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give_me_liberty__an_american_history_brief_fourth_edition__vol_1__2_nodrm.txt

G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n E R I C F O N E R B W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y N E W Y O R K . L O N D O N For my mother, Liza Foner (1909–2005), an accomplished artist who lived through most of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first W. W. Norton & Company has been independent since its founding in 1923, when William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton first published lectures delivered at the People’s Institute, the adult education division of New York City’s Cooper Union. The firm soon expanded its program beyond the Institute, publishing books by celebrated academics from America and abroad. By mid-century, the two major pillars of Norton’s publishing program— trade books and college texts—were firmly established. In the 1950s, the Norton family transferred control of the company to its employees, and today—with a staff of 400 and a comparable number of trade, college, and professional titles published each year— W. W. Norton & Company stands as the largest and oldest publishing house owned wholly by its employees. Copyright © 2014, 2012 by Eric Foner All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Fourth Edition Editor: Steve Forman Associate Editor: Justin Cahill Editorial Assistant: Penelope Lin Managing Editor, College: Marian Johnson Managing Editor, College Digital Media: Kim Yi Project Editor: Diane Cipollone Copy Editor: Elizabeth Dubrulle Marketing Manager: Sarah England Media Editors: Steve Hoge, Tacy Quinn Assistant Editor, Media: Stefani Wallace Production Manager: Sean Mintus Art Director: Rubina Yeh Designer: Chin-Yee Lai Photo Editor: Stephanie Romeo Photo Research: Donna Ranieri Permissions Manager: Megan Jackson Permissions Clearing: Bethany Salminen Composition and Layout: Jouve Manufacturing: Transcontinental Since this page cannot accommodate all of the copyright notices, the Credits pages at the end of the book constitute an extension of the copyright page. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. This edition: ISBN 978-0-393-92034-5 (pbk.) W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110-0017 wwnorton.com W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 A B O U T T H E A U T H O R  E R I C F O N E R is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, he focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. Professor Foner’s publi- cations include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War; Tom Paine and Revolutionary America; Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy; Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877; The Story of American Free- dom; and Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. His history of Recon- struction won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the American Historical Association. In 2006 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching from Columbia University. His most recent book is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize.  C O N T E N T S  A b o u t t h e A u t h o r . . . v L i s t o f M a p s , T a b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s . . . x v i i i P r e f a c e . . . x x 1 5 . “ W H A T I S F R E E D O M ? ” : R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 . . . 4 4 1 T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M . . . 443 Families in Freedom ... 443  Church and School ... 444  Political Freedom ... 444  Land, Labor, and Freedom ... 445  Masters without Slaves ... 445  The Free Labor Vision ... 447  The Freedmen’s Bureau ... 447  The Failure of Land Reform ... 448  The White Farmer ... 449 Voices of Freedom: From Petition of Committee in Behalf of the Freedmen to Andrew Johnson (1865), and From A Sharecropping Contract (1866) ... 450 Aftermath of Slavery ... 453 T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N . . . 454 Andrew Johnson ... 454  The Failure of Presidential Reconstruction ... 454  The Black Codes ... 455  The Radical Republicans ... 456  The Origins of Civil Rights ... 456  The Fourteenth Amendment ... 457  The Reconstruction Act ... 458  Impeachment and the Election of Grant ... 458  The Fifteenth Amendment ... 460  The “Great Constitutional Revolution” ... 461  The Rights of Women ... 461 R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H . . . 462 “The Tocsin of Freedom” ... 462  The Black Officeholder ... 464  Carpetbaggers and Scalawags ... 464  Southern Republicans in Power ... 465  The Quest for Prosperity ... 465 T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N . . . 466 Reconstruction’s Opponents ... 466  “A Reign of Terror” ... 467  The Liberal Republicans ... 469  The North’s Retreat ... 470  The Triumph of the Redeemers ... 471  The Disputed Election and Bargain of 1877 ... 472  The End of Reconstruction ... 473 R E V I E W . . . 4 7 4 1 6 . A M E R I C A ’ S G I L D E D A G E , 1 8 7 0 – 1 8 9 0 . . . 4 7 5 T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N . . . 476 The Industrial Economy ... 477  Railroads and the National Market ... 478  The Spirit of Innovation ... 479  Competition and Consolidation ... 480  The Rise of Andrew Carnegie ... 481  The C o n t e n t s v i i Triumph of John D. Rockefeller ... 481  Workers’ Freedom in an Industrial Age ... 482 T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T . . . 483 A Diverse Region ... 484  Farming in the Trans-Mississippi West ... 485  The Cowboy and the Corporate West ... 486  Conflict on the Mormon Frontier ... 487  The Subjugation of the Plains Indians ... 488  “Let Me Be a Free Man” ... 489  Remaking Indian Life ... 489  The Dawes Act and Wounded Knee ... 490  Settler Societies and Global Wests ... 491 Voices of Freedom: From Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” (1889), and From Ira Steward, “A Second Declaration of Independence” (1879) ... 492 P O L I T I C S I N A G I L D E D A G E . . . 494 The Corruption of Politics ... 494  The Politics of Dead Center ... 495  Government and the Economy ... 496  Reform Legislation ... 497  Political Conflict in the States ... 497 F R E E D O M I N T H E G I L D E D A G E . . . 498 The Social Problem ... 498  Social Darwinism in America ... 499  Liberty of Contract and the Courts ... 500 L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C . . . 501 “The Overwhelming Labor Question” ... 501  The Knights of Labor and the “Conditions Essential to Liberty” ... 502  Middle-Class Reformers ... 502  Protestants and Moral Reform ... 504  A Social Gospel ... 504  The Haymarket Affair ... 505  Labor and Politics ... 506 R E V I E W . . . 5 0 7 1 7 . F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 0 0 . . . 5 0 8 T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E . . . 510 The Farmers’ Revolt ... 510  The People’s Party ... 511  The Populist Platform ... 512  The Populist Coalition ... 513  The Government and Labor ... 513  Populism and Labor ... 514  Bryan and Free Silver ... 515  The Campaign of 1896 ... 516 T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H . . . 517 The Redeemers in Power ... 517  The Failure of the New South Dream ... 517  Black Life in the South ... 518  The Kansas Exodus ... 518  The Decline of Black Politics ... 519  The Elimination of Black Voting ... 520  The Law of Segregation ... 521  The Rise of Lynching ... 522  Politics, Religion, and Memory ... 523 R E D R A W I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S . . . 524 The New Immigration and the New Nativism ... 524  Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Rights ... 525  The Emergence of v i i i Contents Booker T. Washington ... 526  The Rise of the AFL ... 527  The Women’s Era ... 528 B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R . . . 529 The New Imperialism ... 529  American Expansionism ... 529  The Lure of Empire ... 530  The “Splendid Little War” ... 531  Roosevelt at San Juan Hill ... 532  An American Empire ... 533  The Philippine War ... 535 Voices of Freedom: From Josiah Strong, Our Country (1885), and From “Aguinaldo’s Case against the United States” (1899) ... 536 Citizens or Subjects? ... 538  Drawing the Global Color Line ... 539  “Republic or Empire?” ... 539 R E V I E W . . . 5 4 2 1 8 . T H E P R O G R E S S I V E E R A , 1 9 0 0 – 1 9 1 6 . . . 5 4 3 A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y . . . 545 Farms and Cities ... 545  The Muckrakers ... 546  Immigration as a Global Process ... 546  The Immigrant Quest for Freedom ... 548  Consumer Freedom ... 548  The Working Woman ... 549  The Rise of Fordism ... 550  The Promise of Abundance ... 550 V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M . . . 551 Industrial Freedom ... 552  The Socialist Presence and Eugene Debs ... 552 Voices of Freedom: From Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (1898), and From John Mitchell, “A Workingman’s Conception of Industrial Liberty” (1910) ... 554 AFL and IWW ... 556  The New Immigrants on Strike ... 556  Labor and Civil Liberties ... 557  The New Feminism ... 558  The Birth- Control Movement ... 558  Native American Progressivism ... 559 T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M . . . 559 Effective Freedom ... 559  State and Local Reforms ... 560  Progressive Democracy ... 561  Jane Addams and Hull House ... 562  The Campaign for Woman Suffrage ... 563  Maternalist Reform ... 564 T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S . . . 566 Theodore Roosevelt ... 566  John Muir and the Spirituality of Nature ... 567  The Conservation Movement ... 567  Taft in Office ... 568  The Election of 1912 ... 569  New Freedom and New Nationalism ... 569  Wilson’s First Term ... 570  The Expanding Role of Government ... 571 R E V I E W . . . 5 7 3 C o n t e n t s i x 1 9 . S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D W O R L D W A R I , 1 9 1 6 – 1 9 2 0 . . . 5 7 4 A N E R A O F I N T E R V E N T I O N . . . 576 “I Took the Canal Zone” ... 576  The Roosevelt Corollary ... 578  Moral Imperialism ... 579  Wilson and Mexico ... 579 A M E R I C A A N D T H E G R E A T W A R . . . 580 Neutrality and Preparedness ... 581  The Road to War ... 582  The Fourteen Points ... 582 T H E W A R A T H O M E . . . 584 The Progressives’ War ... 584  The Wartime State ... 584  The Propaganda War ... 585  The Coming of Woman Suffrage ... 586  Prohibition ... 587  Liberty in Wartime ... 587 Voices of Freedom: From Eugene V. Debs, Speech to the Jury before Sentencing under the Espionage Act (1918), and From W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis (1919) ... 588 The Espionage Act ... 590  Coercive Patriotism ... 590 W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? . . . 591 The “Race Problem” ... 591  The Anti-German Crusade ... 592  Toward Immigration Restriction ... 593  Groups Apart: Mexicans and Asian-Americans ... 593  The Color Line ... 594  Roosevelt, Wilson, and Race ... 594  W. E. B. Du Bois and the Revival of Black Protest ... 595  Closing Ranks ... 596  The Great Migration ... 596  Racial Violence, North and South ... 597  The Rise of Garveyism ... 598 1 9 1 9 . . . 599 A Worldwide Upsurge ... 599  Upheaval in America ... 599  The Red Scare ... 600  Wilson at Versailles ... 601  The Wilsonian Moment ... 602  The Seeds of Wars to Come ... 604  The Treaty Debate ... 605 R E V I E W . . . 6 0 7 2 0 . F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N : T H E T W E N T I E S , 1 9 2 0 – 1 9 3 2 . . . 6 0 8 T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A . . . 610 A Decade of Prosperity ... 610  A New Society ... 611  The Limits of Prosperity ... 612  The Farmers’ Plight ... 612  The Image of Business ... 613  The Decline of Labor ... 613  The Equal Rights Amendment ... 615  Women’s Freedom ... 615 B U S I N E S S A N D G O V E R N M E N T . . . 616 The Republican Era ... 617  Corruption in Government ... 617  The Election of 1924 ... 618  Economic Diplomacy ... 618 T H E B I R T H O F C I V I L L I B E R T I E S . . . 619 A “Clear and Present Danger” ... 620  The Court and Civil Liberties ... 621 x Contents T H E C U L T U R E W A R S . . . 621 The Fundamentalist Revolt ... 621  The Scopes Trial ... 622  The Second Klan ... 623  Closing the Golden Door ... 624  Race and the Law ... 625  Promoting Tolerance ... 626  The Emergence of Harlem ... 627 Voices of Freedom: From André Siegfried, “The Gulf Between,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1928), and From Majority Opinion, Justice James C. McReynolds, in Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) ... 628 The Harlem Renaissance ... 630 T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N . . . 631 The Election of 1928 ... 631  The Coming of the Depression ... 632  Americans and the Depression ... 633  Resignation and Protest ... 635  Hoover’s Response ... 636  The Worsening Economic Outlook ... 636  Freedom in the Modern World ... 637 R E V I E W . . . 6 3 8 2 1 . T H E N E W D E A L , 1 9 3 2 – 1 9 4 0 . . . 6 3 9 T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L . . . 641 FDR and the Election of 1932 ... 641  The Coming of the New Deal ... 642  The Banking Crisis ... 642  The NRA ... 643  Government Jobs ... 644  Public-Works Projects ... 645  The New Deal and Agriculture ... 646  The New Deal and Housing ... 647  The Court and the New Deal ... 648 T H E G R A S S R O O T S R E V O L T . . . 648 Labor’s Great Upheaval ... 648  The Rise of the CIO ... 649  Labor and Politics ... 650  Voices of Protest ... 651  Religion on the Radio ... 651 T H E S E C O N D N E W D E A L . . . 652 The WPA and the Wagner Act ... 653  The American Welfare State: Social Security ... 654 A R E C K O N I N G W I T H L I B E R T Y . . . 655 The Election of 1936 ... 655 Voices of Freedom: From Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Fireside Chat” (1934), and From John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the Grapes of Wrath (1938) ... 656 The Court Fight ... 658  The End of the Second New Deal ... 659 T H E L I M I T S O F C H A N G E . . . 660 The New Deal and American Women ... 660  The Southern Veto ... 661  The Stigma of Welfare ... 661  The Indian New Deal ... 662  The New Deal and Mexican-Americans ... 662  Last Hired, First Fired ... 663  Federal Discrimination ... 664 A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A . . . 665 The Heyday of American Communism ... 665  Redefining the People ... 666  Challenging the Color Line ... 667  Labor and Civil C o n t e n t s x i Liberties ... 667  The End of the New Deal ... 668  The New Deal in American History ... 669 R E V I E W . . . 6 7 1 2 2 . F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D W A R I I , 1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 5 . . . 6 7 2 F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I . . . 674 Good Neighbors ... 674  The Road to War ... 675  Isolationism ... 675  War in Europe ... 676  Toward Intervention ... 677  Pearl Harbor ... 677  The War in the Pacific ... 678  The War in Europe ... 679 T H E H O M E F R O N T . . . 682 Mobilizing for War ... 682  Business and the War ... 683  Labor in Wartime ... 684  Fighting for the Four Freedoms ... 684  The Fifth Freedom ... 685  Women at War ... 686 V I S I O N S O F P O S T W A R F R E E D O M . . . 687 Toward an American Century ... 687  “The Way of Life of Free Men” ... 688  The Road to Serfdom ... 689 T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A . . . 689 Patriotic Assimilation ... 690  The Bracero Program ... 690  Indians during the War ... 691  Asian-Americans in Wartime ... 691  Japanese- American Internment ... 692  Blacks and the War ... 694  Blacks and Military Service ... 695  Birth of the Civil Rights Movement ... 695  The Double-V ... 696  The War and Race ... 696  An American Dilemma ... 697 Voices of Freedom: From Henry R. Luce, The American Century (1941), and From Charles H. Wesley, “The Negro Has Always Wanted the Four Freedoms,” in What the Negro Wants (1944) ... 698 Black Internationalism ... 700 T H E E N D O F T H E W A R . . . 700 “The Most Terrible Weapon” ... 701  The Dawn of the Atomic Age ... 701  The Nature of the War ... 702  Planning the Postwar World ... 703  Yalta and Bretton Woods ... 703  The United Nations ... 704  Peace, but not Harmony ... 704 R E V I E W . . . 7 0 6 2 3 . T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D T H E C O L D W A R , 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 5 3 . . . 7 0 7 O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R . . . 709 The Two Powers ... 709  The Roots of Containment ... 709  The Truman Doctrine ... 710  The Marshall Plan ... 711 x i i Contents  The Reconstruction of Japan ... 712  The Berlin Blockade and NATO ... 713  The Growing Communist Challenge ... 713  The Korean War ... 715  Cold War Critics ... 717  Imperialism and Decolonization ... 717 Voices of Freedom: From Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955), and From Henry Steele Commager, “Who Is Loyal to America?” in Harper’s (September 1947) ... 718 T H E C O L D W A R A N D T H E I D E A O F F R E E D O M . . . 720 Freedom and Totalitarianism ... 720  The Rise of Human Rights ... 721  Ambiguities of Human Rights ... 722 T H E T R U M A N P R E S I D E N C Y . . . 722 The Fair Deal ... 722  The Postwar Strike Wave ... 723  The Republican Resurgence ... 723  Postwar Civil Rights ... 724  To Secure These Rights ... 725  The Dixiecrat and Wallace Revolts ... 725 T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E . . . 727 Loyalty and Disloyalty ... 728  The Spy Trials ... 729  McCarthy and McCarthyism ... 730  An Atmosphere of Fear ... 731  The Uses of Anticommunism ... 731  Anticommunist Politics ... 732  Cold War Civil Rights ... 733 R E V I E W . . . 7 3 5 2 4 . A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y , 1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 0 . . . 7 3 6 T H E G O L D E N A G E . . . 738 A Changing Economy ... 738  A Suburban Nation ... 739  The Growth of the West ... 740  The TV World ... 741  Women at Work and at Home ... 741  A Segregated Landscape ... 742  The Divided Society ... 743  Religion and Anticommunism ... 743  Selling Free Enterprise ... 744  The Libertarian Conservatives and the New Conservatives ... 744 T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A . . . 745 Ike and Nixon ... 745  The 1952 Campaign ... 746  Modern Republicanism ... 747  The Social Contract ... 748  Massive Retaliation ... 749  Ike and the Russians ... 749  The Emergence of the Third World ... 750  Origins of the Vietnam War ... 751  Mass Society and Its Critics ... 752  Rebels without a Cause ... 753 T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T . . . 754 Origins of the Movement ... 755  The Legal Assault on Segregation ... 755  The Brown Case ... 757  The Montgomery Bus Boycott ... 758  The Daybreak of Freedom ... 758  The Leadership of King ... 759  Massive Resistance ... 760  Eisenhower and Civil Rights ... 760 C o n t e n t s x i i i Voices of Freedom: From Richard Right, “I Choose Exile” (1950), and From The Southern Manifesto (1956) ... 762 T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 6 0 . . . 764 Kennedy and Nixon ... 764  The End of the 1950s ... 765 R E V I E W . . . 7 6 7 2 5 . T H E S I X T I E S , 1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 8 . . . 7 6 8 T H E C I V I L R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N . . . 770 The Rising Tide of Protest ... 770  Birmingham ... 771  The March on Washington ... 772 T H E K E N N E D Y Y E A R S . . . 773 Kennedy and the World ... 773  The Missile Crisis ... 774  Kennedy and Civil Rights ... 775 L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y . . . 776 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ... 776  Freedom Summer ... 776  The 1964 Election ... 777  The Conservative Sixties ... 778  The Voting Rights Act ... 780  Immigration Reform ... 780  The Great Society ... 781  The War on Poverty ... 781  Freedom and Equality ... 782 T H E C H A N G I N G B L A C K M O V E M E N T . . . 782 The Ghetto Uprisings ... 783  Malcolm X ... 784  The Rise of Black Power ... 784 V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T . . . 785 Old and New Lefts ... 785  The Fading Consensus ... 786  America and Vietnam ... 787 Voices of Freedom: From Young Americans for Freedom, The Sharon Statement (September 1960), and From Tom Hayden and Others, The Port Huron Statement (June 1962) ... 788 Lyndon Johnson’s War ... 790  The Antiwar Movement ... 792  The Counterculture ... 793  Personal Liberation and the Free Individual ... 793  Faith and the Counterculture ... 794 T H E N E W M O V E M E N T S A N D T H E R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N . . . 7 9 5 The Feminine Mystique ... 795  Women’s Liberation ... 796  Personal Freedom ... 796  Gay Liberation ... 797  Latino Activism ... 797  Red Power ... 798  Silent Spring ... 798  The Rights Revolution ... 799  The Right to Privacy ... 801 1 9 6 8 . . . 802 A Year of Turmoil ... 802  The Global 1968 ... 803  Nixon’s Comeback ... 804  The Legacy of the Sixties ... 804 R E V I E W . . . 8 0 5 x i v Contents 2 6 . T H E T R I U M P H O F C O N S E R V A T I S M , 1 9 6 9 – 1 9 8 8 . . . 8 0 6 P R E S I D E N T N I X O N . . . 807 Nixon’s Domestic Policies ... 808  Nixon and Welfare ... 808  Nixon and Race ... 809  The Burger Court ... 809  The Continuing Sexual Revolution ... 810  Nixon and Détente ... 811 V I E T N A M A N D W A T E R G A T E . . . 813 Nixon and Vietnam ... 813  The End of the Vietnam War ... 814  Watergate ... 815  Nixon’s Fall ... 815 T H E E N D O F T H E G O L D E N A G E . . . 816 The Decline of Manufacturing ... 816  Stagflation ... 818  The Beleaguered Social Compact ... 818  Ford as President ... 819  The Carter Administration ... 820  Carter and the Economic Crisis ... 820  The Emergence of Human Rights Politics ... 821  The Iran Crisis and Afghanistan ... 822 T H E R I S I N G T I D E O F C O N S E R V A T I S M . . . 823 Voices of Freedom: From Redstockings Manifesto (1969), and From Jerry Falwell, Listen, America! (1980) ... 824 The Religious Right ... 826  The Battle over the Equal Rights Amendment ... 827  The Abortion Controversy ... 828  The Tax Revolt ... 829  The Election of 1980 ... 829 T H E R E A G A N R E V O L U T I O N . . . 830 Reagan and American Freedom ... 830  Reaganomics ... 831  Reagan and Labor ... 831  The Problem of Inequality ... 832  The Second Gilded Age ... 833  Conservatives and Reagan ... 834  Reagan and the Cold War ... 834  The Iran-Contra Affair ... 836  Reagan and Gorbachev ... 836  Reagan’s Legacy ... 837  The Election of 1988 ... 837 R E V I E W . . . 8 3 9 2 7 . G L O B A L I Z A T I O N A N D I T S D I S C O N T E N T S , 1 9 8 9 – 2 0 0 0 . . . 8 4 0 T H E P O S T - C O L D W A R W O R L D . . . 842 The Crisis of Communism ... 842  A New World Order? ... 844  The Gulf War ... 845  Visions of America’s Role ... 845  The Election of Clinton ... 845  Clinton in Office ... 846  The “Freedom Revolution” ... 847 Voices of Freedom: From Bill Clinton, Speech on Signing of NAFTA (1993), and From Global Exchange, Seattle, Declaration for Global Democracy (December 1999) ... 848 Clinton’s Political Strategy ... 850  Clinton and World Affairs ... 851  Human Rights ... 852 C o n t e n t s x v A N E W E C O N O M Y ? . . . 853 The Computer Revolution ... 853  The Stock Market Boom and Bust ... 854  The Enron Syndrome ... 855  Fruits of Deregulation ... 855  Rising Inequality ... 856 C U L T U R E W A R S . . . 857 The Newest Immigrants ... 858  The New Diversity ... 859  African- Americans in the 1990s ... 861  The Spread of Imprisonment ... 862  The Continuing Rights Revolution ... 863  Native Americans ... 864  Multiculturalism ... 865  “Family Values” in Retreat ... 866  The Antigovernment Extreme ... 866 I M P E A C H M E N T A N D T H E E L E C T I O N O F 2 0 0 0 . . . 867 The Impeachment of Clinton ... 868  The Disputed Election ... 868  A Challenged Democracy ... 869 F R E E D O M A N D T H E N E W C E N T U R Y . . . 870 Exceptional America ... 871 R E V I E W . . . 8 7 3 2 8 . A N E W C E N T U R Y A N D N E W C R I S E S . . . 8 7 4 T H E W A R O N T E R R O R I S M . . . 876 Bush before September 11 ... 876  “They Hate Freedom” ... 877  The Bush Doctrine ... 877  The “Axis of Evil” ... 878 A N A M E R I C A N E M P I R E ? . . . 878 Confronting Iraq ... 879  The Iraq War ... 880  The World and the War ... 881 T H E A F T E R M A T H O F S E P T E M B E R 1 1 A T H O M E . . . 883 Security and Liberty ... 883  The Power of the President ... 883  The Torture Controversy ... 884  The Economy under Bush ... 885 T H E W I N D S O F C H A N G E . . . 885 The 2004 Election ... 885  Bush’s Second Term ... 886  Hurricane Katrina ... 886  The Immigration Debate ... 887  Islam, America, and the “Clash of Civilizations” ... 888  The Constitution and Liberty ... 889  The Court and the President ... 890  The Midterm Elections of 2006 ... 890  The Housing Bubble ... 891  The Great Recession ... 892  “A Conspiracy against the Public” ... 893  Bush and the Crisis ... 894 T H E R I S E O F O B A M A . . . 895 The 2008 Campaign ... 896  The Age of Obama? ... 897  Obama’s First Inauguration ... 897 Voices of Freedom: From The National Security Strategy of the United States (September 2002), and From President Barack Obama, Speech on the Middle East (2011) ... 898 Obama in Office ... 900 x v i Contents O B A M A ’ S F I R S T T E R M . . . 902 The Continuing Economic Crisis ... 902  Obama and the World ... 902  The Republican Revival ... 904  The Occupy Movement ... 905  The 2012 Campaign ... 905 L E A R N I N G F R O M H I S T O R Y . . . 907 R E V I E W . . . 9 0 9 A P P E N D I X D O C U M E N T S The Declaration of Independence (1776) ... A-2 The Constitution of The United States (1787) ... A-5 From George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796) ... A-17 The Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments And Resolutions (1848) ... A-22 From Frederick Douglass’s “What, To the Slave, Is The Fourth Of July?” Speech (1852) ... A-25 The Gettysburg Address (1863) ... A-29 Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (1865) ... A-30 The Populist Platform of 1892 ... A-31 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address (1933) ... A-34 From The Program For The March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom (1963) ... A-37 Ronald Reagan’s First Inaugural Address (1981) ... A-38 Barack Obama’s First Inaugural Address (2009) ... A-42 T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S Presidential Elections ... A-46 Admission of States ... A-54 Population of the United States ... A-55 Historical Statistics of The United States: Labor Force—Selected Characteristics Expressed As A Percentage of The Labor Force, 1800–2010 ... A-56 Immigration, By Origin ... A-56 Unemployment Rate, 1890–2013 ... A-57 Union Membership As A Percentage Of Nonagricultural Employment, 1880–2012 ... A-57 Voter Participation in Presidential Elections 1824–2012 ... A-57 Birthrate, 1820–2011 ... A-57 S U G G E S T E D R E A D I N G S ... A - 5 9 G L O S S A R Y ... A - 6 9 C R E D I T S ... A - 9 7 I N D E X ... A - 9 9 C o n t e n t s x v i i M A P S Japanese-American Internment, 1942–1945 ... 693 C H A P T E R 1 5 C H A P T E R 2 3 The Barrow Plantation ... 446 Sharecropping in the South, 1880 ... 452 Cold War Europe, 1956 ... 714 The Presidential Election of 1868 ... 460 The Korean War, 1950–1953 ... 716 Reconstruction in the South, 1867–1877 ... 471 The Presidential Election of 1948 ... 727 The Presidential Election of 1876 ... 472 C H A P T E R 2 4 C H A P T E R 1 6 The Interstate Highway System ... 740 The Railroad Network, 1880 ... 479 The Presidential Election of 1952 ... 747 Indian Reservations, ca. 1890 ... 491 The Presidential Election of 1960 ... 765 Political Stalemate, 1876–1892 ... 496 C H A P T E R 2 5 C H A P T E R 1 7 The Presidential Election of 1964 ... 778 Populist Strength, 1892 ... 512 The Vietnam War, 1964–1975 ... 791 The Presidential Election of 1896 ... 516 The Spanish-American War: The Pacific ... 532 C H A P T E R 2 6 The Spanish-American War: The Caribbean ... 532 The Presidential Election of 1980 ... 830 American Empire, 1898 ... 534 The United States in the Caribbean and Central C H A P T E R 1 8 America, 1954–2004 ... 835 Socialist Towns and Cities, 1900–1920 ... 553 C H A P T E R 2 7 The Presidential Election of 1912 ... 571 Eastern Europe after the Cold War ... 844 C H A P T E R 1 9 The Presidential Election of 2000 ... 868 The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1941 ... 577 C H A P T E R 2 8 World War I: The Western Front ... 583 U.S. Presence in the Middle East, Europe in 1914 ... 602 1947–2012 ... 882 Europe in 1919 ... 603 The Presidential Election of 2012 ... 906 C H A P T E R 2 0 T A B L E S A N D F I G U R E S The Presidential Election of 1928 ... 632 C H A P T E R 2 1 C H A P T E R 1 6 The Presidential Election of 1932 ... 641 Table 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change, The Tennessee Valley Authority ... 646 1870–1920 ... 477 C H A P T E R 2 2 C H A P T E R 1 7 World War II in the Pacific, 1941–1945 ... 679 Table 17.1 States with Over 200 Lynchings, World War II in Europe, 1942–1945 ... 681 1889–1918 ... 523 x v i i i List of Maps, Tables, and Figures C H A P T E R 1 8 Figure 24.3 The Baby Boom and Its Decline ... 742 Table 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920 ... 546 Table 18.2 Immigrants and Their Children as C H A P T E R 2 5 Percentage of Population, Ten Major Cities, 1920 ... 