- Desegregating the Schools
- The Beginnings of Black Activism
- Conclusion: Restoring National Confidence
- FEATURE ESSAY: The Reaction to Sputnik
- Chapter 30 THE TURBULENT SIXTIES
- Kennedy versus Nixon: The First Televised Presidential Candidate Debate
- Kennedy Intensifies the Cold War
- Flexible Response
- Crisis over Berlin
- Containment in Southeast Asia
- Containing Castro: The Bay of Pigs Fiasco
- Containing Castro: The Cuban Missile Crisis
- The New Frontier at Home
- The Congressional Obstacle
- Economic Advance
- Moving Slowly on Civil Rights
- “I Have a Dream”
- The Supreme Court and Reform
- “Let Us Continue”
- Johnson in Action
- The Election of 1964
- The Triumph of Reform
- Johnson Escalates the Vietnam War
- The Vietnam Dilemma
- Escalation
- Stalemate
- Years of Turmoil
- The Student Revolt
- Protesting the Vietnam War
- The Cultural Revolution
- “Black Power”
- Ethnic Nationalism
- Women’s Liberation
- The Return of Richard Nixon
- Vietnam Undermines Lyndon Johnson
- The Democrats Divide
- The Republican Resurgence
- Conclusion: The End of an Era
- FEATURE ESSAY: Unintended Consequences: The Second Great Migration
- Chapter 31 THE RISE OF A NEW CONSERVATISM, 1969–1988
- Reagan and America’s Shift to the Right
- The Tempting of Richard Nixon
- Pragmatic Liberalism
- Détente
- Ending the Vietnam War
- The Watergate Scandal
- The Economy of Stagflation
- War and Oil
- The Great Inflation
- The Shifting American Economy
- A New Environmentalism
- Private Lives, Public Issues
- The Changing American Family
- Gains and Setbacks for Women
- The Gay Liberation Movement
- The AIDS Epidemic
- Politics and Diplomacy After Watergate
- The Ford Administration
- Carter and American Malaise
- Troubles Abroad
- The Collapse of Détente
- The Reagan Revolution
- The Election of 1980
- Cutting Taxes and Spending
- Unleashing the Private Sector
- Reagan and the World
- Challenging the “Evil Empire”
- Confrontation in Central America
- More Trouble in the Middle East
- Trading Arms for Hostages
- Reagan the Peacemaker
- Conclusion: Challenging the New Deal
- FEATURE ESSAY: The Christian Right
- LAW AND SOCIETY: Roe v. Wade: The Struggle over Women’s Reproductive Rights
- Chapter 32 INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, 1989–2012
- “This Will Not Stand”: Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War Era
- The First President Bush
- Republicans at Home
- Ending the Cold War
- The Gulf War
- The Changing Faces of America
- A People on the Move
- The Revival of Immigration
- Emerging Hispanics
- Advance and Retreat for African Americans
- Americans from Asia and the Middle East
- Assimilation or Diversity?
- The New Democrats
- The Election of 1992
- Clinton and Congress
- Scandal in the White House
- Clinton and the World
- Old Rivals in New Light
- To Intervene or Not
- The Balkan Wars
- Republicans Triumphant
- The Disputed Election of 2000
- George W. Bush at Home
- The War on Terror
- Widening the Battlefield
- Bush Reelected
- Barack Obama’s Triumph and Trials
- The Great Recession
- New Challenges and Old
- Doubting the Future
- Conclusion: The End of the American Future—or Not?
- FEATURE ESSAY: An Inconvenient Truth? The Controversy Surrounding Global Warming
- Glossary
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- Index
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