547 Figure 25.1 Percentage of Population below Table 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Poverty Level, by Race, 1959–1969 ... 782 Older in the Labor Force ... 549 Table 18.4 Percentage of Women Workers in C H A P T E R 2 6 Various Occupations ... 550 Figure 26.1 Median Age of First Marriage, Table 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars ... 551 1947–1981 ... 810 Table 26.1 The Misery Index, 1970–1980 ... 817 C H A P T E R 1 9 Figure 26.2 Real Average Weekly Wages, 1955–1990 ... 819 Table 19.1 The Great Migration ... 597 Figure 26.3 Changes in Families’ Real Income, 1980–1990 ... 832 C H A P T E R 2 0 Figure 20.1 Household Appliances, 1900–1930 ... C H A P T E R 2 7 611 Figure 27.1 U.S. Income Inequality, 1913–2003 ... Table 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas 856 under the 1924 Immigration Act ... 626 Table 27.1 Immigration to the United States, 1960–2010 ... 858 C H A P T E R 2 1 Figure 27.2 Birthplace of Immigrants, Figure 21.1 The Building Boom and Its Collapse, 1990–2000 ... 860 1919–1939 ... 647 Figure 27.3 The Projected Non-White Majority: Figure 21.2 Unemployment, 1925–1945 ... 659 Racial and Ethnic Breakdown ... 861 Table 27.2 Home Ownership Rates by Group, 1970–2000 ... 862 C H A P T E R 2 2 Figure 27.4 Changes in Family Structure, Table 22.1 Labor Union Membership ... 684 1970–2010 ... 865 Figure 27.5 Women in the Paid Workforce, C H A P T E R 2 4 1940–2000 ... 866 Figure 24.1 Real Gross Domestic Product per Capita, 1790–2000 ... 738 C H A P T E R 2 8 Figure 24.2 Average Daily Television Viewing ... Figure 28.1 Portrait of a Recession ... 893 741 L i s t s o f M a p s , Ta b l e s , a n d F i g u r e s x i x P R E F A C E Since it originally appeared late in 2004, Give Me Liberty! An American History has gone through three editions and been adopted for use in survey courses at close to one thousand two- and four-year colleges in the United States, as well as a good number overseas. Of course, I am extremely gratified by this response. The book offers students a clear narra- tive of American history from the earliest days of European exploration and conquest of the New World to the first decade of the twenty-first century. Its central theme is the changing contours of American freedom. The comments I have received from instructors and students encour- age me to think that Give Me Liberty! has worked well in the classroom. These comments have also included many valuable suggestions, ranging from corrections of typographical and factual errors to thoughts about subjects that need more extensive treatment. In preparing new editions of the book I have tried to take these suggestions into account, as well as incorporating the insights of recent historical scholarship. Since the original edition was written, I have frequently been asked to produce a more succinct version of the textbook, which now runs to some 1,200 pages. This Brief Edition is a response to these requests. The text of the current volume is about one-third shorter than the full version. The result, I believe, is a book more suited to use in one-semester survey courses, classes x x Preface where the instructor wishes to supplement the text with additional read- ings, and in other situations where a briefer volume is desirable. Since some publishers have been known to assign the task of reduction in cases like this to editors rather than the actual author, I wish to empha- size that I did all the cutting and necessary rewriting for this Brief Edition myself. My guiding principle was to preserve the coverage, structure, and emphases of the regular edition and to compress the book by eliminating details of secondary importance, streamlining the narrative of events, and avoiding unnecessary repetition. While the book is significantly shorter, no subject treated in the full edition has been eliminated entirely and noth- ing essential, I believe, has been sacrificed. The sequence of chapters and subjects remains the same, and the freedom theme is present and operative throughout. In abridging the textbook I have retained the original interpretive framework as well as the new emphases added when the second and third editions of the book were published. The second edition incorporated new material about the history of Native Americans, an area of American his- tory that has been the subject of significant new scholarship in the past few years. It also devoted greater attention to the history of immigration and the controversies surrounding it—issues of considerable relevance to Amer- ican social and political life today. The most significant change in the third edition reflected my desire to place American history more fully in a global context. In the past few years, scholars writing about the American past have sought to delineate the influ- ences of the United States on the rest of the world as well as the global devel- opments that have helped to shape the course of events here at home. They have also devoted greater attention to transnational processes—the expan- sion of empires, international labor migrations, the rise and fall of slavery, the globalization of economic enterprise—that cannot be understood solely within the confines of one country’s national boundaries. Without seek- ing in any way to homogenize the history of individual nations or neglect the domestic forces that have shaped American development, this edition retains this emphasis. The most significant changes in this Fourth Edition reflect my desire to integrate more fully into the narrative the history of American religion. Today, this is a thriving subfield of American historical writing, partly because of the increased prominence in our own time of debates over the relations between government and religion and over the definition of reli- gious liberty—issues that are deeply rooted in the American experience. The Brief Edition also employs a bright new design for the text and its various elements. The popular Voices of Freedom feature—a pair of excerpts from primary source documents in each chapter that illuminate divergent inter- pretations of freedom—is present here. So too are the useful chapter opening P r e f a c e x x i focus questions, which appear in the running heads of the relevant text pages as well. There are chapter opening chronologies and end-of- chapter review pages with questions and key terms. As a new feature in the Brief Edition there are marginal glosses in the text pages that are meant to highlight key points and indicate the chapter structure for students. They are also useful means for review. The Brief Edition features more than 400 illustrations and over 100 captioned maps in easy to read four-color renditions. The Fur- ther Readings sections appear in the Appendix along with the Glossary and the collection of key documents. The Brief Edition is fully supported by the same array of print and electronic supplements that support the other edi- tions of Give Me Liberty! These materials have been revised to match the con- tent of the Brief Edition. Americans have always had a divided attitude toward history. On the one hand, they tend to be remarkably future-oriented, dismissing events of even the recent past as “ancient history” and sometimes seeing history as a bur- den to be overcome, a prison from which to escape. On the other hand, like many other peoples, Americans have always looked to history for a sense of personal or group identity and of national cohesiveness. This is why so many Americans devote time and energy to tracing their family trees and why they visit historical museums and National Park Service historical sites in ever-increasing numbers. My hope is that this book will help to con- vince readers with all degrees of interest that history does matter to them. The novelist and essayist James Baldwin once observed that history “does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, . . . [that] history is literally present in all that we do.” As Baldwin recognized, the power of history is evident in our own world. Especially in a political democracy like the United States, whose government is designed to rest on the consent of informed citizens, knowledge of the past is essential—not only for those of us whose profession is the teaching and writing of history, but for everyone. History, to be sure, does not offer simple lessons or imme- diate answers to current questions. Knowing the history of immigration to the United States, and all of the tensions, turmoil, and aspirations associated with it, for example, does not tell us what current immigration policy ought to be. But without that knowledge, we have no way of understanding which approaches have worked and which have not—essential information for the formulation of future public policy. History, it has been said, is what the present chooses to remember about the past. Rather than a fixed collection of facts, or a group of inter- pretations that cannot be challenged, our understanding of history is con- stantly changing. There is nothing unusual in the fact that each generation rewrites history to meet its own needs, or that scholars disagree among x x i i Preface themselves on basic questions like the causes of the Civil War or the rea- sons for the Great Depression. Precisely because each generation asks dif- ferent questions of the past, each generation formulates different answers. The past thirty years have witnessed a remarkable expansion of the scope of historical study. The experiences of groups neglected by earlier scholars, including women, African-Americans, working people, and others, have received unprecedented attention from historians. New subfields—social history, cultural history, and family history among them—have taken their place alongside traditional political and diplomatic history. Give Me Liberty! draws on this voluminous historical literature to pres- ent an up-to-date and inclusive account of the American past, paying due attention to the experience of diverse groups of Americans while in no way neglecting the events and processes Americans have experienced in common. It devotes serious attention to political, social, cultural, and eco- nomic history, and to their interconnections. The narrative brings together major events and prominent leaders with the many groups of ordinary peo- ple who make up American society. Give Me Liberty! has a rich cast of char- acters, from Thomas Jefferson to campaigners for woman suffrage, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to former slaves seeking to breathe meaning into emancipation during and after the Civil War. The unifying theme of freedom that runs through the text gives shape to the narrative and integrates the numerous strands that make up the American experience. This approach builds on that of my earlier book, The Story of American Freedom (1998), although Give Me Liberty! places events and personalities in the foreground and is more geared to the structure of the introductory survey course. Freedom, and battles to define its meaning, has long been central to my own scholarship and undergraduate teaching, which focuses on the nineteenth century and especially the era of Civil War and Reconstruction (1850–1877). This was a time when the future of slavery tore the nation apart and emancipation produced a national debate over what rights the former slaves, and all Americans, should enjoy as free citizens. I have found that attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of differ- ent groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of mak- ing sense of the bitter battles and vast transformations of that pivotal era. I believe that the same is true for American history as a whole. No idea is more fundamental to Americans’ sense of themselves as individuals and as a nation than freedom. The central term in our politi- cal language, freedom—or liberty, with which it is almost always used interchangeably—is deeply embedded in the record of our history and the language of everyday life. The Declaration of Independence lists liberty among mankind’s inalienable rights; the Constitution announces its pur- pose as securing liberty’s blessings. The United States fought the Civil War P r e f a c e x x i i i to bring about a new birth of freedom, World War II for the Four Freedoms, and the Cold War to defend the Free World. Americans’ love of liberty has been represented by liberty poles, liberty caps, and statues of liberty, and acted out by burning stamps and burning draft cards, by running away from slavery, and by demonstrating for the right to vote. “Every man in the street, white, black, red or yellow,” wrote the educator and statesman Ralph Bunche in 1940, “knows that this is ‘the land of the free’ . . . ‘the cradle of liberty.’” The very universality of the idea of freedom, however, can be mislead- ing. Freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging defi- nition. Indeed, the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates, disagreements, and struggles over freedom. Crises like the American Revo- lution, the Civil War, and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom. So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom. The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms. Over the course of our history, American freedom has been both a real- ity and a mythic ideal—a living truth for millions of Americans, a cruel mockery for others. For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed. For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice. Give Me Liberty! draws attention to three dimensions of freedom that have been critical in American history: (1) the meanings of freedom; (2) the social conditions that make freedom possible; and (3) the boundaries of free- dom that determine who is entitled to enjoy freedom and who is not. All have changed over time. In the era of the American Revolution, for example, freedom was pri- marily a set of rights enjoyed in public activity—including the right of a com- munity to be governed by laws to which its representatives had consented and of individuals to engage in religious worship without governmental interference. In the nineteenth century, freedom came to be closely identi- fied with each person’s opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her innate talents. In the twentieth, the “ability to choose,” in both public and private life, became perhaps the dominant understanding of freedom. This develop- ment was encouraged by the explosive growth of the consumer marketplace which offered Americans an unprecedented array of goods with which to satisfy their needs and desires. During the 1960s, a crucial chapter in the history of American freedom, the idea of personal freedom was extended into virtually every realm, from attire and “lifestyle” to relations between the sexes. Thus, over time, more and more areas of life have been drawn into Americans’ debates about the meaning of freedom. x x i v Preface A second important dimension of freedom focuses on the social con- ditions necessary to allow freedom to flourish. What kinds of economic institutions and relationships best encourage individual freedom? In the colonial era and for more than a century after independence, the answer centered on economic autonomy, enshrined in the glorification of the inde- pendent small producer—the farmer, skilled craftsman, or shopkeeper— who did not have to depend on another person for his livelihood. As the industrial economy matured, new conceptions of economic freedom came to the fore: “liberty of contract” in the Gilded Age, “industrial freedom” (a say in corporate decision making) in the Progressive era, economic security during the New Deal, and, more recently, the ability to enjoy mass consump- tion within a market economy. The boundaries of freedom, the third dimension of this theme, have inspired some of the most intense struggles in American history. Although founded on the premise that liberty is an entitlement of all humanity, the United States for much of its history deprived many of its own people of free- dom. Non-whites have rarely enjoyed the same access to freedom as white Americans. The belief in equal opportunity as the birthright of all Ameri- cans has coexisted with persistent efforts to limit freedom by race, gender, class, and in other ways. Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that one person’s freedom has fre- quently been linked to another’s servitude. In the colonial era and nine- teenth century, expanding freedom for many Americans rested on the lack of freedom—slavery, indentured servitude, the subordinate position of women—for others. By the same token, it has been through battles at the boundaries—the efforts of racial minorities, women, and others to secure greater freedom—that the meaning and experience of freedom have been deepened and the concept extended into new realms. Time and again in American history, freedom has been transformed by the demands of excluded groups for inclusion. The idea of freedom as a universal birthright owes much to abolitionists who sought to extend the blessings of liberty to blacks and to immigrant groups who insisted on full recognition as American citizens. The principle of equal protection of the law without regard to race, which became a central element of American freedom, arose from the antislavery struggle and Civil War and was rein- vigorated by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, which called itself the “freedom movement.” The battle for the right of free speech by labor radicals and birth control advocates in the first part of the twentieth century helped to make civil liberties an essential element of freedom for all Americans. Freedom is the oldest of clichés and the most modern of aspirations. At various times in our history, it has served as the rallying cry of the power- less and as a justification of the status quo. Freedom helps to bind our cul- ture together and exposes the contradictions between what America claims P r e f a c e x x v to be and what it sometimes has been. American history is not a narrative of continual progress toward greater and greater freedom. As the abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson noted after the Civil War, “revolutions may go backward.” While freedom can be achieved, it may also be taken away. This happened, for example, when the equal rights granted to former slaves immediately after the Civil War were essentially nullified during the era of segregation. As was said in the eighteenth century, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. In the early twenty-first century, freedom continues to play a central role in our political and social life and thought. It is invoked by individuals and groups of all kinds, from critics of economic globalization to those who seek to export American freedom overseas. As with the longer version of the book, I hope that this Brief Edition of Give Me Liberty! will offer begin- ning students a clear account of the course of American history, and of its central theme, freedom, which today remains as varied, contentious, and ever-changing as America itself. x x v i Preface A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S All works of history are, to a considerable extent, collaborative books, in that every writer builds on the research and writing of previous scholars. This is especially true of a textbook that covers the entire American experience, over more than five centuries. My greatest debt is to the innumerable histo- rians on whose work I have drawn in preparing this volume. The Suggested Reading list in the Appendix offers only a brief introduction to the vast body of historical scholarship that has influenced and informed this book. More specifically, however, I wish to thank the following scholars, who gener- ously read portions of this work and offered valuable comments, criticisms, and suggestions: Wayne Ackerson, Salisbury University Mary E. Adams, City College of San Francisco Jeff Adler, University of Florida David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University John Barr, Lone Star College, Kingwood Lauren Braun-Strumfels, Raritan Valley Community College James Broussard, Lebanon Valley College Michael Bryan, Greenville Technical College Stephanie Cole, The University of Texas at Arlington Ashley Cruseturner, McLennan Community College Jim Dudlo, Brookhaven College Beverly Gage, Yale University Monica Gisolfi, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Adam Goudsouzian, University of Memphis Mike Green, Community College of Southern Nevada Vanessa Gunther, California State University, Fullerton David E. Hamilton, University of Kentucky Brian Harding, Mott Community College Sandra Harvey, Lone Star College–Cy Fair April Holm, University of Mississippi David Hsiung, Juniata College James Karmel, Harford Community College Kelly Knight, Penn State University Marianne Leeper, Trinity Valley Community College Jeffrey K. Lucas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke Tina Margolis, Westchester Community College Kent McGaughy, HCC Northwest College James Mills, University of Texas, Brownsville Gil Montemayor, McLennan Community College Jonathan Noyalas, Lord Fairfax Community College Robert M. O’Brien, Lone Star College–Cy Fair P r e f a c e x x v i i Joseph Palermo, California State University, Sacramento Ann Plane, University of California, Santa Barbara Nancy Marie Robertson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Esther Robinson, Lone Star College–Cy Fair Richard Samuelson, California State University, San Bernadino Diane Sager, Maple Woods Community College John Shaw, Portland Community College Mark Spencer, Brock University David Stebenne, Ohio State University Judith Stein, City College, City University of New York George Stevens, Duchess Community College Robert Tinkler, California State University, Chico Elaine Thompson, Louisiana Tech University David Weiman, Barnard College William Young, Maple Woods Community College I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in the Columbia University Department of History: Pablo Piccato, for his advice on Latin American his- tory; Evan Haefeli and Ellen Baker, who read and made many suggestions for improvements in their areas of expertise (colonial America and the history of the West, respectively); and Sarah Phillips, who offered advice on treating the history of the environment. I am also deeply indebted to the graduate students at Columbia Univer- sity’s Department of History who helped with this project. Theresa Ventura offered invaluable assistance in gathering material for the new sections plac- ing American history in a global context. April Holm provided similar assis- tance for new coverage in this edition of the history of American religion and debates over religious freedom. James Delbourgo conducted research for the chapters on the colonial era. Beverly Gage did the same for the twenti- eth century. Daniel Freund provided all-round research assistance. Victoria Cain did a superb job of locating images. I also want to thank my colleagues Elizabeth Blackmar and Alan Brinkley for offering advice and encourage- ment throughout the writing of this book. Many thanks to Joshua Brown, director of the American Social History Project, whose website, History Matters, lists innumerable online resources for the study of American history. Nancy Robertson at IUIPUI did a superb job revising and enhancing the in-book pedagogy. Monica Gisolfi (Univer- sity of North Carolina, Wilmington) and Robert Tinkler (California State University, Chico) did excellent work on the Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank. Kathleen Thomas (University of Wisconsin, Stout) helped greatly in the revisions of the companion media packages. x x v i i i Preface At W. W. Norton & Company, Steve Forman was an ideal editor— patient, encouraging, and always ready to offer sage advice. I would also like to thank Steve’s assistants, Justin Cahill and Penelope Lin, for their indispensable and always cheerful help on all aspects of the project; Ellen Lohman and Debbie Nichols for their careful copyediting and proof read- ing work. Stephanie Romeo and Donna Ranieri for their resourceful atten- tion to the illustrations program; Hope Miller Goodell and Chin-Yee Lai for their refinements of the book design; Mike Fodera and Debra Morton-Hoyt for splendid work on the covers for the Fourth Edition; Kim Yi for keep- ing the many threads of the project aligned and then tying them together; Sean Mintus for his efficiency and care in book production; Steve Hoge for orchestrating the rich media package that accompanies the textbook; Jessica Brannon-Wranosky, Texas A&M University–Commerce, our digital media author for the terrific new web quizzes and outlines; Volker Janssen, Cali- fornia State University, Fullerton, for the helpful new online reading exer- cises; Nicole Netherton, Steve Dunn, and Mike Wright for their alert reads of the U.S. survey market and their hard work in helping establish Give Me Liberty! within it; and Drake McFeely, Roby Harrington, and Julia Reidhead for maintaining Norton as an independent, employee-owned publisher ded- icated to excellence in its work. Many students may have heard stories of how publishing companies alter the language and content of textbooks in an attempt to maximize sales and avoid alienating any potential reader. In this case, I can honestly say that W. W. Norton allowed me a free hand in writing the book and, apart from the usual editorial corrections, did not try to influence its content at all. For this I thank them, while I accept full responsibility for the interpretations pre- sented and for any errors the book may contain. Since no book of this length can be entirely free of mistakes, I welcome readers to send me corrections at [email protected]. My greatest debt, as always, is to my family—my wife, Lynn Garafola, for her good-natured support while I was preoccupied by a project that con- sumed more than its fair share of my time and energy, and my daughter, Daria, who while a ninth and tenth grader read every chapter as it was writ- ten and offered invaluable suggestions about improving the book’s clarity, logic, and grammar. Eric Foner New York City July 2013 P r e f a c e x x i x G I V E M E L I B E R T Y ! A N A M E R I C A N H I S T O R Y  B r i e f F o u r t h E d i t i o n 1865 Special Field Order 15 C H A P T E R 1 5 Freedmen’s Bureau established Lincoln assassinated; Andrew Johnson becomes president 1865– Presidential Reconstruction 1867 Black Codes “ W H A T I S 1866 Civil Rights Bill Ku Klux Klan established 1867 Reconstruction Act of 1867 F R E E D O M ? ” Tenure of Office Act 1867– Radical Reconstruction 1877  1868 Impeachment and trial of President Johnson Fourteenth Amendment ratified R E C O N S T R U C T I O N , 1 8 6 5 – 1 8 7 7 1869 Inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant 1870 Hiram Revels, first black U.S. senator Fifteenth Amendment ratified 1870– Enforcement Acts 1871 1872 Liberal Republicans established 1873 Colfax Massacre Slaughterhouse Cases National economic depression begins 1876 United States v. Cruikshank 1877 Bargain of 1877 The Shackle Broken—by the Genius of Freedom. This 1874 lithograph depicts Robert B. Elliott, a black congressman from South Carolina, delivering celebrated speech supporting the bill that became the Civil Rights Act of 1875. F O C U S On the evening of January 12, 1865, less than a month after Union forces captured Savannah, Georgia, twenty leaders of the city’s black community gathered for a discussion with General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. The con- Q U E S T I O N S versation revealed that the black leaders brought out of slavery a clear definition of freedom. Asked what he understood by slavery, Garrison s Frazier, a Baptist minister chosen as the group’s spokesman, responded did the former slaves and that it meant one person’s “receiving by irresistible power the work of slaveholders pursue in the another man, and not by his consent.” Freedom he defined as “placing postwar South? us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of our- selves.” The way to accomplish this was “to have land, and turn it and till s it by our own labor.” visions of Reconstruction? Sherman’s meeting with the black leaders foreshadowed some of the radical changes that would take place during the era known s as Reconstruction (meaning, literally, the rebuilding of the shattered political effects of Radi- nation). In the years following the Civil War, former slaves and their cal Reconstruction in the white allies, North and South, would seek to redefine the meaning and South? boundaries of American freedom. Previously an entitlement of whites, freedom would be expanded to include black Americans. The laws and s Constitution would be rewritten to guarantee African-Americans, for tors, in both the North and the first time in the nation’s history, recognition as citizens and equality South, for the abandon- before the law. Black men would be granted the right to vote, ushering ment of Reconstruction? in a period of interracial democracy throughout the South. Black schools, churches, and other institutions would flourish, laying the foundation for the modern African-American community. Many of the advances of Reconstruction would prove temporary, swept away during a campaign of violence in the South and the North’s retreat from the ideal of equal- ity. But Reconstruction laid the foundation for future struggles to extend freedom to all Americans. Four days after the meeting, Sherman responded to the black delegation by issuing Special Field Order 15. This set aside the Sea Islands and a large area along the South Carolina and Georgia coasts for the settlement of black families on forty-acre plots of land. He also offered them broken-down mules that the army could no longer use. In Sherman’s order lay the origins of the phrase, “forty acres and a mule,” which would reverberate across the South in the next few years. Among the emancipated slaves, Sherman’s order raised hopes that the end of slavery would be accompanied by the economic independence that they, like other Americans, believed essential to genuine freedom. 442 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M “What is freedom?” asked Congressman James A. Garfield in 1865. “Is it the bare privilege of not being chained? If this is all, then freedom is a bitter mockery, a cruel delusion.” Did freedom mean simply the absence of slavery, or did it imply other rights for the former slaves, and if so, which ones? Equal civil rights, the vote, ownership of property? During Reconstruction, freedom became a terrain of conflict, its substance open to different, often contradictory interpretations. Conflicts over freedom African-Americans’ understanding of freedom was shaped by their experiences as slaves and their observation of the free society around them. To begin with, freedom meant escaping the numerous injustices of slavery—punishment by the lash, the separation of families, denial of access to education, the sexual exploitation of black women by their owners—and sharing in the rights and opportunities of American citizens. “If I cannot do like a white man,” Henry Adams, an emancipated slave in Family Record, a lithograph marketed Louisiana, told his former master in 1865, “I am not free.” to former slaves after the Civil War, centers on an idealized portrait of a middle-class black family, with scenes of slavery and freedom. F a m i l i e s i n F r e e d o m With slavery dead, institutions that had existed before the war, like the black family, free blacks’ churches and schools, and the secret slave church, were strength- ened, expanded, and freed from white supervision. The family was central to the postemancipation black community. Former slaves made remarkable efforts to locate loved ones from whom they had been separated under slavery. One northern reporter in 1865 encoun- tered a freedman who had walked more than 600 miles from Georgia to North Carolina, searching for the wife and children from whom he had been sold away before the war. While freedom helped to stabilize family life, it also subtly altered relationships within the family. Immediately after the Civil War, planters complained that freedwomen had “withdrawn” from field labor and work as house servants. Many black women preferred to devote more time to their families than had been pos- sible under slavery, and men considered it a badge of T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 443 honor to see their wives remain at home. Eventually, the dire poverty of the black community would compel a far higher proportion of black women than white women to go to work for wages. C h u r c h a n d S c h o o l At the same time, blacks abandoned white-controlled religious institutions to create churches of their own. On the eve of the Civil War, 42,000 black Methodists worshiped in biracial South Carolina churches; by the end of Reconstruction, only 600 remained. As the major institution independent of white control, the church Five Generations of a Black Family, played a central role in the black community. A place of worship, it also an 1862 photograph that suggests housed schools, social events, and political gatherings. Black ministers the power of family ties among came to play a major role in politics. Some 250 held public office during emancipated slaves. Reconstruction. Another striking example of the freedpeople’s quest for individual and community improvement was their desire for education. The thirst for learn- ing sprang from many sources—a desire to read the Bible, the need to prepare for the economic marketplace, and the opportunity, which arose in 1867, to take part in politics. Blacks of all ages flocked to the schools established by Mother and Daughter Reading, Mt. Meigs, Alabama, an 1890 northern missionary societies, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and groups of ex- photograph by Rudolph Eickemeyer. slaves themselves. Reconstruction also witnessed the creation of the nation’s During Reconstruction and for years first black colleges, including Fisk University in Tennessee, Hampton thereafter, former slaves exhibited Institute in Virginia, and Howard University in the nation’s capital. a deep desire for education, and learning took place outside of school as well as within. P o l i t i c a l F r e e d o m In a society that had made political participation a core element of freedom, the right to vote inevitably became central to the former slaves’ desire for empowerment and equality. As Frederick Douglass put it soon after the South’s surrender in 1865, “Slavery is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.” In a “monarchial government,” Douglass explained, no “special” disgrace applied to those denied the right to vote. But in a democ- racy, “where universal suffrage is the rule,” excluding any group meant branding them with “the stigma of inferiority.” Anything less than full citizenship, black spokesmen insisted, would betray the nation’s democratic promise and the war’s meaning. To demon- strate their patriotism, blacks throughout the South organized Fourth of July celebrations. For years after the Civil War, white southerners would 444 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? The First African Church, Richmond, as depicted in Harper’s Weekly, June 27, 1874. The establishment of independent black churches was an enduring accomplishment of Reconstruction. “shut themselves within doors” on Independence Day, as a white resident of Charleston recorded in her diary, while former slaves commemorated the holiday themselves. L a n d , L a b o r , a n d F r e e d o m Like those of rural people throughout the world, former slaves’ ideas of freedom were directly related to landownership. On the land they would Freedom and landownership develop independent communities free of white control. Many former slaves insisted that through their unpaid labor, they had acquired a right to the land. “The property which they hold,” declared an Alabama black con- vention, “was nearly all earned by the sweat of our brows.” In some parts of the South, blacks in 1865 seized property, insisting that it belonged to them. In its individual elements and much of its language, former slaves’ definition of freedom resembled that of white Americans—self-ownership, Freedom’s meaning for former slaves family stability, religious liberty, political participation, and economic autonomy. But these elements combined to form a vision very much their own. For whites, freedom, no matter how defined, was a given, a birthright to be defended. For African-Americans, it was an open-ended process, a transformation of every aspect of their lives and of the society and cul- ture that had sustained slavery in the first place. Although the freedpeople failed to achieve full freedom as they understood it, their definition did much to shape national debate during the turbulent era of Reconstruction. M a s t e r s w i t h o u t S l a v e s Most white southerners reacted to military defeat and emancipation with The southern white reaction to dismay, not only because of the widespread devastation but also because emancipation they must now submit to northern demands. “The demoralization is T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 445 Two maps of the Barrow plantation illustrate the effects of emancipation T H E B A R R O W P L A N T A T I O N on rural life in the South. In 1860, 1860 1881 slaves lived in communal quarters near the owner’s house. Twenty years later, former slaves working as Sabrina sharecroppers lived scattered across Dalton the plantation and had their own Lizzie Dalton iver iver church and school. Frank Maxey Joe Bug Jim Reid ittle R ittle R L W L r Wr Nancy Pope ig i h g t h 's t 's Cane Pope B Church r B an Gus Barrow ra c School Willis n h c Bryant h Gin House Lem Bryant Gin House Lewis Watson Tom Wright Reuben Barrow Ben Thomas Omy Barrow "Granny" Slave Peter Tom Landlord’s Quarters Master's Barrow Thomas House House Milly Barrow Handy Barrow Old Isaac Calvin Tom Tang Branch Creek Parker Branch Creek Beckton Barrow Syll's Fork Syll's Fork Lem Douglas complete,” wrote a Georgia girl. “We are whipped, there is no doubt about it.” The appalling loss of life, a disaster without parallel in the American Confederate deaths experience, affected all classes of southerners. Nearly 260,000 men died for the Confederacy—more than one-fifth of the South’s adult male white population. The widespread destruction of work animals, farm buildings, and machinery ensured that economic revival would be slow and painful. In 1870, the value of property in the South, not counting that represented by slaves, was 30 percent lower than before the war. Planter families faced profound changes in the war’s aftermath. Many Planters lost not only their slaves but their life savings, which they had patrioti- cally invested in now-worthless Confederate bonds. Some, whose slaves departed the plantation, for the first time found themselves compelled to do physical labor. Southern planters sought to implement an understanding of freedom quite different from that of the former slaves. As they struggled to accept the reality of emancipation, most planters defined black freedom in the narrowest manner. As journalist Sidney Andrews discovered late in 1865, “The whites seem wholly unable to comprehend that freedom for the negro means the same thing as freedom for them.” 446 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? T h e F r e e L a b o r V i s i o n Along with former slaves and former masters, the victorious Republican North tried to implement its own vision of freedom. Central to its defini- tion was the antebellum principle of free labor, now further strengthened as a definition of the good society by the Union’s triumph. In the free labor Free labor and the good society vision of a reconstructed South, emancipated blacks, enjoying the same opportunities for advancement as northern workers, would labor more productively than they had as slaves. At the same time, northern capital and migrants would energize the economy. The South would eventually come to resemble the “free society” of the North, complete with public schools, small towns, and independent farmers. With planters seeking to establish a labor system as close to slavery as possible, and former slaves demanding economic autonomy and access to land, a long period of conflict over the organization and control of labor followed on plantations throughout the South. It fell to the Freedmen’s Winslow Homer’s 1876 painting , A Bureau, an agency established by Congress in March 1865, to attempt to Visit from the Old Mistress, depicts an imaginary meeting between a establish a working free labor system. southern white woman and her former slaves. Their stance and gaze suggest the tensions arising from the birth T h e F r e e d m e n ’ s B u r e a u of a new social order. Homer places his subjects on an equal footing, Under the direction of O. O. Howard, a graduate of Bowdoin College in yet maintains a space of separation Maine and a veteran of the Civil War, the bureau took on responsibilities between them. He exhibited the that can only be described as daunting. The bureau was an experiment in painting to acclaim at the Paris government social policy that seems to belong more comfortably to the Universal Exposition in 1878. New Deal of the 1930s or the Great Society of the 1960s (see Chapters 21 and 25, respec- tively) than to nineteenth-century America. Bureau agents were supposed to establish schools, provide aid to the poor and aged, settle disputes between whites and blacks and among the freedpeople, and secure for former slaves and white Unionists equal treatment before the courts. “It is not . . . in your power to fulfill one-tenth of the expec- tations of those who framed the Bureau,” General William T. Sherman wrote to Howard. “I fear you have Hercules’ task.” The bureau lasted from 1865 to 1870. Even at its peak, there were fewer than T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 447 The Freedmen’s Bureau, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868, depicts the bureau agent as a promoter of racial peace in the violent postwar South. Achievements of the 1,000 agents in the entire South. Nonetheless, the bureau’s achievements Freedmen’s Bureau in some areas, notably education and health care, were striking. By 1869, nearly 3,000 schools, serving more than 150,000 pupils in the South, reported to the bureau. Bureau agents also ran hospitals established dur- ing the war and provided medical care and drugs to both black and white southerners. T h e F a i l u r e o f L a n d R e f o r m One provision of the law establishing the bureau gave it the authority to divide abandoned and confiscated land into forty-acre plots for rental and eventual sale to the former slaves. In the summer of 1865, however, President Andrew Johnson and land Andrew Johnson, who had succeeded Lincoln, ordered nearly all land in reform federal hands returned to its former owners. A series of confrontations followed, notably in South Carolina and Georgia, where the army forcibly evicted blacks who had settled on “Sherman land.” When O. O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, traveled to the Sea Islands to inform blacks of the new policy, he was greeted with disbelief and protest. A committee of former slaves drew up petitions to Howard and President Johnson. Land, the freedmen insisted, was essential to the meaning of freedom. Without it, they declared, “we have not bettered our condition” from the days of slavery—“you will see, this is not the condition of really free men.” Because no land distribution took place, the vast majority of rural freedpeople remained poor and without property during Reconstruction. 448 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? They had no alternative but to work on white-owned plantations, often for their former owners. Far from being able to rise in the social scale through hard work, black men were largely confined to farm work, unskilled labor, and service jobs, and black women to positions in pri- vate homes as cooks and maids. The failure of land reform produced a deep sense of betrayal that survived among the former slaves and their descendants long after the end of Reconstruction. “No sir,” Mary Gaffney, an elderly ex-slave, recalled in the 1930s, “we were not given a thing but freedom.” Out of the conflict on the plantations, new systems of labor emerged in the different regions of the South. Sharecropping came to dominate the Cotton Belt and much of the Tobacco Belt of Virginia and North Carolina. Sharecropping initially arose as a compromise between blacks’ desire for land and planters’ demand for labor discipline. The system allowed each A nursemaid and her charge, from a black family to rent a part of a plantation, with the crop divided between daguerreotype around 1865. worker and owner at the end of the year. Sharecropping guaranteed the planters a stable resident labor force. Former slaves preferred it to gang labor because it offered them the prospect of working without day-to- day white supervision. But as the years went on, sharecropping became more and more oppressive. Sharecroppers’ economic opportunities were severely limited by a world market in which the price of farm products suffered a prolonged decline. T h e W h i t e F a r m e r The plight of the small farmer was not confined to blacks in the postwar South. Wartime devastation set in motion a train of events that perma- nently altered the independent way of life of white yeomen, leading to what they considered a loss of freedom. To obtain supplies from mer- chants, farmers were forced to take up the growing of cotton and pledge a part of the crop as collateral (property the creditor can seize if a debt is not paid). This system became known as the “crop lien.” Since interest rates The crop-lien system were extremely high and the price of cotton fell steadily, many farmers found themselves still in debt after marketing their portion of the crop at year’s end. They had no choice but to continue to plant cotton to obtain new loans. By the mid-1870s, white farmers, who cultivated only 10 percent of the South’s cotton crop in 1860, were growing 40 percent, and many who had owned their land had fallen into dependency as sharecroppers who now rented land owned by others. Both black and white farmers found themselves caught in the share- The burden of debt cropping and crop-lien systems. The workings of sharecropping and the T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 449 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m P e t i t i o n o f C o m m i t t e e i n B e h a l f o f t h e F r e e d m e n t o A n d r e w J o h n s o n ( 1 8 6 5 ) In the summer of 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered land that had been distributed to freed slaves in South Carolina and Georgia returned to its former owners. A committee of freedmen drafted a petition asking for the right to obtain land. Johnson did not, however, change his policy. We the freedmen of Edisto Island, South Carolina, have learned from you through Major General O. O. Howard . . . with deep sorrow and painful hearts of the possibility of [the] government restoring these lands to the former owners. We are well aware of the many perplexing and trying questions that burden your mind, and therefore pray to god (the preserver of all, and who has through our late and beloved President [Lincoln’s] proclamation and the war made us a free people) that he may guide you in making your decisions and give you that wisdom that cometh from above to settle these great and important questions for the best interests of the country and the colored race. Here is where secession was born and nurtured. Here is where we have toiled nearly all our lives as slaves and treated like dumb driven cattle. This is our home, we have made these lands what they were, we are the only true and loyal people that were found in possession of these lands. We have been always ready to strike for liberty and humanity, yea to fight if need be to preserve this glorious Union. Shall not we who are freedmen and have always been true to this Union have the same rights as are enjoyed by others? . . . Are not our rights as a free people and good citizens of these United States to be considered before those who were found in rebellion against this good and just government? . . . [Are] we who have been abused and oppressed for many long years not to be allowed the privilege of purchasing land but be subject to the will of these large land owners? God forbid. Land monopoly is injurious to the advancement of the course of freedom, and if government does not make some provision by which we as freedmen can obtain a homestead, we have not bettered our condition. . . . We look to you . . . for protection and equal rights with the privilege of purchasing a homestead—a homestead right here in the heart of South Carolina. 450 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” F r o m a S h a r e c r o p p i n g C o n t r a c t ( 1 8 6 6 ) Few former slaves were able to acquire land in the post–Civil War South. Most ended up as sharecroppers, working on white-owned land for a share of the crop at the end of the growing season. This contract, typical of thousands of others, originated in Tennessee. The laborers signed with an X, as they were illiterate. Thomas J. Ross agrees to employ the Freedmen to plant and raise a crop on his Rosstown Plantation. . . . On the following Rules, Regulations and Remunerations. The said Ross agrees to furnish the land to cultivate, and a sufficient number of mules & horses and feed them to make and house said crop and all necessary farming utensils to carry on the same and to give unto said Freedmen whose names appear below one half of all the cotton, corn and wheat that is raised on said place for the year 1866 after all the necessary expenses are deducted out that accrues on said crop. Outside of the Freedmen’s labor in harvesting, carrying to market and selling the same the said Freedmen . . . covenant and agrees to and with said Thomas J. Ross that for and in consideration of one half of the crop before mentioned that they will plant, cultivate, and raise under the management control and Superintendence of said Ross, in good faith, a cotton, corn and oat crop under his management for the year 1866. And we the said Freedmen agrees to furnish ourselves & families in provisions, clothing, medicine and medical bills and all, and every kind of other expenses that we may incur on said plantation for the year 1866 free of charge to said Ross. Should the said Ross furnish us any of the above supplies or any other kind of expenses, during said year, [we] are to settle and pay him out of the net proceeds of our part of the crop the retail price of the county at time of sale or any price we may agree upon—The said Ross shall keep a regular book account, against each and every one or the head of every family to be adjusted and settled at the end of the year. We furthermore bind ourselves to and with said Ross that we will do good work and labor ten hours a day on an average, winter and summer. . . . We further agree that we will lose all lost time, or pay at the rate of one dollar per day, rainy days excepted. In sickness and women lying in childbed are to lose the time and account for it to the other hands out Q U E S T I O N S of his or her part of the crop. . . . We furthermore bind ourselves that we will 1. Why do the black petitioners believe obey the orders of said Ross in all things in carrying that owning land is essential to the out and managing said crop for said year and be enjoyment of freedom? docked for disobedience . . . and are also respon- sible to said Ross if we carelessly, maliciously 2. In what ways does the contract limit maltreat any of his stock for said year to said Ross the freedom of the laborers? for damages to be assessed out of our wages. Samuel (X) Johnson, Thomas (X) Richard, 3. What do these documents suggest Tinny (X) Fitch, Jessie (X) Simmons, Sophe (X) about competing definitions of black Pruden, Henry (X) Pruden, Frances (X) Pruden, freedom in the aftermath of slavery? Elijah (X) Smith. V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 451 S H A R E C R O P P I N G I N T H E S O U T H , 1 8 8 0 Percentage of farms sharecropped (by county) 35–80% 26–34% 20–25% 13–19% 0–12% VIRGINIA NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE ARKANSAS SOUTH CAROLINA GEORGIA TEXAS MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA A t l a n t i c LOUISIANA O c e a n FLORIDA Gulf of Mexico 0 150 200 miles 0 150 200 kilometers By 1880, sharecropping had become crop-lien system are illustrated by the case of Matt Brown, a Mississippi the dominant form of agricultural farmer who borrowed money each year from a local merchant. He began labor in large parts of the South. The system involved both white and black 1892 with a debt of $226 held over from the previous year. By 1893, farmers. although he produced cotton worth $171, Brown’s debt had increased to $402, because he had borrowed $33 for food, $29 for clothing, $173 for supplies, and $112 for other items. Brown never succeeded in getting out of debt. He died in 1905; the last entry under his name in the merchant’s account book is a coffin. Even as the rural South stagnated economically, southern cities expe- Growth of southern cities rienced remarkable growth after the Civil War. As railroads penetrated the interior, they enabled merchants in market centers like Atlanta to trade directly with the North, bypassing coastal cities that had traditionally monopolized southern commerce. A new urban middle class of merchants, railroad promoters, and bankers reaped the benefits of the spread of cotton production in the postwar South. 452 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What visions of freedom did the former slaves and slaveholders pursue in the postwar South? The cotton depot at Guthrie, Texas. Bales of cotton have been loaded onto trains for shipment. After the Civil War, more and more white farmers began growing cotton to support their families, permanently altering their formerly self-sufficient way of life. A f t e r m a t h o f S l a v e r y The United States, of course, was not the only society to confront the prob- lem of the transition from slavery to freedom. Indeed, many parallels exist Emancipation in the Western between the debates during Reconstruction and struggles that followed Hemisphere slavery in other parts of the Western Hemisphere over the same issues of land, control of labor, and political power. Planters elsewhere held the same stereotypical views of black laborers as were voiced by their coun- terparts in the United States—former slaves were supposedly lazy and lacking in ambition, and thought that freedom meant an absence of labor. For their part, former slaves throughout the hemisphere tried to carve Chinese laborers at work on out as much independence as possible, both in their daily lives and in their a Louisiana plantation during Reconstruction. labor. On small Caribbean islands like Barbados, where no unoccupied land existed, former slaves had no alternative but to return to plantation labor. Elsewhere, the plantations either fell to pieces, as in Haiti, or continued operating with a new labor force composed of indentured ser- vants from India and China, as in Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana. Southern planters in the United States brought in a few Chinese laborers in an attempt to replace freedmen, but since the federal government opposed such efforts, the Chinese remained only a tiny proportion of the southern workforce. But if struggles over land and labor united its poste- mancipation experience with that of other societies, in T H E M E A N I N G O F F R E E D O M 453 one respect the United States was unique. Only in the United States were former slaves, within two years of the end of slavery, granted the right Emancipation and the to vote and, thus, given a major share of political power. Few anticipated right to vote this development when the Civil War ended. It came about as the result of one of the greatest political crises of American history—the battle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction. The struggle resulted in profound changes in the nature of citizenship, the structure of constitutional authority, and the meaning of American freedom. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N A n d r e w J o h n s o n To Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, fell the task of overseeing the restoration of the Union. Born in poverty in North Carolina, as a youth Johnson’s background Johnson worked as a tailor’s apprentice. Becoming a successful politician after moving to Tennessee, Johnson identified himself as the champion of his state’s “honest yeomen” and a foe of large planters, whom he described as a “bloated, corrupted aristocracy.” A strong defender of the Union, he became the only senator from a seceding state to remain at his post in Washington, D.C., when the Civil War began in 1861. When northern forces occupied Tennessee, Abraham Lincoln named him military gov- ernor. In 1864, Republicans nominated him to run for vice president as a symbol of the party’s hope of extending its organization into the South. Outlook In personality and outlook, Johnson proved unsuited for the respon- sibilities he shouldered after Lincoln’s death. A lonely, stubborn man, he was intolerant of criticism and unable to compromise. He lacked Lincoln’s political skills and keen sense of public opinion. Moreover, while Johnson had supported emancipation once Lincoln made it a goal of the war effort, he held deeply racist views. African-Americans, Johnson believed, had no role to play in Reconstruction. T h e F a i l u r e o f P r e s i d e n t i a l R e c o n s t r u c t i o n A little over a month after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and with Congress out of session until December, Johnson in May 1865 outlined his plan for reuniting the nation. He issued a series of proclamations that 454 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? began the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865–1867). Johnson offered a pardon (which restored political and property rights, except for Johnson’s program slaves) to nearly all white southerners who took an oath of allegiance. He excluded Confederate leaders and wealthy planters whose prewar property had been valued at more than $20,000. Most of those exempted, however, soon received individual pardons from the president. Johnson also appointed provisional governors and ordered them to call state con- ventions, elected by whites alone, that would establish loyal governments in the South. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repu- diate secession, and refuse to pay the Confederate debt—all unavoidable consequences of southern defeat—he granted the new governments a free hand in managing local affairs. The conduct of the southern governments elected under Johnson’s program turned most of the Republican North against the president. By and large, white voters returned prominent Confederates and members of the old elite to power. Reports of violence directed against former slaves and northern visitors in the South further alarmed Republicans. T h e B l a c k C o d e s But what aroused the most opposition to Johnson’s Reconstruction policy were the Black Codes, laws passed by the new southern governments that attempted to regulate the lives of the former slaves. These laws granted Regulating former slaves blacks certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. But they denied them the rights to testify Selling a Freedman to Pay His Fine at Monticello, Florida, an engraving from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, January 19, 1867. Under the Black Codes enacted by southern legislatures immediately after the Civil War, blacks convicted of “vagrancy”—often because they refused to sign contracts to work on plantations—were fined and, if unable to pay, auctioned off to work for the person who paid the fine. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 455 against whites, to serve on juries or in state militias, or to vote. And in response to planters’ demands that the freedpeople be required to work on the plantations, the Black Codes declared that those who failed to sign yearly labor contracts could be arrested and hired out to white landowners. Clearly, the death of slavery did not automatically mean the birth of freedom. But the Black Codes so completely violated free labor principles Reaction to Black Codes that they called forth a vigorous response from the Republican North. In general, few groups of rebels in history have been treated more leniently than the defeated Confederates. A handful of southern leaders were arrested, but most were quickly released. Only one was executed—Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison, where thousands of Union prisoners of war had died. Most of the Union army was swiftly demobilized. What moti- vated the North’s turn against Johnson’s policies was not a desire to “punish” the white South, but the inability of the South’s political leaders to accept the reality of emancipation as evidenced by the Black Codes. T h e R a d i c a l R e p u b l i c a n s When Congress assembled in December 1865, Johnson announced that with loyal governments functioning in all the southern states, the nation had been reunited. In response, Radical Republicans, who had grown increas- ingly disenchanted with Johnson during the summer and fall, called for the dissolution of these governments and the establishment of new ones with “rebels” excluded from power and black men guaranteed the right to vote. Thaddeus Stevens, leader of Radicals shared the conviction that Union victory created a golden opportu- the Radical Republicans in the nity to institutionalize the principle of equal rights for all, regardless of race. House of Representatives during Reconstruction. The most prominent Radicals in Congress were Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts, and Thaddeus Stevens, a lawyer and iron manufacturer who represented Pennsylvania in the House of Representatives. Before the Civil War, both had been outspoken foes of slavery and defenders of black rights. Stevens’s most cherished aim was to confiscate the land of disloyal planters and divide it among former slaves and northern migrants to the South. But his plan to make “small indepen- dent landholders” of the former slaves proved too radical even for many of his Radical colleagues and failed to pass. T h e O r i g i n s o f C i v i l R i g h t s With the South unrepresented, Republicans enjoyed an overwhelming majority in Congress. Most Republicans were moderates, not Radicals. Moderates believed that Johnson’s plan was flawed, but they desired to 456 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? work with the president to modify it. They feared that neither northern Radical Republicans versus nor southern whites would accept black suffrage. Moderates and Radicals moderates joined in refusing to seat the southerners recently elected to Congress, but moderates broke with the Radicals by leaving the Johnson governments in place. Early in 1866, Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois proposed two bills that reflected the moderates’ belief that Johnson’s policy required modi- fication. The first extended the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which had originally been established for only one year. The second, the Civil Rights Bill, was described by one congressman as “one of the most important bills ever presented to the House for its action.” It defined all persons born in the United States as citizens and spelled out rights they were to enjoy without The Civil Rights Bill of 1866 regard to race. Equality before the law was central to the measure—no longer could states enact laws like the Black Codes discriminating between white and black citizens. So were free labor values. According to the law, no state could deprive any citizen of the right to make contracts, bring lawsuits, or enjoy equal protection of one’s person and property. These, said Trumbull, were the “fundamental rights belonging to every man as a free man.” The bill made no mention of the right to vote for blacks. In President Andrew Johnson, in an constitutional terms, the Civil Rights Bill represented the first attempt to 1868 lithograph by Currier and Ives. define in law the essence of freedom. Because of Johnson’s stubborn To the surprise of Congress, Johnson vetoed both bills. Both, he said, opposition to the congressional would centralize power in the national government and deprive the states Reconstruction policy, one disgruntled citizen drew a crown on of the authority to regulate their own affairs. Moreover, he argued, blacks his head with the words, “I am King.” did not deserve the rights of citizenship. Congress failed by a single vote to muster the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto of the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill (although later in 1866, it did extend the bureau’s life to 1870). But in April 1866, the Civil Rights Bill became the first major law in American history to be passed over a presidential veto. T h e F o u r t e e n t h A m e n d m e n t Congress now proceeded to adopt its own plan of Reconstruction. In June, it approved and sent to the states for ratification the Fourteenth Amendment, which placed in the Constitution the principle of citizenship for all persons born in the United States, and which empowered the fed- eral government to protect the rights of all Americans. The amendment prohibited the states from abridging the “privileges and immunities” of citizens or denying them the “equal protection of the law.” This broad language opened the door for future Congresses and the federal courts to breathe meaning into the guarantee of legal equality. T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 457 In a compromise between the radical and moderate positions on black suffrage, the amendment did not grant blacks the right to vote. But it did provide that if a state denied the vote to any group of men, that state’s representation in Congress would be reduced. (This provision did not apply when states barred women from voting.) The abolition of slavery Black suffrage and political threatened to increase southern political power, since now all blacks, not power merely three-fifths as in the case of slaves, would be counted in determin- ing a state’s representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment offered the leaders of the white South a choice—allow black men to vote and keep their state’s full representation in the House of Representatives, or limit the vote to whites and sacrifice part of their political power. By writing into the Constitution the principle that equality before the law Significance of the Fourteenth regardless of race is a fundamental right of all American citizens, the amend- Amendment ment made the most important change in that document since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. T h e R e c o n s t r u c t i o n A c t The Fourteenth Amendment became the central issue of the political campaign of 1866. Johnson embarked on a speaking tour of the North. Denouncing his critics, the president made wild accusations that the Radicals were plotting to assassinate him. His behavior further under- mined public support for his policies, as did riots that broke out in Memphis and New Orleans, in which white policemen and citizens killed dozens of blacks. In the northern congressional elections that fall, Republicans op posed to Johnson’s policies won a sweeping victory. Nonetheless, at the president’s urging, every southern state but Tennessee refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. The intransigence of Johnson and the bulk of the white South pushed moderate Republicans toward the Radicals. In March 1867, over Johnson’s veto, Congress adopted the Reconstruction Act, which temporar- ily divided the South into five military districts and called for the creation of new state governments, with black men given the right to vote. Thus began Radical Reconstruction the period of Radical Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. I m p e a c h m e n t a n d t h e E l e c t i o n o f G r a n t In March 1867, Congress adopted the Tenure of Office Act, barring the president from removing certain officeholders, including cabinet mem- bers, without the consent of the Senate. Johnson considered this an unconstitutional restriction on his authority. In February 1868, he removed 458 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? A Democratic Party broadside from the election of 1866 in Pennsylvania uses racist imagery to argue that government assistance aids lazy former slaves at the expense of hardworking whites. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. The House of Representatives responded by approving articles of impeachment—that is, it presented charges against Johnson to the Senate, which had to decide whether to remove him from office. That spring, for the first time in American history, a president was placed on trial before the Senate for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” By this The trial of Andrew Johnson point, virtually all Republicans considered Johnson a failure as president. But some moderates feared that conviction would damage the constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the executive. Johnson’s lawyers assured moderate Republicans that, if acquitted, he would stop interfering with Reconstruction policy. The final tally was 35-19 to convict Johnson, one vote short of the two-thirds necessary to remove him. Seven Republicans had joined the Democrats in voting to acquit the president. A few days after the vote, Republicans nominated Ulysses S. Grant, Ulysses Grant the Union’s most prominent military hero, as their candidate for president. Grant’s Democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York. Reconstruction became the central issue of the bitterly fought 1868 campaign. Democrats denounced Reconstruction as unconstitutional and condemned black suffrage as a violation of America’s political tradi- tions. They appealed openly to racism. Seymour’s running mate, Francis P. Blair Jr., charged Republicans with placing the South under the rule of “a T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 459 semi-barbarous race” who longed to “subject T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L the white women to their unbridled lust.” E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 6 8 T h e F i f t e e n t h A m e n d m e n t 5 5 7 Grant won the election of 1868, although 3 4 8 33 12 by a margin—300,000 of 6 million votes 8 4 cast—that many Republicans found uncom- 26 7 6 3 3 8 21 16 13 3 fortably slim. The result led Congress to 5 5 3 11 7 11 adopt the Fifteenth Amendment, which 10 9 prohibited the federal and state govern- 5 6 8 9 ments from denying any citizen the right to 7 vote because of race. Bitterly opposed by the 3 Democratic Party, it was ratified in 1870. Non-voting territory Although the Fifteenth Amendment opened the door to suffrage restrictions Electoral Vote Popular Vote Party Candidate (Share) (Share) not explicitly based on race—literacy tests, Republican Grant 214 (73%) 3,012,833 (53%) property qualifications, and poll taxes—and Southern Democrat Seymour 80 (27%) 2,703,249 (47%) Not voting due to Reconstruction did not extend the right to vote to women, it State legislature cast the electoral votes for Grant marked the culmination of four decades of abolitionist agitation. “Nothing in all his- tory,” exclaimed veteran abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, equaled “this wonderful, quiet, sudden transformation of four millions of human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot-box.” The Fifteenth Amendment, an 1870 lithograph marking the ratification of the constitutional amendment prohibiting states from denying citizens the right to vote because of race. Surrounding an image of a celebration parade are portraits of Abraham Lincoln; President Ulysses S. Grant and his vice president, Schuyler Colfax; the abolitionists John Brown, Martin R. Delany, and Frederick Douglass; and Hiram Revels, the first black to serve in the U.S. Senate. At the bottom are scenes of freedom—education, family, political representation, and church life. 460 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the competing visions of Reconstruction? T h e “ G r e a t C o n s t i t u t i o n a l R e v o l u t i o n ” Effects of Reconstruction The laws and amendments of Reconstruction reflected the intersection amendments of two products of the Civil War era—a newly empowered national state, and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law. What Republican leader Carl Schurz called the “great Constitutional revolution” of Reconstruction transformed the federal system and with it, the language of freedom so central to American political culture. Before the Civil War, American citizenship had been closely linked to race. But the laws and amendments of Reconstruction repudiated the idea that citizenship was an entitlement of whites alone. And, as one congress- Race and citizenship man noted, the amendments expanded the liberty of whites as well as blacks, including “the millions of people of foreign birth who will flock to our shores.” The new amendments also transformed the relationship between the federal government and the states. The Bill of Rights had linked civil liberties to the autonomy of the states. Its language—“Congress shall make no law”—reflected the belief that concentrated national power posed the greatest threat to freedom. The authors of the Reconstruction amendments assumed that rights required national power to enforce them. Rather than a threat to liberty, the federal government, in Charles Sumner’s words, had become “the custodian of freedom.” The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from Constitutional significance a document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minori- ties could stake a claim to freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government. In the twentieth century, many of the Supreme Court’s most important decisions expanding the rights of American citi- zens were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps most notably the 1954 Brown ruling that outlawed school segregation (see Chapter 24). T h e R i g h t s o f W o m e n “The contest with the South that destroyed slavery,” wrote the Philadelphia lawyer Sidney George Fisher in his diary, “has caused an immense increase in the popular passion for liberty and equality.” But advocates of women’s rights encountered the limits of the Reconstruction commitment Women and the limits of to equality. Women activists saw Reconstruction as the moment to claim equality their own emancipation. The rewriting of the Constitution, declared suf- frage leader Olympia Brown, offered the opportunity to sever the blessings of freedom from sex as well as race and to “bury the black man and the woman in the citizen.” T H E M A K I N G O F R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 461 Even Radical Republicans insisted that Reconstruction was the “Negro’s hour” (the hour, that is, of the black male). The Fourteenth Amend ment for the first time introduced the word “male” into the Constitution, in its clause penalizing a state for denying any group of men the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment outlawed discrimination in voting based on race but not gender. These measures pro- duced a bitter split both between feminists and Radical Republicans, and within femi- nist circles. Some leaders, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, denounced their former abolitionist allies and moved to sever the women’s rights move- A Delegation of Advocates of Woman ment from its earlier moorings in the antislavery tradition. Suffrage Addressing the House Thus, even as it rejected the racial definition of freedom that had Judiciary Committee, an engraving from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reconstruction left the Newspaper, February 4, 1871. The gender boundary largely intact. When women tried to use the rewritten group includes Elizabeth Cady legal code and Constitution to claim equal rights, they found the courts Stanton, seated just to the right of the unreceptive. Myra Bradwell invoked the idea of free labor in challenging speaker, and Susan B. Anthony, at an Illinois stat ute limiting the practice of law to men, but the Supreme the table on the extreme right. Court in 1873 rebuffed her claim. Free labor principles, the justices declared, did not apply to women, since “the law of the Creator” had assigned them to “the domestic sphere.” Despite their limitations, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments America’s great departure and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 marked a radical departure in American and world history. Alone among the nations that abolished slavery in the nineteenth century, the United States, within a few years of emancipation, clothed its former slaves with citizenship rights equal to those of whites. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 inaugurated America’s first real experi- ment in interracial democracy. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H “ T h e T o c s i n o f F r e e d o m ” Among the former slaves, the passage of the Reconstruction Act inspired an Political action by outburst of political organization. At mass political meetings—community African-Americans gatherings attended by men, women, and children—African-Americans 462 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the South? Electioneering at the South, an engraving from Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868, depicts a speaker at a political meeting in the rural South. Women as well as men took part in these grassroots gatherings. staked their claim to equal citizenship. Blacks, declared an Alabama meeting, deserved “exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men. We ask for nothing more and will be content with nothing less.” Determined to exercise their new rights as citizens, thousands joined the Union League, an organization closely linked to the Republican Party, and the vast majority of eligible African-Americans registered to vote. James K. Green, a former slave in Hale County, Alabama, and a League The First Vote, an engraving from organizer, went on to serve eight years in the Alabama legislature. In Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867, the 1880s, Green looked back on his political career. Before the war, he depicts the first biracial elections in declared, “I was entirely ignorant; I knew nothing more than to obey my southern history. The voters represent master; and there were thousands of us in the same attitude. . . . But the key sources of the black political leadership that emerged during tocsin [warning bell] of freedom sounded and knocked at the door and we Reconstruction—the artisan carrying walked out like free men and shouldered the responsibilities.” his tools, the well-dressed city person By 1870, all the former Confederate states had been readmitted to (probably free before the war), and the Union, and in a region where the Republican Party had not existed the soldier. before the war, nearly all were under Republican control. Their new state constitutions, drafted in 1868 and 1869 by the first public bodies in American history with substantial black representation, marked a consid- erable improvement over those they replaced. The constitutions greatly expanded public responsibilities. They established the region’s first state- funded systems of free public education, and they created new peniten- tiaries, orphan asylums, and homes for the insane. The constitutions guaranteed equality of civil and political rights and abolished practices of the antebellum era such as whipping as a punishment for crime, property qualifications for officeholding, and imprisonment for debt. A few states initially barred former Confederates from voting, but this policy was quickly abandoned by the new state governments. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H 463 T h e B l a c k O f f i c e h o l d e r Throughout Reconstruction, black voters provided the bulk of the Republican Party’s support. But African-Americans did not control Reconstruction politics, as their opponents frequently charged. The high- est offices remained almost entirely in white hands, and only in South Carolina, where blacks made up 60 percent of the population, did they form a majority of the legislature. Nonetheless, the fact that some 2,000 African-Americans in African-Americans held public office during Reconstruction marked public office a fundamental shift of power in the South and a radical departure in American government. African-Americans were represented at every level of government. Fourteen were elected to the national House of Representatives. Two blacks served in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction, both repre- senting Mississippi. Hiram Revels, who had been born free in North Carolina, in 1870 became the first black senator in American history. The second, Blanche K. Bruce, a former slave, was elected in 1875. At state and local levels, the presence of black officeholders and their white allies A portrait of Hiram Revels, the first black U. S. senator, by Theodore made a real difference in southern life, ensuring that blacks accused of Kaufmann, a German-born artist who crimes would be tried before juries of their peers and enforcing fairness emigrated to the United States in in such aspects of local government as road repair, tax assessment, and 1855. Lithograph copies sold widely poor relief. in the North during Reconstruction. In South Carolina and Louisiana, homes of the South’s wealthiest and Frederick Douglass, commenting best-educated free black communities, most prominent Reconstruction on the dignified image, noted that African-Americans “so often see officeholders had never experienced slavery. In addition, a number of ourselves described and painted as black Reconstruction officials, like Pennsylvania-born Jonathan J. Wright, monkeys, that we think it a great who served on the South Carolina Supreme Court, had come from the piece of fortune to find an exception North after the Civil War. The majority, however, were former slaves who to this general rule.” had established their leadership in the black community by serving in the Union army; working as ministers, teachers, or skilled craftsmen; or engaging in Union League organizing. C a r p e t b a g g e r s a n d S c a l a w a g s The new southern governments also brought to power new groups of whites. Many Reconstruction officials were northerners who for one reason or another had made their homes in the South after the war. Their opponents dubbed them “carpetbaggers,” implying that they had packed all their belongings in a suitcase and left their homes in order to reap the spoils of office in the South. Some carpetbaggers were undoubtedly corrupt adventurers. The large majority, however, were former Union 464 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the social and political effects of Radical Reconstruction in the South? soldiers who decided to remain in the South when the war ended, before there was any prospect of going into politics. Most white Republicans, however, had been born in the South. Southern Republicans Former Confederates reserved their greatest scorn for these “scalawags,” whom they considered traitors to their race and region. Some southern- born Republicans were men of stature and wealth, like James L. Alcorn, the owner of one of Mississippi’s largest plantations and the state’s first Republican governor. Most “scalawags,” however, were non-slaveholding white farmers from the southern upcountry. Many had been wartime Unionists, and they now cooperated with the Republicans in order to pre- vent “rebels” from returning to power. S o u t h e r n R e p u b l i c a n s i n P o w e r In view of the daunting challenges they faced, the remarkable thing is not that Reconstruction governments in many respects failed, but how much they did accomplish. Perhaps their greatest achievement lay in establish- ing the South’s first state-supported public schools. The new educational State-supported public schools systems served both black and white children, although generally in schools segregated by race. Only in New Orleans were the public schools integrated during Reconstruction, and only in South Carolina did the state university admit black students (elsewhere, separate colleges were established). The new governments also pioneered civil rights legislation. Civil rights legislation Their laws made it illegal for railroads, hotels, and other institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Enforcement varied considerably from locality to locality, but Reconstruction established for the first time at the state level a standard of equal citizenship and a recognition of blacks’ right to a share of public services. Republican governments also took steps to strengthen the position of rural laborers and promote the South’s economic recovery. They passed laws to ensure that agricultural laborers and sharecroppers had the first claim on harvested crops, rather than merchants to whom the landowner owed money. South Carolina created a state Land Commission, which by 1876 had settled 14,000 black families and a few poor whites on their own farms. T h e Q u e s t f o r P r o s p e r i t y Rather than on land distribution, however, the Reconstruction governments Economic development during pinned their hopes for southern economic growth and opportunity for Reconstruction African-Americans and poor whites alike on regional economic development. R A D I C A L R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H 465 A group of black students and their teacher in a picture taken by an amateur photographer, probably a Union army veteran, while touring Civil War battlefields. Railroad construction Railroad construction, they believed, was the key to transforming the South into a society of booming factories, bustling towns, and diversified agriculture. Every state during Reconstruction helped to finance railroad construction, and through tax reductions and other incentives tried to attract northern manufacturers to invest in the region. The program had mixed results. Economic development in general remained weak. To their supporters, the governments of Radical Reconstruction presented a complex pattern of disappointment and accomplishment. A revitalized southern economy failed to materialize, and most African- Biracial democracy Americans remained locked in poverty. On the other hand, biracial demo- cratic government, a thing unknown in American history, for the first time functioned effectively in many parts of the South. The conservative elite that had dominated southern government from colonial times to 1867 found itself excluded from political power, while poor whites, newcomers from the North, and former slaves cast ballots, sat on juries, and enacted and administered laws. It is a measure of how far change had progressed that the reaction against Reconstruction proved so extreme. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N R e c o n s t r u c t i o n ’ s O p p o n e n t s The South’s traditional leaders—planters, merchants, and Democratic politicians—bitterly opposed the new governments. “Intelligence, virtue, Sources of opposition and patriotism” in public life, declared a protest by prominent southern 466 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? Democrats, had given way to “ignorance, stupidity, and vice.” Corruption did exist during Reconstruction, but it was con- fined to no race, region, or party. The rapid growth of state budgets and the benefits to be gained from public aid led in some states to a scramble for influence that pro- duced bribery, insider dealing, and a get- rich-quick atmosphere. Southern frauds, however, were dwarfed by those practiced in these years by the Whiskey Ring, which involved high officials of the Grant admin- istration, and by New York’s Tweed Ring, controlled by the Democrats, whose thefts ran into the tens of millions of dollars. (These are discussed in the next chapter.) The rising taxes needed to pay for schools and other new public facilities and to assist railroad development were another cause of opposition to Reconstruction. Many poor whites who had initially supported the Republican Party turned against it when it became clear that their economic situation was not improving. The most basic reason for opposi- tion to Reconstruction, however, was that most white southerners could not accept the idea of former slaves voting, holding office, and enjoying equality before the law. Opponents launched a campaign of violence in an effort to end Republican rule. Their actions posed a fundamental challenge both for Reconstruction A cartoon from around 1870 governments in the South and for policymakers in Washington, D.C. illustrates a key theme of the racist opposition to Reconstruction—that blacks had forced themselves upon “ A R e i g n o f T e r r o r ” whites and gained domination over them. A black school teacher inflicts The Civil War ended in 1865, but violence remained widespread in large punishment on a white student in an integrated classroom, and a racially parts of the postwar South. In the early years of Reconstruction, violence mixed jury judges a white defendant. was mostly local and unorganized. Blacks were assaulted and murdered for refusing to give way to whites on city sidewalks, using “insolent” T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 467 language, challenging end-of-year contract settlements, and attempting to buy land. The violence that greeted the advent of Republican governments after 1867, however, was far more pervasive and more directly moti- vated by politics. In wide areas of the South, secret societies sprang Campaigns of violence up with the aim of preventing blacks from voting and destroying the organization of the Republican Party by assassinating local leaders and public officials. The most notorious such organization was the Ku Klux Klan, which in effect served as a military arm of the Democratic Party in the South. From its founding in 1866 in Tennessee, the Klan was a terror- ist organization. It committed some of the most brutal criminal acts in American history. In many counties throughout the South, it launched what one victim called a “reign of terror” against Republican leaders, black and white. A Prospective Scene in the City of The Klan’s victims included white Republicans, among them war- Oaks, a cartoon in the September 1, time Union ists and local officeholders, teachers, and party organizers. 1868, issue of the Independent But African-Americans—local political leaders, those who managed to Monitor, a Democratic newspaper acquire land, and others who in one way or another defied the norms published in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The cartoon sent a warning to of white supremacy—bore the brunt of the violence. On occasion, vio- the Reverend A. S. Lakin, who lence escalated from assaults on individuals to mass terrorism and even had moved from Ohio to become local insurrections. The bloodiest act of violence during Reconstruction president of the University of took place in Colfax, Louisiana, in 1873, where armed whites assaulted Alabama, and Dr. N. B. Cloud, a the town with a small cannon. Hundreds of former slaves were mur- southern-born Republican serving as Alabama’s superintendent of public dered, including fifty members of a black militia unit after they had education. The Ku Klux Klan forced surrendered. both men from their positions. In 1870 and 1871, Congress adopted three Enforcement Acts, outlawing ter- rorist societies and allowing the presi- dent to use the army against them. These laws continued the expansion of national authority during Reconstruction. In 1871, President Grant dispatched federal mar- shals, backed up by troops in some areas, to arrest hundreds of accused Klansmen. Many Klan leaders fled the South. After a series of well-publicized trials, the Klan went out of existence. In 1872, for the first time since the Civil War, peace reigned in most of the former Confederacy. 468 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? T h e L i b e r a l R e p u b l i c a n s Despite the Grant administration’s effective response to Klan terrorism, Waning commitment to the North’s commitment to Reconstruction waned during the 1870s. the North Northerners increasingly felt that the South should be able to solve its own problems without constant interference from Washington. The federal government had freed the slaves, made them citizens, and given them the right to vote. Now, blacks should rely on their own resources, not demand further assistance. In 1872, an influential group of Republicans, alienated by corruption within the Grant administration and believing that the growth of federal power during and after the war needed to be curtailed, formed their own party. They included Republican founders like Lyman Trumbull and prominent editors and journalists such as E. L. Godkin of The Nation. Calling themselves Liberal Republicans, they nominated Horace Greeley, editor of Liberal Republicans the New York Tribune, for president. Democratic criticisms of Recon struction found a receptive audi- ence among the Liberals. As in the North, they became convinced, the “best men” of the South had been excluded from power while “ignorant” voters controlled politics, producing corruption and mis- government. Greeley had spent most of his career, first as a Whig and then as a Republican, denouncing the Democratic Party. But with the Changes in graphic artist Thomas Nast’s depiction of blacks in Harper’s Weekly mirrored the evolution of Republican sentiment in the North. And Not This Man? August 5, 1865, shows the black soldier as an upstanding citizen deserving of the vote. Colored Rule in a Reconstructed (?) State, March 14, 1874, suggests that Reconstruction legislatures had become travesties of democratic government. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 469 1872 election Republican split presenting an opportunity to repair their political fortunes, Democratic leaders endorsed Greeley as their candidate. But many rank-and-file Democrats, unable to bring themselves to vote for Greeley, stayed at home on election day. As a result, Greeley suffered a devastating defeat by Grant, whose margin of more than 700,000 popular votes was the largest in a nineteenth-century presidential contest. But Greeley’s campaign placed on the northern agenda the one issue on which the Liberal reformers and the Democrats could agree—a new policy toward the South. T h e N o r t h ’ s R e t r e a t The Liberal attack on Reconstruction, which continued after 1872, con- tributed to a resurgence of racism in the North. Journalist James S. Pike, a leading Greeley supporter, in 1874 published The Prostrate State, an influential account of a visit to South Carolina. The book depicted a state engulfed by political corruption, drained by governmental extrava- gance, and under the control of “a mass of black barbarism.” Resurgent racism offered a convenient explanation for the alleged “failure” of Reconstruction. The solution, for many, was to restore leading whites to political power. Factors weakening Other factors also weakened northern support for Reconstruction. Reconstruction In 1873, the country plunged into a severe economic depression. Distracted by economic problems, Republicans were in no mood to devote further attention to the South. The depression dealt the South a severe blow and further weakened the prospect that Republicans could revitalize the region’s economy. Democrats made substantial gains throughout the nation in the elections of 1874. For the first time since the Civil War, their party took control of the House of Representatives. Before the new Congress met, the old one enacted a final piece of Reconstruction legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This outlawed racial discrimination in places of public accommodation like hotels and theaters. But it was clear that the northern public was retreating from Reconstruction. The Supreme Court and The Supreme Court whittled away at the guarantees of black rights Reconstruction Congress had adopted. In the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the justices ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment had not altered traditional fed- eralism. Most of the rights of citizens, it declared, remained under state control. Three years later, in United States v. Cruikshank, the Court gutted 470 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? the Enforcement Acts by throwing out the convictions of some of those responsible for the Colfax Massacre of 1873. T h e T r i u m p h o f t h e R e d e e m e r s By the mid-1870s, Reconstruction was clearly on the defensive. Democrats had already regained control of states with substantial white voting Democratic victories at majorities such as Tennessee, North Carolina, and Texas. The victori- the polls ous Democrats called themselves Redeemers, since they claimed to have “redeemed” the white South from corruption, misgovernment, and north- ern and black control. In those states where Reconstruction governments survived, violence again erupted. This time, the Grant administration showed no desire to intervene. In Mississippi, in 1875, armed Democrats destroyed ballot Return of violence boxes and drove former slaves from the polls. The result was a Democratic landslide and the end of Reconstruction in Mississippi. Similar events R E C O N S T R U C T I O N I N T H E S O U T H , 1 8 6 7 – 1 8 7 7 PENNSYLVANIA COLORADO INDIANA OHIO ILLINOIS MARYLANDDELAWARE KANSAS WEST VIRGINIA MISSOURI VIRGINIA 1870 (1873) KENTUCKY NEW MEXICO NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE 1868 (1876) TERRITORY INDIAN 1866 (1870) TERRITORY ARKANSAS 1868 (1874) SOUTH CAROLINA 1868 (1876) MISSISSIPPI ALABAMA GEORGIA 1870 (1875) 1868 (1874) 1870 (1871) TEXAS 1870 (1873) LOUISIANA A t l a n t i c 1868 (1876) O c e a n FLORIDA 1868 (1876) Gulf of Mexico Former Confederate states 1869 Date of readmission to the Union 0 150 300 miles (1873) Date of election that produced Democratic control of legislature 0 150 300 kilometers and governorship T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 471 took place in South Carolina in 1876. Democrats nominated for gover- nor former Confederate general Wade Hampton. Hampton promised to respect the rights of all citizens of the state, but his supporters, inspired by Democratic tactics in Mississippi, launched a wave of intimidation. Democrats intended to carry the election, one planter told a black official, “if we have to wade in blood knee-deep.” T h e D i s p u t e d E l e c t i o n a n d B a r g a i n o f 1 8 7 7 Events in South Carolina directly affected the outcome of the presidential campaign of 1876. To succeed Grant, the Republicans nominated Gov- Rutherford B. Hayes ernor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. The Democrats chose as his opponent New York’s governor, Samuel J. Tilden. By this time, only South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana remained under Republican control. The election turned out to be so close that whoever captured these states—which both parties claimed to have carried—would become the next president. Unable to resolve the impasse on its own, Congress in January 1877 appointed a fifteen-member Electoral Commission, composed of sena- tors, representatives, and Supreme Court justices. Republicans enjoyed an 8-7 majority on the commission, and to no one’s surprise, the members decided by T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L that margin that Hayes had carried the dis- E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 7 6 puted southern states and had been elected president. Even as the commission deliberated, 5 5 7 2 5 however, behind-the-scenes negotiations 1 13 10 35 11 took place between leaders of the two par- 4 3 11 29 6 9 ties. Hayes’s representatives agreed to 3 21 22 15 3 3 5 recognize Democratic control of the entire 6 5 15 11 8 12 10 South and to avoid further intervention 12 6 7 in local affairs. For their part, Democrats 8 10 11 promised not to dispute Hayes’s right to 8 8 office and to respect the civil and political 4 rights of blacks. Non-voting territory Thus was concluded the Bargain of Electoral Vote Popular Vote 1877. Hayes became president and quickly Party Candidate (Share) (Share) ordered federal troops to stop guarding Republican Hayes 185 (50%) 4,036,298 (48%) Democrat Tilden 184 (50%) the state houses in Louisiana and South 4,300,590 (51%) Greenback Cooper 0 (0%) 93,895 (1%) Carolina, allowing Democratic claimants Disputed (assigned to Hayes by electoral commission) to become governors. (Contrary to legend, 472 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” What were the main factors, in both the North and South, for the abandonment of Reconstruction? Hayes did not remove the last soldiers from the South—he simply ordered them to return to their barracks.) The triumphant southern Democrats failed to live up to their pledge to recognize blacks as equal citizens. T h e E n d o f R e c o n s t r u c t i o n As a historical process—the nation’s adjustment to the destruction of slavery—Reconstruction continued well after 1877. Blacks continued to vote and, in some states, hold office into the 1890s. But as a distinct era of national history—when Republicans controlled much of the South, blacks exercised significant political power, and the federal government accepted the responsibility for protecting the fundamental rights of all American citizens—Reconstruction had come to an end. Despite its limitations, Reconstruction was a remarkable chapter in the story of American free- dom. Nearly a century would pass before the nation again tried to bring Is This a Republican Form of equal rights to the descendants of slaves. The civil rights era of the 1950s Government?, a cartoon by Thomas and 1960s would sometimes be called the Second Reconstruction. Nast in Harper’s Weekly, September 2, 1876, illustrates his conviction that the overthrow of Reconstruction meant that the United States was not prepared to live up to its democratic ideals or protect the rights of black citizens threatened by violence. T H E O V E R T H R O W O F R E C O N S T R U C T I O N 473 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. In 1865, the former Confederate general Robert Freedmen’s Bureau (p. 447) Richardson remarked that “the emancipated slaves own sharecropping (p. 449) crop-lien system (p. 449) nothing, because nothing but freedom has been given to Black Codes (p. 455) them.” Explain whether this would be an accurate assess- Civil Rights Bill of 1866 (p. 457) ment of Reconstruction twelve years later. Fourteenth Amendment (p. 457) Reconstruction Act (p. 458) 2. The women’s movement split into two separate national Fifteenth Amendment (p. 460) organizations in part because the Fifteenth Amendment women’s rights (p. 461) did not give women the vote. Explain why the two groups carpetbaggers and scalawags (p. 464) split. Ku Klux Klan (p. 468) Colfax Massacre (p. 468) 3. How did black families, churches, schools, and other Enforcement Acts (p. 468) institutions contribute to the development of African- Civil Rights Act of 1875 (p. 470) American culture and political activism in this period? Slaughterhouse Cases (p. 470) Redeemers (p. 471) 4. Why did ownership of land and control of labor become Bargain of 1877 (p. 472) major points of contention between former slaves and whites in the South? 5. By what methods did southern whites seek to limit African-American civil rights and liberties? How did the federal government respond? 6. How did the failure of land reform and continued poverty lead to new forms of servitude for both blacks and whites? wwnorton.com 7. What caused the confrontation between President /studyspace Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction policies? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE 8. What national issues and attitudes combined to bring an s end to Reconstruction by 1877? s s 9. By 1877, how did the condition of former slaves in the s United States compare with that of freedmen around the s globe? 474 C h a p t e r 1 5  “What Is Freedom?” C H A P T E R 1 6 1872 Crédit Mobilier Scandal 1873 Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s Gilded Age 1876 Battle of the Little Bighorn 1877 Reconstruction ends A M E R I C A ’ S Great Railroad Strike 1879 Henry George’s Progress and Poverty 1883 Civil Service Act G I L D E D A G E Railroads create time zones 1886 Knights of Labor’s membership peaks Haymarket affair  1887 Interstate Commerce Commission created Dawes Act 1 8 7 0 – 1 8 9 0 1888 Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 1889 Andrew Carnegie’s “Wealth” 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives Massacre at Wounded Knee 1893 Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis 1894 Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against Commonwealth 1895 United States v. E. C. Knight Co. 1899 Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class 1905 Lochner v. New York Forging the Shaft, a painting from the 1870s by the American artist John Ferguson Weir, depicts workers in a steel factory making a propeller shaft for an ocean liner. Weir illustrates both the dramatic power of the factory at a time when the United States was overtaking European countries in manufacturing, and the fact that industrial production still required hard physical labor. F O C U S An immense crowd gathered in New York Harbor on October 28, 1886, for the dedication of Liberty Enlightening the World, a fitting symbol for a nation now wholly free. The idea for the statue originated in 1865 with Édouard de Laboulaye, a French educator and Q U E S T I O N S the author of several books on the United States, as a response to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Measuring more than 150 feet from s torch to toe and standing atop a huge pedestal, the edifice was the tallest make the United States a man-made structure in the Western Hemisphere. mature industrial society In time, the Statue of Liberty, as it came to be called, would become after the Civil War? Americans’ most revered national icon. For over a century it has stood as a symbol of freedom. The statue has welcomed millions of immigrants— s the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” celebrated in a poem by formed economically and Emma Lazarus inscribed on its base in 1903. In the years since its dedi- socially in this period? cation, the statue’s familiar image has been reproduced by folk artists in every conceivable medium and has been used by advertisers to promote s everything from cigarettes and lawn mowers to war bonds. It has become political system effective a powerful international symbol as well. in meeting its goals? The year of the statue’s dedication, 1886, also witnessed the “great upheaval,” a wave of strikes and labor protests that touched every part s of the nation. The 600 dignitaries (598 of them men) who gathered on development of the Gilded what is now called Liberty Island for the dedication hoped the Statue Age affect American of Liberty would inspire renewed devotion to the nation’s political and freedom? economic system. But for all its grandeur, the statue could not conceal the deep social divisions and fears about the future of American freedom that s accompanied the country’s emergence as the world’s leading industrial the period approach the power. Crucial questions moved to the center stage of American public problems of an industrial life during the 1870s and 1880s and remained there for decades to come: society? What are the social conditions that make freedom possible, and what role should the national government play in defining and protecting the liberty of its citizens? T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N Between the end of the Civil War and the early twentieth century, the United States underwent one of the most rapid and profound economic revolutions any country has ever experienced. There were numerous Roots of economic change causes for this explosive economic growth. The country enjoyed abundant natural resources, a growing supply of labor, an expanding market for manufactured goods, and the availability of capital for investment. In 476 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? addition, the federal government actively promoted industrial and agri- cultural development. It enacted high tariffs that protected American industry from foreign competition, granted land to railroad companies to encourage construction, and used the army to remove Indians from west- ern lands desired by farmers and mining companies. T h e I n d u s t r i a l E c o n o m y The rapid expansion of factory production, mining, and railroad construc- tion in all parts of the country except the South signaled the transition from Lincoln’s America—a world centered on the small farm and artisan A changing America TABLE 16.1 Indicators of Economic Change, 1870–1920 1870 1900 1920 &ARMS 5.7 6.4 Land in farms (million acres) 408 841 956 Wheat grown (million bushels) 254 599 843 %MPLOYMENT 28.5 44.5 In manufacturing (millions) 2.5 5.9 11.2 0ERCENTAGE Agricultural 52 27 Industryb 29 44 Trade, service, administrationc 20 27 2AILROAD Steel produced (thousands of tons) 0.8 11.2 46 '.0 18.7 91.5 Per capita (in 1920 dollars) 371 707 920 ,IFE 47 54 a Percentages are rounded and do not total 100 b Includes manufacturing, transportation, mining, construction c Includes trade, finance, public administration T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N 477 workshop—to a mature industrial society. By 1913, the United States Industrial growth produced one-third of the world’s industrial output—more than Great Britain, France, and Germany combined. By 1880, for the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau found a majority of the workforce engaged in non- farming jobs. The traditional dream of economic independence seemed obsolete. By 1890, two-thirds of Americans worked for wages, rather than owning a farm, business, or craft shop. Drawn to factories by the promise of employment, a new working class emerged in these years. Between 1870 and 1920, almost 11 million Americans moved from farm to city, and another 25 million immi- grants arrived from overseas. Most manufacturing now took place in industrial cities. The heart- land of what is sometimes called the “second industrial revolution” was The industrial Great Lakes the region around the Great Lakes, with its factories producing iron and region steel, machinery, chemicals, and packaged foods. Pittsburgh had become the world’s center of iron and steel manufacturing. Chicago, by 1900 the nation’s second-largest city with 1.7 million inhabitants, was home to factories producing steel and farm machinery and giant stockyards where cattle were processed into meat products for shipment east in refrigerated rail cars. R a i l r o a d s a n d t h e N a t i o n a l M a r k e t The railroad made possible the second industrial revolution. Spurred by private investment and massive grants of land and money by federal, state, Key role of railroads and local governments, the number of miles of railroad track in the United States tripled between 1860 and 1880 and tripled again by 1920, opening vast new areas to commercial farming and creating a truly national mar- ket for manufactured goods. The railroads even reorganized time itself. In 1883, the major companies divided the nation into the four time zones still in use today. The growing population formed an ever-expanding market for the mass production, mass distribution, and mass marketing of goods, essen- The rise of national brands tial elements of a modern industrial economy. The spread of national brands like Ivory Soap and Quaker Oats symbolized the continuing integration of the economy. So did the growth of national chains, most prominently the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, better known as A & P grocery stores. Based in Chicago, the national mail-order firms Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck & Co. sold clothing, jewelry, farm equipment, and numerous other goods to rural families throughout the country. 478 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? T H E R A I L R O A D N E T W O R K , 1 8 8 0 Pacific Mountain Time Zone Time Zone Central Seattle Time Zone Eastern Time Zone Atlantic Time Zone Portland CANADA Helena Northern Pacific Boise St. Paul Boston Ne Buffalo w York Cen Detroit tral New York Central Pacific Chicago Reno Cleveland U Salt Lake City nion Pacific Pen Omaha n Pittsburgh sylvania Philadelphia San Francisco Il Washington, D.C. l Denver in Baltimore and Ohio o Kansas City is St. Louis C Norfolk entra Los Angeles l Memphis Santa Fe Phoenix A t l a n t i c Atlanta O c e a n Charleston El Paso Dallas So Mobile uthern Pa Houston New Orleans cific MEXICO Gulf of Mexico Pa c i f i c O c e a n 0 250 500 miles Major railroads in 1880 0 250 500 kilometers Time-zone boundaries T h e S p i r i t o f I n n o v a t i o n By 1880, the transnational rail network made possible the creation A remarkable series of technological innovations spurred rapid commu- of a truly national market for goods. nication and economic growth. The opening of the Atlantic cable in 1866 made it possible to send electronic telegraph messages instantaneously between the United States and Europe. During the 1870s and 1880s, the telephone, typewriter, and handheld camera came into use. Scientific breakthroughs poured forth from research laboratories in Menlo Park and Orange, New Jersey, created by the era’s greatest inventor, Edison’s innovations Thomas A. Edison. During the course of his life, Edison helped to establish entirely new industries that transformed private life, public entertainment, and economic activity. Among Edison’s innovations were the phonograph, lightbulb, motion picture, and a system for generating and distributing electric power. The spread of electricity was essential to industrial and Electricity urban growth, providing a more reliable and flexible source of power than water or steam. T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N 479 ( Left) Travel became globalized in the second half of the nineteenth century. This advertisement promotes an around-the-world route by railroad and steamboat, beginning in Chicago. ( Right) The cover of the 1897 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. One of the country’s largest mail- order companies, Sears, Roebuck processed 100,000 orders per day at the end of the nineteenth century. The cornucopia at the center suggests the variety of items one could order by mail: furniture, a piano, a bicycle, and farm tools. C o m p e t i t i o n a n d C o n s o l i d a t i o n Economic growth was dramatic but highly volatile. The combination of a market flooded with goods and the federal monetary policies (discussed later) that removed money from the national economy led to a relentless fall in prices. The world economy suffered prolonged downturns in the 1870s and 1890s. Businesses engaged in ruthless competition. Railroads and other The Electricity Building at the Chicago companies tried various means of bringing order to the chaotic market- World’s Fair of 1893, painted by place. They formed “pools” that divided up markets between suppos- Childe Hassam. The electric lighting edly competing firms and fixed prices. They established “trusts”—legal at the fair astonished visitors and devices whereby the affairs of several rival companies were managed by illustrated how electricity was changing the visual landscape. a single director. Such efforts to coordinate the economic activities of independent companies generally proved short lived. To avoid cutthroat competition, more and more corporations battled to control entire industries. Between 1897 and 1904, some 4,000 firms fell by the wayside or were gobbled up by others. By the time the wave of mergers had been completed, giant corpo- rations like U.S. Steel (created by financier J. P. Morgan in 1901 by combining eight large steel companies into the first billion- dollar economic enterprise), Standard Oil, 480 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? and International Harvester (a manufacturer of agricultural machinery) dominated major parts of the economy. T h e R i s e o f A n d r e w C a r n e g i e In an era without personal or corporate income taxes, some business leaders accumulated enormous fortunes and economic power. During the depression that began in 1873, Andrew Carnegie set out to establish a “vertically integrated” steel company—that is, one that controlled every Vertical integration phase of the business from raw materials to transportation, manufac- turing, and distribution. By the 1890s, he dominated the steel industry and had accumulated a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Carnegie’s complex of steel factories at Homestead, Pennsylvania, were the most technologically advanced in the world. Believing that the rich had a moral obligation to promote the advance- ment of society, Carnegie denounced the “worship of money” and distrib- uted much of his wealth to various philanthropies, especially the creation Philanthropy of public libraries in towns throughout the country. But he ran his com- panies with a dictatorial hand. His factories operated nonstop, with two twelve-hour shifts every day of the year except the Fourth of July. T h e T r i u m p h o f J o h n D . R o c k e f e l l e r Next!, a cartoon from the magazine If any single name became a byword for enormous wealth, it was John Puck, September 7, 1904, depicts the D. Rockefeller, who began his working career as a clerk for a Cleveland Standard Oil Company as an octopus with tentacles wrapped around merchant and rose to dominate the oil industry. He drove out rival the copper, steel, and shipping firms through cutthroat competition, arranging secret deals with rail- industries, as well as a state house road companies, and fixing prices and production quotas. Like Carnegie, and Congress. One tentacle reaches he soon established a vertically integrated for the White House. monopoly, which controlled the drilling, refining, storage, and distribution of oil. By the 1880s, his Standard Oil Company con- trolled 90 percent of the nation’s oil indus- try. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller gave much of his fortune away, establishing foundations to promote education and medical research. And like Carnegie, he bitterly fought his employees’ efforts to organize unions. These and other industrial leaders inspired among ordinary Americans a com- bination of awe, admiration, and hostility. T H E S E C O N D I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N 481 Depending on one’s point of view, they were “captains of industry,” whose energy and vision pushed the economy forward, or “robber barons,” who wielded power without any accountability in an unregulated marketplace. Their dictatorial attitudes, unscrupulous methods, repressive labor poli- cies, and exercise of power without any democratic control led to fears that they were undermining political and economic freedom. Concentrated wealth degraded the political process, declared Henry Demarest Lloyd Henry Demarest Lloyd’s Wealth against in Wealth against Commonwealth (1894), an exposé of how Rockefeller’s Commonwealth Standard Oil Company made a mockery of economic competition and political democracy by manipulating the market and bribing legislators. “Liberty and monopoly,” Lloyd concluded, “cannot live together.” W o r k e r s ’ F r e e d o m i n a n I n d u s t r i a l A g e Striking as it was, the country’s economic growth distributed its benefits very unevenly. For a minority of workers, the rapidly expanding indus- trial system created new forms of freedom. In some industries, skilled workers commanded high wages and exercised considerable control over the production process. A worker’s economic independence now rested on technical skill rather than ownership of one’s own shop and tools as in ear- lier times. Through their union, skilled iron- and steelworkers fixed output quotas and controlled the training of apprentices in the technique of iron rolling. These workers often knew more about the details of production than their employers did. Economic insecurity For most workers, however, economic insecurity remained a basic fact of life. During the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s, millions of workers lost their jobs or were forced to accept reductions of pay. The “tramp” became a familiar figure on the social landscape as thousands of men took to the roads in search of work. Between 1880 and 1900, an average of 35,000 workers perished each year in factory and mine accidents, the highest rate in the industrial world. Much of the working class remained desperately poor and to survive needed income from all family members. By 1890, the richest 1 percent of Americans received the same total income as the bottom half of the population and owned more property than the remaining 99 percent. Many of the wealthiest Americans consciously pursued an aristocratic lifestyle, building palatial homes, attending exclusive social clubs, schools, and colleges, holding fancy- Thorstein Veblen’s The dress balls, and marrying into each other’s families. In 1899, the Theory of the Leisure Class economist and social historian Thorstein Veblen published The Theory 482 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age What factors combined to make the United States a mature industrial society after the Civil War? A turn-of-the-century photograph of the Casino Grounds, Newport, Rhode of the Leisure Class, a devastating critique of an upper-class culture Island, an exclusive country club for focused on “conspicuous consumption”—that is, spending money not rich socialites of the Gilded Age. on needed or even desired goods, but simply to demonstrate the pos- session of wealth. At the same time much of the working class lived in desperate con- ditions. Jacob Riis, in How the Other Half Lives (1890), offered a shocking account of living conditions among the urban poor, complete with photo- graphs of apartments in dark, airless, overcrowded tenement houses. Jacob Riis and tenements T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T Nowhere did capitalism penetrate more rapidly or dramatically than in the trans-Mississippi West, whose “vast, trackless spaces,” as the poet Walt Whitman called them, were now absorbed into the expanding economy. At the close of the Civil War, the frontier of continuous white settlement did not extend far beyond the Mississippi River. To the west lay millions of acres of fertile and mineral-rich land roamed by giant herds of buffalo whose meat and hides provided food, clothing, and shelter for a population of more than 250,000 Indians. Ever since the beginning of colonial settlement in British North America, the West—a region whose definition shifted as the population The West as place of expanded—had been seen as a place of opportunity for those seeking to opportunity improve their condition in life. From farmers moving into Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in the decades after the American Revolution to prospectors T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T 483 who struck it rich in the California gold rush of the mid-nineteenth century, millions of Americans and immigrants from abroad found in the westward move- ment a path to economic opportunity. But the West was hardly a uniform paradise of small, independent farm- ers. Beginning in the eighteenth century, for example, California was the site of forced Indian labor on mis- sions run by members of religious orders, a system that helped establish the pattern of large agricultural landholdings in that region. Landlords, railroads, and mining companies in the West also utilized Mexican migrant and indentured labor, Chinese working on long-term contracts, and, until the end of the Civil War, African-American slaves. A D i v e r s e R e g i o n The West, of course, was hardly a single area. West of the Mississippi River lay a variety of regions, all marked by remarkable physical beauty—the “vast, trackless” Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the desert of the Baxter Street Court, 1890, one of Southwest, the Sierra Nevada, and the valleys and coastline of California numerous photographs by Jacob Riis depicting living conditions in New and the Pacific Northwest. It would take many decades before individual York City’s slums. settlers and corporate business enterprises penetrated all these areas. But the process was far advanced by the end of the nineteenth century. The political and economic incorporation of the American West was part of a global process. In many parts of the world, indigenous inhabitants—the Zulu in South Africa, aboriginal peoples in Australia, American Indians—were pushed aside (often after fierce resistance) as The worldwide fate of centralizing governments brought large interior regions under their indigenous peoples control. In the United States, the incorporation of the West required the active intervention of the federal government, which acquired Indian land by war and treaty, administered land sales, regulated territorial politics, and distributed land and money to farmers, railroads, and min- ing companies. In the twentieth century, the construction of federally financed irrigation systems and dams would open large areas to commercial farm- ing. Ironically, the West would become known (not least to its own inhab- itants) as a place of rugged individualism and sturdy independence. But Role of government in without active governmental assistance, the region could never have been the West settled and developed. 484 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How was the West transformed economically and socially in this period? Across the Continent, a lithograph from 1868 by the British-born female artist Frances F. Palmer, celebrates post–Civil War westward expansion as the spread of civilization— represented by the railroad, telegraph, school, church, and wagon trains—into a wilderness that appears totally uninhabited except for two Indians in the far distance and a herd of buffalo. F a r m i n g i n t h e T r a n s - M i s s i s s i p p i W e s t Even as sporadic Indian wars raged, settlers poured into the West. Territo- rial and state governments eager for population and railroad companies anx ious to sell the immense tracts of land they had acquired from the gov- ernment flooded European countries and eastern cities with promotional literature promising easy access to land. More land came into cultivation in the thirty years after the Civil War than in the previous two and a half centuries of American history. Hundreds of thousands of families acquired farms under the Homestead Act, and even more purchased land from spec- The new agricultural empire ulators and from railroad companies. A new agricultural empire produc- of the West ing wheat and corn arose on the Middle Border (Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas), whose population rose from 300,000 in 1860 to 5 million in 1900. The farmers were a diverse group, including native-born easterners, blacks escaping the post-Reconstruction South, and immigrants from Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. In the late nine- teenth century the most multicultural state in the Union was North Dakota. Despite the promises of promotional pamphlets, farming on the Great Plains was not an easy task. Much of the burden fell on women. Farm fami- Farm women lies generally invested in the kinds of labor-saving machinery that would bring in cash, not machines that would ease women’s burdens in the household (like the back-breaking task of doing laundry). A farm woman in Arizona described her morning chores in her diary: “Get up, turn out my chickens, draw a pail of water . . . make a fire, put potatoes to cook, brush and sweep half inch of dust off floor, feed three litters of chickens, then mix T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T 485 biscuits, get breakfast, milk, besides work in the house, and this morning had to go half mile after calves.” Despite the emergence of a few “bonanza farms” that covered thou- sands of acres and employed large numbers of agricultural wage work- Family farms ers, family farms still dominated the trans-Mississippi West. Even small farmers, however, became increasingly oriented to national and interna- tional markets, specializing in the production of single crops for sale in faraway places. At the same time, railroads brought factory-made goods to rural people, replacing items previously produced in farmers’ homes. Farm families became more and more dependent on loans to purchase land, machinery, and industrial products, and increasingly vulnerable to Vulnerability to global the ups and downs of prices for agricultural goods in the world market. market prices Agriculture reflected how the international economy was becoming more integrated. The combination of economic depressions and expanding agri- cultural production in places like Argentina, Australia, and the American West pushed prices of farm products steadily downward. Small farmers throughout the world suffered severe difficulties in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Many joined the migration to cities within their countries or the increasing international migration of labor. The future of western farming ultimately lay with giant agricultural enterprises relying heavily on irrigation, chemicals, and machinery— investments far beyond the means of family farmers. A preview of the agricultural future was already evident in California, where, as far back The family of David Hilton on their as Spanish and Mexican days, landownership had been concentrated in Nebraska homestead in 1887. large units. In the late nineteenth century, California’s giant fruit and veg- The Hiltons insisted on being photographed with their organ, away etable farms, owned by corporations like the Southern Pacific Railroad, from the modest sod house in which were tilled not by agricultural laborers who could expect to acquire land of they lived, to better represent their their own, but by migrant laborers from China, the Philippines, Japan, and aspiration for prosperity. Mexico, who tramped from place to place following the ripening crops. T h e C o w b o y a n d t h e C o r p o r a t e W e s t The two decades following the Civil War also witnessed the golden age of the cattle kingdom. The Kansas Pacific Railroad’s stations at Abilene, Dodge City, and Wichita, Kansas, became destinations for the fabled drives of millions of cattle from Texas. A collection of white, Mexican, and 486 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How was the West transformed economically and socially in this period? black men who conducted the cattle drives, the cowboys became symbols of a life of freedom on the open range. Their exploits would later serve as the theme of many a Hollywood movie, and their clothing inspired fash- ions that remain popular today. But there was nothing romantic about the life of the cowboys, most of whom were low-paid wage workers. (Texas cowboys even went on strike for higher pay in 1883.) The days of the long- distance cattle drive ended in the mid-1880s, as farmers enclosed more and more of the open range with barbed-wire fences, making it difficult to graze cattle on the grasslands of the Great Plains, and two terrible winters destroyed millions of cattle. When the industry recuperated, it was reorga- nized in large, enclosed ranches close to rail connections. The West was more than a farming empire. By 1890, a higher percentage of its population lived in cities than was the case in other regions. Large cor- In the late 1800s, California tried to porate enterprises appeared throughout the West. Western mining, from attract immigrants by advertising its Michigan iron ore and copper to gold and silver in California, Nevada, and pleasant climate and the availability of Colorado, fell under the sway of companies that mobilized eastern and land, although large-scale corporate European investment to introduce advanced technology. Gold and silver farms were coming to dominate the rushes took place in the Dakotas in 1876, Idaho in 1883, and Alaska at the state’s agriculture. end of the century. C o n f l i c t o n t h e M o r m o n F r o n t i e r The Mormons had moved to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the 1840s, hop- ing to practice their religion free of the persecution they had encountered in the East. They envisioned their community in Utah as the foundation of a great empire they called Deseret. Given the widespread unpopular- Deseret community ity of Mormon polygamy and the close connection of church and state in Mormon theology, conflict with the growing numbers of non-Mormon settlers moving west became inevitable. When President James Buchanan removed the Mormon leader Brigham Young as Utah’s territorial gov- ernor and Young refused to comply, federal troops entered the Salt Lake Valley, where they remained until the beginning of the Civil War. In 1857, during this time of tension, a group of Mormons attacked a wagon train of non-Mormon settlers traveling through Utah toward California. What came to be called the Mountain Meadows Massacre resulted in the death Mountain Meadows Massacre of all the adults and older children in the wagon train—over 100 persons. Nearly twenty years later, one leader of the assault was convicted of mur- der and executed. After the Civil War, Mormon leaders sought to avoid further antagonizing the federal government. In the 1880s, Utah banned the practice of polygamy (although the practice persists to this day among T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T 487 some fundamentalist Mormons living in isolated areas). But sporadic conflict continued between Mormon families, who spread out across the Southwest, and Native Americans as well as other settlers. T h e S u b j u g a t i o n o f t h e P l a i n s I n d i a n s The incorporation of the West into the national economy spelled the doom of the Plains Indians and their world. Their lives had already undergone Spread of horses profound transformations. In the eighteenth century, the spread of horses, originally introduced by the Spanish, led to a wholesale shift from farming and hunting on foot to mounted hunting of buffalo. Most migrants on the Oregon and California Trails before the Civil War encountered little hostility from Indians, often trading with them for food and supplies. But as settlers encroached on Indian lands, bloody conflict between the army and Plains tribes began in the 1850s and contin- ued for decades. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant announced a new “peace policy” in the West, but warfare soon resumed. Drawing on methods used to defeat the Confederacy, Civil War generals like Philip H. Sheridan set out to destroy the foundations of the Indian economy—villages, horses, and The buffalo especially the buffalo. Hunting by mounted Indians had already reduced the buffalo population—estimated at 30 million in 1800—but it was army campaigns and the depredations of hunters seeking buffalo hides that ren- dered the vast herds all but extinct. Albert Bierstadt’s 1863 painting, The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak, depicts Indians as an integral part of the majestic landscape of the West. 488 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How was the West transformed economically and socially in this period? “ L e t M e B e a F r e e M a n ” The army’s relentless attacks broke the power of one tribe after another. In 1877, troops commanded by former Freedmen’s Bureau commissioner O. O. Howard pursued the Nez Percé Indians on a 1,700-mile chase across the Far West. The Nez Percé (whose name was given them by Lewis and The Nez Percé Clark in 1805 and means “pierced noses” in French) were seeking to escape to Canada after fights with settlers who had encroached on tribal lands in Oregon and Idaho. After four months, Howard forced the Indians to sur- render, and they were removed to Oklahoma. Two years later, the Nez Percé leader, Chief Joseph, delivered a Chief Joseph speech in Washington to a distinguished audience that included President Rutherford B. Hayes. Condemning the policy of confining Indians to res- ervations, Joseph adopted the language of freedom and equal rights before the law so powerfully reinforced by the Civil War and Reconstruction. “Treat all men alike,” he pleaded. “Give them the same law. . . . Let me be a free man—free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to . . . think and talk and act for myself.” Until his death in 1904, Joseph would unsuccessfully petition successive presidents for his people’s right to return to their beloved Oregon homeland. Indians occasionally managed to inflict costly delay and even defeat on army units. The most famous Indian victory took place in June 1876 at Little Bighorn, when General George A. Custer and his entire command of 250 men perished. The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, were defending tribal land in the Black Hills of the Sitting Bull, probably the best-known Dakota Territory. Native American of the late nineteenth Events like these delayed only temporarily the onward march of white century, in a photograph from 1885. soldiers, settlers, and prospectors. Between the end of the Civil War and 1890, eight new western states entered the Union (Nebraska, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming). Railroads now crisscrossed the Great Plains, farmers and cattlemen exploited land formerly owned by Indians, and the Plains tribes had been concentrated on reservations, where they lived in poverty, preyed on by unscrupulous traders and government agents. R e m a k i n g I n d i a n L i f e “The life my people want is a life of freedom,” Sitting Bull declared. The Indian idea of freedom, however, which centered on preserving their cul- tural and political autonomy and control of ancestral lands, conflicted with the interests and values of most white Americans. T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T 489 In 1871, Congress eliminated the treaty system that dated back to the revolutionary era, by which the federal government negotiated agreements with Indians as if they were independent nations. The federal government also pressed forward with its assault on Indian cul- ture. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established boarding schools where Indian children, removed from the “nega- tive” influences of their parents and tribes, were dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways. T h e D a w e s A c t a n d W o u n d e d K n e e The crucial step in attacking “tribalism” came in 1887 with the passage of the Dawes Act, named for Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, chair of the Senate’s Indian Affairs Committee. The act broke up the land A quilt created by a Sioux woman of nearly all tribes into small parcels to be distributed who lived on a reservation in South to Indian families, with the remainder auctioned off to white purchasers. Dakota around 1900, possibly as Indians who accepted the farms and “adopted the habits of civilized life” a gift for a nearby white family. It would become full-fledged American citizens. The policy proved to be a depicts scenes of traditional daily life disaster, leading to the loss of much tribal land and the erosion of Indian cul- among the Indians, including hunting buffalo and cooking game. The bird’s tural traditions. When the government made 2 million acres of Indian land eggs at the top left corner have available in Oklahoma, 50,000 white settlers poured into the territory to hatched at the bottom right. claim farms on the single day of April 22, 1889. Further land rushes followed in the 1890s. In the half century after the passage of the Dawes Act, Indians lost 86 million of the 138 million acres of land in their possession in 1887. Some Indians sought solace in the Ghost Dance, a religious revitaliza- Despite white efforts to remake Indian tion campaign. Its leaders foretold a day when whites disappear, the buffalo life, traditional crafts survived. This would return, and Indians could once again practice their ancestral customs photograph, taken in 1903, depicts a pottery maker in the Isleta Pueblo “free from misery, death, and disease.” Large numbers of Indians gathered for near Albuquerque, New Mexico. days of singing, dancing, and religious observances. Fearing a general upris- ing, the government sent troops to the reservations. On December 29, 1890, soldiers opened fire on Ghost Dancers encamped near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota, killing between 150 and 200 Indians, mostly women and children. The Wounded Knee massacre was widely applauded in the press. An army court of inquiry essentially exonerated the troops and their com- mander, and twenty soldiers were later awarded the Medal of Honor, a rec- ognition of exceptional heroism in battle, for their actions at Wounded Knee. The Wounded Knee massacre marked the end of four centuries of armed conflict between the continent’s native population and European 490 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age Focus Question How was the West transformed economically and socially in this period? I N D I A N R E S E R V A T I O N S , c a . 1 8 9 0 RIBES MANDAN COLVILLE HIDATSA CANADA L T SPOKAN BLACKFEET MINITARI ASTA REE COEUR D'ALENE CHIPPEWA WASHINGTON FLATHEAD SIOUX EST CO CHIPPEWA YAKIMA SIOUX & TRIBES NEZ PERCÉ MONTANA ASSINIBOIN NORTH DAKOTA NORTHW MINNESOTA UMATILLA WARM SPRING CROW NORTHERN SIOUX OREGON CHEYENNE TRIBES WISCONSIN IDAHO KLAMATH SOUTH DAKOTA MICHIGAN RIVER KLAMATH SHOSHONE & BANNOCK SHOSHONE & ARAPAHO SIOUX SIOUX HOOPA VALLEY WYOMING IOWA SHOSHONE PONCA WINNEBAGO & PAIUTE ROUND OMAHA SAC & FOX VALLEY PAIUTE NEBRASKA INDIANA UTE ILLINOIS POMO NEVADA SAC & FOX PAIUTE UTAH KICKAPOO TERRITORY COLORADO POTTAWATOMI KANSAS CHIPPEWA MUNSEE MISSOURI KENTUCKY CALIFORNIA MOAPA UTE JICARILLA TULE RIVER APACHE RIVER SUPPAI NAVAJO HOPI INDIAN TERRITORY HUALPAI MISSION INDIANS MOHAVE ARIZONA PUEBLO Peoria TERRITORY ZUÑI Chilocco Ottawa Quapaw MOHAVE NEW MEXICO Kansas Wyandotte PIMA Modoc APACHE TERRITORY CHEROKEE Tonkawa Shawnee YUMA OUTLET Ponca Osage Seneca PAPAGO MARICOPA Otoe & Missouri MESCALERO Cherokee APACHE Iowa Pawnee PAPAGO Cheyenne & Pa c i f i c TEXAS Arapaho Kickapoo Sac & Fox O c e a n Wichita Creek Caddo Pottawatomie MEXICO Comanche Seminole Kiowa Choctaw Apache Chickasaw 0 200 400 miles Indian reservations 0 200 400 kilometers By 1890, the vast majority of the settlers and their descendants. By 1900, the Indian population had remaining Indian population had been fallen to 250,000, the lowest point in American history. Of that num- removed to reservations scattered ber, 53,000 had become American citizens by accepting land allotments across the western states. under the Dawes Act. The following year, Congress granted citizenship to 100,000 residents of Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma). The remainder would have to wait until 1919 (for those who fought in World War I) and 1924, when Congress made all Indians American citizens. S e t t l e r S o c i e t i e s a n d G l o b a l W e s t s The conquest of the American West was part of a global process whereby set- A global process tlers moved boldly into the interior of regions in temperate climates around the world, bringing their familiar crops and livestock and establishing T H E T R A N S F O R M A T I O N O F T H E W E S T 491 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m A n d r e w C a r n e g i e , “ W e a l t h ” ( 1 8 8 9 ) One of the richest men in Gilded Age America, Andrew Carnegie promoted what he called the gospel of wealth, the idea that those who accumulated money had an obligation to use it to promote the advancement of society. He explained his outlook in this article in the North American Review, one of the era’s most prominent magazines. The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship. The conditions of human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past few hundred years. . . . The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us to-day measures the change which has come with civilization. This change, however, is not to be deplored, but welcomed as highly beneficial. It is well, nay, essential for the progress of the race, that the houses of some should be homes for all that is highest and best in literature and the arts, and for all the refinements of civilization, rather than that none should be so. . . . In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves. . . . He is the only true reformer who is as careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in alms-giving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue. . . . The best means of benefitting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise—parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste, and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people—in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good. Thus is the problem of Rich and Poor to be solved. The laws of accumulation will be left free; the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor. 492 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age F r o m I r a S t e w a r d , “ A S e c o n d D e c l a r a t i o n o f I n d e p e n d e n c e ” ( 1 8 7 9 ) At a Fourth of July celebration in Chicago in 1879, Ira Steward, the most prominent labor leader associated with the movement for the eight-hour day, invoked the legacy of the Declaration of Independence and the abolition of slavery during the Civil War to discuss labor’s grievances. Resolved, That the practical question for an American Fourth of July is not between freedom and slavery, but between wealth and poverty. For if it is true that laborers ought to have as little as possible of the wealth they produce, South Carolina slaveholders were right and the Massachusetts abolitionists were wrong. Because, when the working classes are denied everything but the barest necessities of life, they have no decent use for liberty. . . . Slavery is . . . the child of poverty, instead of poverty the child of slavery: and freedom is the child of wealth, instead of wealth the child of freedom. The only road, therefore, to universal freedom is the road that leads to universal wealth. Resolved, That while the Fourth of July was heralded a hundred years ago in the name of Liberty, we now herald this day in behalf of the great economic measure of Eight Hours, or shorter day’s work for wageworkers everywhere . . . because more leisure, rest and thought will cultivate habits, customs, and expenditures that mean higher wages: and the world’s highest paid laborers now furnish each other with vastly more occupations or days’ work than the lowest paid workers can give to one another. . . . [And] if the worker’s power to buy increases with his power to do, granaries and warehouses will empty their pockets, and farms and factories fill up with producers. . . . And we call to the workers of the whole civilized world, especially those of France, Germany, and Great Britain, to join hands with Q U E S T I O N S the laborers of the United States in this mighty 1. Why does Carnegie think it is better to movement. . . . build public institutions than to give On the . . . issue of eight hours, therefore, or less hours, we join hands with all, regardless charity to the poor? of politics, nationality, color, religion, or sex; 2. Why does Ira Steward appeal to knowing no friends or foes except as they aid other countries for assistance and or oppose this long-postponed and world-wide understanding? movement. And for the soundness of our political econ- 3. Compare the views of Carnegie and omy, as well as the rectitude of our intentions, Stewart about how the economy should we confidently and gladly appeal to the wiser operate. statesmanship of the civilized world. V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 493 mining and other industries. Countries such as Argentina, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, as well as the United States, are often called “settler societies,” because immigrants from overseas quickly outnum- bered and displaced the original inhabitants—unlike in India and most parts of colonial Africa, where fewer Europeans ventured and those who did relied on the labor of the indigenous inhabitants. In many settler societies, native peoples were subjected to cultural reconstruction similar to policies in the United States. In Australia, the government gathered the Aboriginal populations—their numbers devastated by disease—in “reserves” reminiscent of American Indian reservations. Australia went fur- ther than the United States in the forced assimilation of surviving Aboriginal peoples. The government removed large numbers of children from their families to be adopted by whites—a policy abandoned only in the 1970s. A 1911 poster advertising the federal government’s sale of land formerly possessed by Indians. Under the Dawes Act of 1887, Indian families were allotted individual farms and the remaining land P O L I T I C S I N A G I L D E D A G E on reservations, so-called surplus land, was made available to whites. The era from 1870 to 1890 is the only period of American history com- monly known by a derogatory name—the Gilded Age, after the title of an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner. “Gilded” means covered with a layer of gold, but it also suggests that the glittering surface covers a core of little real value and is therefore deceptive. T h e C o r r u p t i o n o f P o l i t i c s As they had earlier in the nineteenth century, Americans during the Gilded Age saw their nation as an island of political democracy in a world still dominated by undemocratic governments. In Europe, only France and Switzerland enjoyed universal male suffrage. Even in Britain, most of the working class could not vote until the passage of the Reform Act of 1884. The new corporation and Nonetheless, the power of the new corporations, seemingly immune political power to democratic control, raised disturbing questions for the American under- standing of political freedom as popular self-government. Political corrup- tion was rife. In Pennsylvania’s legislature, the “third house” of railroad 494 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age Was the Gilded Age political system effective in meeting its goals? The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon from Puck, January 23, 1889, shows well-fed monopolists towering over the obedient senators. Above them, a sign rewrites the closing words of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “This is the Senate of the Monopolists, by the Monopolists, and for the Monopolists.” lobbyists supposedly exerted as much influence as the elected chambers. In the West, many lawmakers held stock or directorships in lumber com- panies and railroads that received public aid. Urban politics fell under the sway of corrupt political machines like New York’s Tweed Ring, which plundered the city of tens of millions of dollars. “Boss” William M. Tweed’s organization reached into every “Boss” Tweed of New York neighborhood. He won support from the city’s immigrant poor by fashion- ing a kind of private welfare system that provided food, fuel, and jobs in hard times. A combination of political reformers and businessmen tired of paying tribute to the ring ousted Tweed in the early 1870s, although he remained popular among the city’s poor, who considered him an urban Robin Hood. At the national level, the most notorious example of corruption came to light during Grant’s presidency. This was Crédit Mobilier, a corporation The Crédit Mobilier scandal formed by an inner ring of Union Pacific Railroad stockholders to oversee the line’s government-assisted construction. Essentially, it enabled the participants to sign contracts with themselves, at an exorbitant profit, to build the new line. The arrangement was protected by the distribution of stock to influential politicians. T h e P o l i t i c s o f D e a d C e n t e r In national elections, party politics bore the powerful imprint of the Civil War. Republicans controlled the industrial North and Midwest and the Republican strength agrarian West and were particularly strong among members of revival- ist churches, Protestant immigrants, and blacks. Organizations of Union P O L I T I C S I N A G I L D E D A G E 495 veterans formed a bulwark of Republican P O L I T I C A L S T A L E M A T E , support. Every Republican candidate for 1 8 7 6 – 1 8 9 2 president from 1868 to 1900 had fought in the Union army. By 1893, a lavish system of pensions for Union soldiers and their widows and children consumed more than 40 percent of the federal budget. Democrats, after 1877, dominated the South and did well among Catholic voters, especially Irish-Americans, in the nation’s cities. The parties were closely divided. In three of the five presidential elections between 1876 and 1892, the margin sepa- rating the major candidates was less than Non-voting territory 1 percent of the popular vote. Twice, in 1876 and 1888, the candidate with an Elections of 1876–1892 electoral-college majority trailed in the Voted Democrat 4–5 times Voted Republican 4–5 times popular vote. Only for brief periods did the Voted more irregularly same party control the White House and both houses of Congress. More than once, Congress found itself paralyzed as important bills shuttled back and forth between House and Senate, and special sessions to complete legislation became necessary. Gilded Age presidents made little effort to mobilize public opinion or extend executive leadership. In some ways, though, American democracy in the Gilded Age seemed Party activism remarkably healthy. Elections were closely contested, party loyalty was intense, and 80 percent or more of eligible voters turned out to cast ballots. G o v e r n m e n t a n d t h e E c o n o m y The nation’s political structure, however, proved ill equipped to deal with the problems created by the economy’s rapid growth. Despite its expanded scope and powers arising from the Civil War, the federal government remained remarkably small by modern standards. The federal workforce in 1880 numbered 100,000 (today, it exceeds 2.5 million). The parties and business Nationally, both parties came under the control of powerful politi- interest cal managers with close ties to business interests. Republicans strongly supported a high tariff to protect American industry, and throughout the 1870s they pursued a fiscal policy based on reducing federal spending, repaying much of the national debt, and withdrawing greenbacks—the paper money issued by the Union during the Civil War—from circulation. Democrats opposed the high tariff, but the party’s national leadership 496 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age Was the Gilded Age political system effective in meeting its goals? remained closely linked to New York bankers and financiers and resisted demands from debt-ridden agricultural areas for an increase in the money supply. In 1879, for the first time since the war, the United States returned to the gold standard—that is, paper currency became exchangeable for gold at a fixed rate. Republican economic policies strongly favored the interests of eastern industrialists and bankers. These policies worked to the disadvantage of southern and western farmers, who had to pay a premium for manufactured goods while the prices they received for their produce steadily declined. R e f o r m L e g i s l a t i o n Gilded Age national politics did not entirely lack accomplishments. Inspired in part by President Garfield’s assassination by a disappointed office seeker, the Civil Service Act of 1883 created a merit system for fed- eral employees, with appointment via competitive examinations rather than political influence. Although it applied at first to only 10 percent of This political cartoon from the 1884 the more than 100,000 government workers, the act marked the first step presidential campaign depicts Republican nominee James G. Blaine in establishing a professional civil service and removing officeholding as a champion of a high tariff that from the hands of political machines. (However, since funds raised from would protect American workers from political appointees had helped to finance the political parties, civil service cheap foreign labor. Blaine’s attire is reform had the unintended result of increasing politicians’ dependence on a reference to the nominating speech donations from business interests.) at the Republican convention by In 1887, in response to public outcries against railroad practices, Robert G. Ingersoll, who referred to the candidate as a “plumed knight.” Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to ensure that the rates railroads charged farmers and merchants to trans- port their goods were “reasonable” and did not offer more favorable treat- ment to some shippers over others. The ICC was the first federal agency intended to regulate economic activity, but since it lacked the power to establish rates on its own—it could only sue companies in court—it had little impact on railroad practices. Three years later, Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which banned all combinations and practices that restrained free trade. But the language was so vague that the act proved almost impossible to enforce. Weak as they were, these laws helped Legacy of economic reform to establish the precedent that the national government could regulate the legislation economy to promote the public good. P o l i t i c a l C o n f l i c t i n t h e S t a t e s At the state and local level the Gilded Age was an era of political ferment and conflict over the proper uses of governmental authority. In the imme- diate aftermath of the Civil War, state governments in the North, like P O L I T I C S I N A G I L D E D A G E 497 those in the Reconstruction South, greatly expanded their responsibility for public health, welfare, and education, and cities invested heavily in public works such as park construction and improved water and gas services. The policies of railroad companies produced a growing chorus of protest, especially in the West. Farmers and local merchants complained of excessively high freight rates, discrimination in favor of large producers and shippers, and high fees charged by railroad-controlled grain Laying Tracks at Union Square warehouses. Critics of the railroads came for a Railroad, an 1890 painting, together in the Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange (1867), which moved to depicts one of the era’s many public establish cooperatives for storing and marketing farm output in the hope works assisted by state and local of forcing the carriers “to take our produce at a fair price.” governments. At the same time, the labor movement, revitalized during the Civil War, demanded laws establishing eight hours as a legal day’s work. Seven northern legislatures passed such laws, but since most lacked strong means of enforcement they remained dead letters. Nevertheless, the efforts of workers, like those of farmers, inspired a far-reaching national debate. F R E E D O M I N T H E G I L D E D A G E T h e S o c i a l P r o b l e m As the United States matured into an industrial economy, Americans struggled to make sense of the new social order. Debates over politi- cal economy engaged the attention of millions of Americans, reaching far beyond the tiny academic world into the public sphere inhabited by self-educated workingmen and farmers, reformers of all kinds, newspaper editors, and politicians. This broad public discussion produced thousands of books, pamphlets, and articles on such technical issues as land taxation and currency reform, as well as widespread debate over the social and ethi- cal implications of economic change. Many Americans sensed that something had gone wrong in the Social unrest nation’s social development. Talk of “better classes,” “respectable classes,” and “dangerous classes,” dominated public discussion, and bitter labor strikes seemed to have become the rule. In 1881, the Massachusetts Bureau 498 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How did the economic development of the Gilded Age affect American freedom? of Labor Statistics reported that virtually every worker it interviewed in Fall River, the nation’s largest center of textile production, complained of overwork, poor housing, and tyrannical employers. With factory workers living on the edge of poverty alongside a grow- ing class of millionaires, it became increasingly difficult to view wage Freedom and equality labor as a temporary resting place on the road to economic independence. disconnected Yet given the vast expansion of the nation’s productive capacity, many Americans viewed the concentration of wealth as inevitable, natural, and justified by progress. By the turn of the century, advanced economics taught that wages were determined by the iron law of supply and demand and that wealth rightly flowed not to those who worked the hardest but to men with business skills and access to money. The close link between freedom and equality, forged in the Revolution and reinforced during the Civil War, appeared increasingly out of date. S o c i a l D a r w i n i s m i n A m e r i c a The idea of the natural superiority of some groups to others, which before the Civil War had been invoked to justify slavery in an otherwise free society, now reemerged in the vocabulary of modern science to explain the success and failure of individuals and social classes. In 1859, the British scientist Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. One of the most Charles Darwin influential works of science ever to appear, it expounded the theory of evolution whereby plant and animal species best suited to their environ- ment took the place of those less able to adapt. In a highly oversimplified form, language borrowed from Darwin, The misapplication of such as “natural selection,” “the struggle for existence,” and “the survival Darwin’s theory of evolution of the fittest,” entered public discussion of social problems in the Gilded Age. According to what came to be called Social Darwinism, evolution was as natural a process in human society as in nature, and government must not interfere. Especially misguided, in this view, were efforts to uplift those at the bottom of the social order, such as laws regulating conditions of work or public assistance to the poor. The giant industrial corporation, Social Darwinists believed, had emerged because it was better adapted to its environment than earlier forms of enterprise. To restrict its operations by legislation would reduce society to a more primitive level. Even the depressions of the 1870s and 1890s did not shake the widespread view that the poor were essentially responsible for their own fate. Failure to advance in society was widely thought to indicate a lack of character, an absence of self-reliance and determination in the face of adversity. F R E E D O M I N T H E G I L D E D A G E 499 The era’s most influential Social Darwinist was Yale professor William Graham Sumner William Graham Sumner. For Sumner, freedom required frank accep- tance of inequality. Society faced two and only two alternatives: “liberty, inequality, survival of the fittest; not-liberty, equality, survival of the unfit- test.” Government, Sumner believed, existed only to protect “the property of men and the honor of women,” not to upset social arrangements decreed by nature. L i b e r t y o f C o n t r a c t a n d t h e C o u r t s The growing influence of Social Darwinism helped to popularize an idea that A new idea of free labor would be embraced by the business and professional classes in the last quar- ter of the nineteenth century—a “negative” definition of freedom as limited government and an unrestrained free market. Central to this social vision was the idea of contract. So long as labor relations were governed by con- tracts freely arrived at by independent individuals, neither the government nor unions had a right to interfere with working conditions, and Americans had no grounds to complain of a loss of freedom. Thus the principle of free labor, which originated as a celebration of the independent small producer in a society of broad equality and social harmony, was transformed into a defense of the unrestrained operations of the capitalist marketplace. State and federal courts regularly struck down state laws regulating The courts and economic economic enterprise as an interference with the right of the free laborer to freedom choose his employment and working conditions, and of the entrepreneur to utilize his property as he saw fit. For decades, the courts viewed state regulation of business—especially laws establishing maximum hours of work and safe working conditions—as an insult to free labor. The courts generally sided with business enterprises that complained of a loss of economic freedom. In 1885, the New York Court of Appeals invalidated a state law that prohibited the manufacture of cigars in tene- ment dwellings on the grounds that such legislation deprived the worker of Women and work the “liberty” to work “where he will.” Although women still lacked political rights, they were increasingly understood to possess the same economic “lib- erty,” defined in this way, as men. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1895 declared unconstitutional a state law that outlawed the production of garments in sweatshops and established a forty-eight-hour work week for women and E. C. Knight case children. In 1895 in United States v. E. C. Knight Co. , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which barred combinations in restraint of trade, could not be used to break up a sugar refining monopoly, because the Constitution empowered Congress to regulate commerce but not manufacturing. Their unwillingness to allow regulation of the economy, 500 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How did the economic development of the Gilded Age affect American freedom? however, did not prevent the courts from acting to impede labor organization. The Sherman Act, intended to prevent business mergers that stifled competi- tion, was used by judges primarily to issue injunctions prohibiting strikes on the grounds that they illegally interfered with the freedom of trade. In a 1905 case that became almost as notorious as Dred Scott, the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York voided a state law establishing ten Lochner v. New York hours per day or sixty per week as the maximum hours of work for bak- ers. By this time, the Court was invoking “liberty” in ways that could easily seem absurd. In one case, it overturned as a violation of “personal liberty” a Kansas law prohibiting “yellow-dog” contracts, which made nonmember- ship in a union a condition of employment. In another, it struck down state laws requiring payment of coal miners in money rather than paper usable only at company-owned stores. Workers, observed mine union leader John P. Mitchell, could not but feel that “they are being guaranteed the lib- erties they do not want and denied the liberty that is of real value to them.” L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C “ T h e O v e r w h e l m i n g L a b o r Q u e s t i o n ” Ruins of the Pittsburgh Round House, As Mitchell’s remark suggests, public debate in the late nineteenth a photograph published in the July century, more than at almost any other moment in American history, 1895 issue of Scribner’s Magazine, divided along class lines. The shift from the slavery controversy to shows the widespread destruction what one politician called “the overwhelming labor question” was dra- of property during the Great Railroad matically illustrated in 1877, the year of both the end of Strike of July 1877. Reconstruction and also the first national labor walkout— the Great Railroad Strike. When workers protesting a pay cut paralyzed rail traffic in much of the country, militia units tried to force them back to work. After troops fired on strikers in Pittsburgh, killing twenty people, workers responded by burning the city’s railroad yards, destroy- ing millions of dollars in property. General strikes para- lyzed Chicago and St. Louis. The strike revealed both a strong sense of solidarity among workers and the close ties between the Republican Party and the new class of industrialists. President Rutherford B. Hayes, who a few months earlier had ordered federal troops in the South to end their involvement in local politics, ordered the army into the North. The workers, the president wrote in his diary, were “put down by force.” L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C 501 In the aftermath of 1877, the federal government constructed armories in major cities to ensure that troops would be on hand in the event of further labor diffi- culties. Henceforth, national power would be used not to protect beleaguered for- mer slaves but to guarantee the rights of property. T h e K n i g h t s o f L a b o r a n d t h e “ C o n d i t i o n s E s s e n t i a l t o L i b e r t y ” The 1880s witnessed a new wave of labor organizing. At its center stood the Knights The Great Labor Parade of of Labor, led by Terence V. Powderly. The September 1, from Frank Leslie’s Knights were the first group to try to organize unskilled workers as well as Illustrated Newspaper, September 13, skilled, women alongside men, and blacks as well as whites (although even 1884. A placard illustrates how the labor movement identified Gilded Age the Knights excluded the despised Asian immigrants on the West Coast). The employers with the Slave Power of group reached a peak membership of nearly 800,000 in 1886 and involved the pre–Civil War era. millions of workers in strikes, boycotts, political action, and educational and social activities. Labor reformers of the Gilded Age put forward a wide array of pro- grams, from the eight-hour day to public employment in hard times, currency reform, anarchism, socialism, and the creation of a vaguely defined “cooperative commonwealth.” Labor raised the question whether meaning- ful freedom could exist in a situation of extreme economic inequality. M i d d l e - C l a s s R e f o r m e r s Dissatisfaction with social conditions in the Gilded Age extended well beyond aggrieved workers. Alarmed by fear of class warfare and the Social thought in the growing power of concentrated capital, social thinkers offered numerous Gilded Age plans for change. In the last quarter of the century, more than 150 utopian or cataclysmic novels appeared, predicting that social conflict would end either in a new, harmonious social order or in total catastrophe. Of the many books proposing more optimistic remedies for the unequal distribution of wealth, the most popular were Progress and Poverty (1879) by Henry George, The Cooperative Commonwealth (1884) by Laurence Gronlund, and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888). All three were among the century’s greatest best-sellers, their extraordinary success tes- 502 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How did reformers of the period approach the problems of an industrial society? tifying to what George called “a wide-spread consciousness . . . that there is something radically wrong in the present social organization.” All three writers, though in very different ways, sought to reclaim an imagined golden age of social harmony and American freedom. Henry George’s Progress Progress and Poverty probably commanded more public attention than and Poverty any book on economics in American history. Henry George began with a famous statement of “the problem” suggested by its title—the growth of “squalor and misery” alongside material progress. His solution was the “single tax,” which would replace other taxes with a levy on increases in the value of real estate. No one knows how many of Henry George’s read- ers actually believed in this way of solving the nation’s ills. But millions responded to his clear explanation of economic relationships and his stir- ring account of how the “social distress” long thought to be confined to the Old World had made its appearance in the New. Quite different in outlook was The Cooperative Commonwealth, the first book to popularize socialist ideas for an American audience. Its author, Laurence Gronlund, was a lawyer who had emigrated from Denmark in 1867. Socialism—the belief that private control of economic enterprises Socialism should be replaced by government ownership in order to ensure a fairer dis- tribution of the benefits of the wealth produced—became a major political force in western Europe in the late nineteenth century. In the United States, however, where access to private property was widely considered essential to individual freedom, socialist beliefs were largely confined to immigrants, whose writings, frequently in foreign languages, attracted little attention. Gronlund began the process of socialism’s Americanization. Whereas Edward Bellamy, author of the Karl Marx, the nineteenth century’s most influential socialist theorist, utopian novel Looking Backward. had predicted that socialism would come into being via a working-class revolution, Gronlund portrayed it as the end result of a process of peace- ful evolution, not violent upheaval. He thus made socialism seem more acceptable to middle-class Americans who desired an end to class conflict and the restoration of social harmony. Not until the early twentieth century would socialism become a sig- nificant presence in American public life. As Gronlund himself noted, the most important result of The Cooperative Commonwealth was to prepare an audience for Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which promoted social- ist ideas while “ignoring that name” (Bellamy wrote of nationalism, not socialism). In Looking Backward, his main character falls asleep in the late nineteenth century only to awaken in the year 2000, in a world where cooperation has replaced class strife, “excessive individualism,” and cutthroat competition. Freedom, Bellamy insisted, was a social condition resting on interdependence, not autonomy. L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C 503 The book inspired the creation of hundreds of nationalist clubs devoted to bringing into existence the world of 2000 and left a profound mark on a generation of reformers and intellectuals. Bellamy held out the hope of retaining the material abundance made possible by industrial capitalism while eliminating inequality. P r o t e s t a n t s a n d M o r a l R e f o r m Mainstream Protestants played a major role in seeking to stamp out sin during the Gilded Age. What one historian calls a “Christian lobby” pro- moted political solutions to what they saw as the moral problems raised by labor conflict and the growth of cities, and threats to religious faith by Darwinism and other scientific advances. Unlike the pre–Civil War period, when “moral suasion” was the pre- ferred approach of many reformers, powerful national organizations like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, National Reform Association, Legislation on morals and Reform Bureau now campaigned for federal legislation that would “christianize the government” by outlawing sinful behavior. Among the proposed targets were the consumption of alcohol, gambling, prostitu- tion, polygamy, and birth control. In a striking departure from the prewar situation, southerners joined in the campaign for federal regulation of individual behavior, something whites in the region had strongly opposed before the Civil War, fearing it could lead to action against slavery. The key role played by the white South in the campaign for moral legislation The Bible Belt helped earn the region a reputation as the Bible Belt—a place where politi- cal action revolved around religious principles. Although efforts to enact a national law requiring businesses to close on Sunday failed, the Christian lobby’s efforts set the stage for later legislation such as the Mann Act of 1910, banning the transportation of women across state lines for immoral purposes (an effort to suppress prostitution), and Prohibition. A S o c i a l G o s p e l Most of the era’s Protestant preachers concentrated on attacking individual sins like drinking and Sabbath-breaking and saw nothing immoral about the pursuit of riches. But the outlines of what came to be called the Social Rauschenbusch and Gladden Gospel were taking shape in the writings of Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister in New York City; Washington Gladden, a Congregational clergyman in Columbus, Ohio; and others. They insisted that freedom and spiritual self-development required an equalization of wealth and power and that unbridled competition mocked the Christian ideal of brotherhood. 504 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age How did reformers of the period approach the problems of an industrial society? The Social Gospel movement originated as an effort to reform Protestant churches by expanding their appeal in poor urban neighbor- hoods and making them more attentive to the era’s social ills. The move- ment’s adherents established missions and relief programs in urban areas that attempted to alleviate poverty, combat child labor, and encour- age the construction of better working-class housing. Within American Catholicism as well, a group of priests and bishops emerged who attempted to alter the church’s traditional hostility to movements for social reform and its isolation from contemporary currents of social thought. With most of its parishioners working men and women, they argued, the church should lend its support to the labor movement. T h e H a y m a r k e t A f f a i r The year of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, 1886, also witnessed an unprecedented upsurge in labor activity. On May 1, 1886, some 350,000 workers in cities across the country demonstrated for an eight-hour day. Having originated in the United States, May 1, or May Day as it came to The first May Day be called, soon became an annual date of parades, picnics, and protests, celebrated around the world by organized labor. The most dramatic events of 1886 took place in Chicago, a city with a large and vibrant labor movement that brought together native-born and immigrant workers, whose outlooks ranged from immigrant socialism and anarchism to American traditions of equality and anti-monopoly. On May 3, 1886, four strikers were killed by police. The next day, a rally was held in Haymarket Square to protest the killings. Near the end of the Haymarket protests speeches, someone—whose identity has never been determined—threw a bomb into the crowd, killing a policeman. The panicked police opened fire, shooting several bystanders and a number of their own force. Soon after, police raided the offices of labor and radical groups and arrested their leaders. Employers took the opportunity to paint the labor movement as a dangerous and un-American force, prone to violence and controlled by foreign-born radicals. Eight anarchists were charged with plotting and carrying out the bombing. Even though the evidence against them was extremely weak, a jury convicted the “Haymarket martyrs.” Four were hanged, one committed suicide in prison, and the remaining three were imprisoned until John Peter Altgeld, a pro-labor governor of Illinois, com- muted their sentences in 1893. Seven of the eight men accused of plotting the Haymarket bombing were foreign-born—six Germans and an English immigrant. The last was Albert Parsons, a native of Alabama who had served in the Confederate L A B O R A N D T H E R E P U B L I C 505 army in the Civil War, married a black woman, and edited a Republican newspaper in Texas during Reconstruction. Having survived the Ku Klux Klan in Reconstruction Texas, Parsons perished on the Illinois gallows for a crime that he, like the other “Haymarket martyrs,” did not commit. L a b o r a n d P o l i t i c s The Haymarket affair took place amid an outburst of independent labor political activity. In Kansas City, for example, a coalition of black and Irish- American workers and middle-class voters elected Tom Hanna as mayor. He proceeded to side with unions rather than employers in industrial disputes. The most celebrated labor campaign took place in New York City, where in 1886, somewhat to his own surprise, Henry George found him- In this pro-labor cartoon from 1888, a self thrust into the role of labor’s candidate for mayor. George’s aim in workingman rescues liberty from the running was to bring attention to the single tax on land. The labor leaders stranglehold of monopolies and the who organized the United Labor Party had more immediate goals in mind, pro-business major parties. especially stopping the courts from barring strikes and jailing unionists for conspiracy. A few days after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, New Yorkers flocked to the polls to elect their mayor. Nearly 70,000 voted for George, who finished second, eclipsing the total of the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, and coming close to defeating Democrat Abram Hewitt. The events of 1886 suggested that labor might be on the verge of establishing itself as a permanent political force. In fact, that year marked the high point of the Knights of Labor. Facing increasing employer hostil- ity and linked by employers and the press to the violence and radicalism Decline of Knights of Labor associated with the Haymarket events, the Knights soon declined. The major parties, moreover, proved remarkably resourceful in appealing to labor voters. In the early twentieth century, reformers would turn to new ways of addressing the social conditions of freedom and new means of increasing ordinary Americans’ political and economic liberty. But before this, in the 1890s, the nation would face its gravest crisis since the Civil War, and the boundaries of freedom would once again be redrawn. 506 C h a p t e r 1 6  America’s Gilded Age C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S “great upheaval” of 1886 1. The American economy thrived because of federal (p. 476) involvement, not the lack of it. How did the federal “trusts” (p. 480) government actively promote industrial and agricultural vertical integration (p. 481) development in this period? “captains of industry” vs. “robber barons” (p. 482) “bonanza farms” (p. 486) 2. Why were railroads so important to America’s second Dawes Act (p. 490) industrial revolution? What events demonstrate their Ghost Dance (p. 490) influence on society and politics as well as the economy? gospel of wealth (p. 492) greenbacks (p. 496) 3. Why did organized efforts of farmers, workers, and local Interstate Commerce reformers largely fail to achieve substantive change in the Commission (p. 497) Gilded Age? Sherman Antitrust Act (p. 497) Patrons of Husbandry (p. 498) 4. Describe the involvement of American family farmers Social Darwinism (p. 499) in the global economy after 1870 and its effects on their liberty of contract (p. 500) Knights of Labor (p. 502) independence. Social Gospel (p. 504) Haymarket Affair (p. 505) 5. How successfully did third parties lead movements for reform at the state level? 6. How did American political leaders seek to remake Indians and change the ways they lived? 7. How do the ideas of Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and other authors conflict with Social Darwinism? 8. How did social reformers such as Edward Bellamy, Henry wwnorton.com George, and advocates of the Social Gospel movement /studyspace conceive of liberty and freedom differently than the proponents of the liberty of contract ideal and laissez- VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE faire? s s 9. In what ways did the West provide a “safety valve” for s the problems in the industrial East? In what ways did it s reveal some of the same problems? s C h a p t e r R e v i e w a n d O n l i n e R e s o u r c e s 507 1867 Alaska purchased C H A P T E R 1 7 1874 Women’s Christian Temperance Union founded 1879– Kansas Exodus 1880 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act 1883 Civil Rights Cases F R E E D O M ’ S 1886 American Federation of Labor established 1890 National American Woman Suffrage Association B O U N D A R I E S , A T organized Alfred T. Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power upon History H O M E A N D A B R O A D 1892 Homestead strike Populist Party organized  1893 Hawaii’s Queen Liliuokalani overthrown Economic depression 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 0 0 begins 1894 Coxey’s Army marches to Washington Pullman strike Immigration Restriction League established 1895 Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta speech 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson The National Association of Colored Women established 1897 William McKinley inaugurated president 1898 Spanish-American War 1899– Philippine War 1903 1900 Gold Standard Act 1901– Insular Cases 1904 A Trifle Embarrassed, a cartoon from the magazine Puck in 1898, depicts Uncle Sam and a female figure of liberty standing at the gate of a Foundling [Orphan] Asylum and being presented with orphans representing Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines. These were the territories acquired by the United States during the Spanish-American War. (All but Cuba remained American possessions.) The artist seems to question whether the United States is prepared to assume the role of imperial power. One of the most popular songs of 1892 bore the title “Father Was Killed by a Pinkerton Man.” It was inspired by an incident dur- F O C U S ing a bitter strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steelworks at Home- stead, Pennsylvania, the nineteenth century’s most widely publicized Q U E S T I O N S confrontation between labor and capital. Homestead’s twelve steel mills were the most profitable and techno- logically advanced in the world. The union contract gave the Amalgam- s ated Association a considerable say in their operation, including the right and the significance of to approve the hiring of new workers and to regulate the pace of work. Populism? In 1892, Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, his local supervisor, decided to operate the plant on a nonunion basis. Henceforth, only workers who s agreed not to join the union could work at Homestead. In response, blacks after 1877 give way the workers blockaded the steelworks and mobilized support from the to legal segregation across local community. The battle memorialized in song took place on July 6, the South? 1892, when armed strikers confronted 300 private policemen from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Seven workers and three Pinkerton agents s were killed, and the Pinkertons were forced to retreat. Four days later, boundaries of American the governor of Pennsylvania dispatched 8,000 militiamen to open the freedom grow narrower in complex on management’s terms. In the end, the Amalgamated Associa- this period? tion was destroyed. Homestead demonstrated that neither a powerful union nor public s opinion could influence the conduct of the largest corporations. Moreover, emerge as an imperial two American ideas of freedom collided at Homestead—the employers’ power in the 1890s? definition, based on the idea that property rights, unrestrained by union rules or public regulation, sustained the public good; and the workers’ conception, which stressed economic security and independence from what they considered the “tyranny” of employers. During the 1890s, Andrew Carnegie’s ironworks at many Americans came to believe that they were being denied economic Homestead, Pennsylvania. independence and democratic self-government, long central to the popular understanding of freedom. Millions of farmers joined the Populist movement in an attempt to reverse their declining economic pros- pects and to rescue the government from what they saw as control by powerful corporate interests. The 1890s witnessed the imposition of a new racial system in the South that locked African-Americans into the status of second-class citizenship, denying them many of the freedoms white Americans took for granted. Increasing immigration produced heated debates over whether the country should reconsider its traditional self-definition as a refuge for foreigners seeking greater F R E E D O M ’ S B O U N D A R I E S , A T H O M E A N D A B R O A D 509 freedom on American shores. At the end of the 1890s, in the Spanish- American War, the United States for the first time acquired overseas possessions and found itself ruling over subject peoples from Puerto Rico to the Philippines. Was the democratic republic, many Americans won- dered, becoming an empire like those of Europe? Rarely has the country experienced at one time so many debates over both the meaning of free- dom and freedom’s boundaries. T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E T h e F a r m e r s ’ R e v o l t Even as labor unrest crested, a different kind of uprising was ripen- ing in the South and the trans-Mississippi West, a response to falling agricultural prices and growing economic dependency in rural areas. In the South, the sharecropping system, discussed in Chapter 15, locked millions of tenant farmers, white and black, into perpetual poverty. The interruption of cotton exports during the Civil War had led to the rapid Causes of unrest expansion of production in India, Egypt, and Brazil. The glut of cotton on the world market led to declining prices, throwing millions of small farmers deep into debt and threatening them with the loss of their land. In the West, farmers who had mortgaged their property to purchase seed, fertilizer, and equipment faced the prospect of losing their farms when unable to repay their bank loans. Farmers increasingly believed that their plight derived from the high freight rates charged by railroad companies, excessive interest rates for loans from merchants and bank- ers, and the fiscal policies of the federal government (discussed in the previous chapter) that reduced the supply of money and helped to push down farm prices. The Farmers’ Alliance Through the Farmers’ Alliance, the largest citizens’ movement of the nineteenth century, farmers sought to remedy their condition. Founded in Texas in the late 1870s, the Alliance spread to forty-three states by 1890. The Alliance proposed that the federal government establish warehouses where farmers could store their crops until they were sold. Using the crops as collateral, the government would then issue loans to farmers at low interest rates, thereby ending their dependence on bankers and mer- chants. Since it would have to be enacted by Congress, the “subtreasury plan,” as this proposal was called, led the Alliance into politics. 510 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad What were the origins and the significance of Populism? T h e P e o p l e ’ s P a r t y In the early 1890s, the Alliance evolved into the People’s Party (or Populists), the era’s greatest political insurgency. Attempting to speak for all “producing classes,” the party did not just appeal to farmers. It achieved some of its greatest successes in states like Colorado and Idaho, where it won the support of miners and industrial workers. But its major base lay in the cotton and wheat belts of the South and West. The Populists embarked on a remarkable effort of community orga- Populist organizing nization and education. To spread their message they published numer- ous pamphlets on political and economic questions, established more than 1,000 local newspapers, and sent traveling speakers throughout rural America. At great gatherings on the western plains, similar in some ways to religious revival meetings, and in small-town southern country stores, one observer wrote, “people commenced to think who had never thought before, and people talked who had seldom spoken.” Here was the last great political expression of the nineteenth-century vision of America as a commonwealth of small producers whose freedom rested on the ownership of productive property and respect for the dignity of labor. But although the Populists used the familiar language of nineteenth- century radicalism, they were hardly a backward-looking movement. They embraced the modern technologies that made large-scale cooperative The Populist message enterprise possible—the railroad, the telegraph, and the national market— while looking to the federal government to regulate those technologies in the public interest. They promoted agricultural education and believed farmers should adopt modern scientific methods of cultivation. A group of Kansas Populists, perhaps on their way to a political gathering, in a photograph from the 1890s. T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E 511 T h e P o p u l i s t P l a t f o r m The Populist platform of 1892, adopted at the party’s Omaha convention, remains a classic document of American reform. Written by Ignatius Donnelly, a Minnesota editor, it spoke of a nation “brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin” by political corruption and eco- Proposals of reform nomic inequality. The platform put forth a long list of proposals to restore democracy and economic opportunity, many of which would be adopted during the next half-century: the direct election of U.S. senators, govern- ment control of the currency, a graduated income tax, a system of low-cost public financing to enable farmers to market their crops, and recognition of the right of workers to form labor unions. In addition, Populists called for public ownership of the railroads to guarantee farmers inexpensive access to markets for their crops. A generation would pass before a major party offered so sweeping a plan for political action to create the social conditions of freedom. P O P U L I S T S T R E N G T H , 1 8 9 2 WASHINGTON CANADA NEW MONTANA NORTH HAMPSHIRE MAINE DAKOTA VERMONT OREGON MINNESOTA IDAHO SOUTH WISCONSIN NEW MASSACHUSETTS WYOMING DAKOTA MICHIGAN YORK RHODE ISLAND NEBRASKA IOWA PENNSYLVANIA CONNECTICUT NEVADA UTAH INDIANA OHIO NEW JERSEY ILLINOIS WEST DELAWARE CALIFORNIA TERRITORY COLORADO KANSAS VIRGINIA MARYLAND MISSOURI VIRGINIA KENTUCKY NORTH ARIZONA OKLAHOMA TENNESSEE CAROLINA TERRITORY NEW MEXICO TERRITORY ARKANSAS SOUTH TERRITORY CAROLINA ALABAMA GEORGIA Populist share of the MISSISSIPPI presidential vote, 1892 TEXAS (percentage) LOUISIANA Over 48 30–48 FLORIDA 15–30 5–15 0–5 MEXICO 0 250 500 miles Not voting 0 250 500 kilometers 512 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad What were the origins and the significance of Populism? T h e P o p u l i s t C o a l i t i o n In some southern states, the Populists made remarkable efforts to unite black and white small farmers on a common political and economic pro- gram. In general, southern white Populists’ racial attitudes did not differ Populism and race significantly from those of their non-Populist neighbors. Nonetheless, rec- ognizing the need for allies to break the Democratic Party’s stranglehold on power in the South, some white Populists insisted that black and white farmers shared common grievances and could unite for common goals. Tom Watson, Georgia’s leading Populist, worked the hardest to forge a black-white alliance. “You are kept apart,” he told interracial audiences, “that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings.” While many blacks refused to abandon the party of Lincoln, others were attracted by the Populist appeal. In most of the South, however, Democrats fended off the Populist challenge by resorting to the tactics they had used to retain power since the 1870s—mobilizing whites with warnings about “Negro suprem- acy,” intimidating black voters, and stuffing ballot boxes on election day. The Populist movement also engaged the energies of thousands of Women reformers reform-minded women from farm and labor backgrounds. Some, like Mary Elizabeth Lease, a former homesteader and one of the first female lawyers in Kansas, became prominent organizers, campaigners, and strategists. During the 1890s, referendums in Colorado and Idaho approved extending the vote to women, whereas in Kansas and California the proposal went down in defeat. Populists in all these states endorsed woman suffrage. Populist presidential candidate James Weaver received more than 1 million votes in 1892. The party carried five western states. In his inau- Presidential election of 1892 gural address in 1893, Lorenzo Lewelling, the new Populist governor of Kansas, anticipated a phrase made famous seventy years later by Martin Luther King Jr.: “I have a dream. . . . A time is foreshadowed when . . . liberty, equality, and justice shall have permanent abiding places in the republic.” T h e G o v e r n m e n t a n d L a b o r Were the Populists on the verge of replacing one of the two major par- ties? The severe depression that began in 1893 led to increased conflict between capital and labor and seemed to create an opportunity for expanding the Populist vote. Time and again, employers brought state or federal authority to bear to protect their own economic power or put down threats to public order. In May 1894, the federal government T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E 513 deployed soldiers to disperse Coxey’s Army—a band of several hundred unemployed men led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey, who marched to Washington demanding economic relief. Also in 1894, workers in the company-owned town of Pullman, Illi- nois, where railroad sleeping cars were manufactured, called a strike to protest a reduction in wages. The American Railway Union announced The Pullman Strike that its members would refuse to handle trains with Pullman cars. When the boycott crippled national rail service, President Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, Richard Olney (himself on the board of several railroad companies), obtained a federal court injunction ordering the strikers back to work. Federal troops and U.S. marshals soon occupied railroad centers like Chicago and Sacramento. The strike collapsed when the union’s leaders, including its char- Eugene Debs ismatic president, Eugene V. Debs, were jailed for contempt of court for violating the judicial order. In the case of In re Debs, the Supreme Court unanimously confirmed the sentences and approved the use of injunctions against striking labor unions. On his release from prison in November 1895, more than 100,000 persons greeted Debs at a Chicago railroad depot. P o p u l i s m a n d L a b o r Federal troops pose atop a railroad In 1894, Populists made determined efforts to appeal to industrial work- engine after being sent to Chicago ers. Governor Davis Waite of Colorado, who had edited a labor newspa- to help suppress the Pullman strike per before his election, sent the militia to protect striking miners against of 1894. 514 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad What were the origins and the significance of Populism? company police. In the state and congressional elections of that year, as the economic depression deepened, voters by the millions abandoned the Democratic Party of President Cleveland. In rural areas, the Populist vote increased in 1894. But urban work- ers did not rally to the Populists, whose core issues—the subtreasury plan and lower mortgage interest rates—had little meaning for them. Urban working-class voters instead shifted en masse to the Republicans, Labor votes who claimed that raising tariff rates (which Democrats had recently reduced) would restore prosperity by protecting manufacturers and industrial workers from the competition of imported goods and cheap foreign labor. In one of the most decisive shifts in congressional power in American history, the Republicans gained 117 seats in the House of Representatives. B r y a n a n d F r e e S i l v e r In 1896, Democrats and Populists joined to support William Jennings Bryan for the presidency. A thirty-six-year-old congressman from Nebraska, A cartoon from the magazine Judge, Bryan won the Democratic nomination after delivering to the national con- September 14, 1896, condemns vention an electrifying speech that crystallized the farmers’ pride and griev- William Jennings Bryan and his ances. “Burn down your cities and leave our farms,” Bryan proclaimed, “cross of gold” speech for defiling the symbols of Christianity. Bryan “and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms tramples on the Bible while holding and grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” Bryan called his golden cross; a vandalized church for the “free coinage” of silver—the unrestricted minting of silver money. In is visible in the background. language ringing with biblical imagery, Bryan condemned the gold stan- dard: “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Bryan’s demand for “free silver” was the latest expression of the view that increasing the amount of currency in circulation would raise the prices farmers received for their crops and make it easier to pay off their debts. His nomination wrested control of the Democratic Party from long- dominant leaders like President Grover Cleveland, who were closely tied to eastern businessmen. There was more to Bryan’s appeal, however, than simply free silver. A devoutly religious man, he was strongly influenced by the Social Gospel movement (discussed in the previous chapter). He championed a vision of the government helping ordinary Americans that anticipated provisions of the New Deal of the 1930s, including a progressive income tax, banking regulation, and the right of workers to form unions. Bryan also broke with tradition and embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, seeking to rally farmers and workers to his cause. T H E P O P U L I S T C H A L L E N G E 515 T h e C a m p a i g n o f 1 8 9 6 Republicans met the silverite challenge head on, insisting that gold was the only “honest” currency. Abandoning the gold standard, they insisted, would destroy business confidence and prevent recovery from the depres- sion by making creditors unwilling to extend loans, because they could not be certain of the value of the money in which they would be repaid. The William McKinley party nominated for president Ohio governor William McKinley, who as a congressman in 1890 had shepherded to passage the strongly protectionist McKinley Tariff. The election of 1896 is sometimes called the first modern presidential campaign because of the amount of money spent by the Republicans and A modern campaign the efficiency of their national organization. Eastern bankers and industrial- ists, thoroughly alarmed by Bryan’s call for monetary inflation and his fiery speeches denouncing corporate arrogance, poured millions of dollars into Republican coffers. (McKinley’s campaign raised some $10 million; Bryan’s around $300,000.) While McKinley remained at his Ohio home, his politi- cal manager Mark Hanna created a powerful national political machine that flooded the country with pamphlets, posters, and campaign buttons. The results revealed a nation as divided along regional lines as in 1860. Bryan carried the South and West and received 6.5 million votes. McKinley swept the more popu- lous industrial states of the Northeast and T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L Midwest, attracting 7.1 million. Industrial E L E C T I O N O F 1 8 9 6 America, from financiers and managers to workers, now voted solidly Republican, 4 a loyalty reinforced when prosperity 3 3 4 4 6 4 9 returned after 1897. 3 4 12 36 15 14 McKinley’s victory shattered the 3 4 32 8 13 6 political stalemate that had persisted 3 10 3 24 15 23 3 8 4 6 since 1876 and created one of the most 10 17 12 8 12 1 11 enduring political majorities in American 1 12 8 9 history. During McKinley’s presidency, 9 11 13 Republicans placed their stamp on eco- 15 8 nomic policy by passing the Dingley 4 Tariff of 1897, raising rates to the highest Non-voting territory level in history, and the Gold Standard Electoral Vote Popular Vote Act of 1900. Not until 1932, in the midst Party Candidate (Share) (Share) of another economic depression, would Republican McKinley 271 (61%) 7,104,779 (51%) Democrat Bryan 176 (39%) 6,502,925 (47%) the Democrats become the nation’s Minor parties 315,398 (2%) majority party. 516 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across the South? T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H T h e R e d e e m e r s i n P o w e r The failure of Populism in the South opened the door for the full imposition of a new racial order. The coalition of merchants, planters, and business entrepreneurs who dominated the region’s politics after 1877 called themselves Redeemers, since they claimed to have redeemed the region from the alleged horrors of misgovernment and “black rule.” Undoing Reconstruction On achieving power, they had moved to undo as much as possible of Reconstruction. Hardest hit were the new public school systems. Louisiana spent so little on education that it became the only state in the Union in which the percentage of whites unable to read and write actu- ally increased between 1880 and 1900. Black schools, however, suffered the most, as the gap between expenditures for black and white pupils widened steadily. New laws authorized the arrest of virtually any person without employment and greatly increased the penalties for petty crimes. As the South’s prison population rose, the renting out of convicts became a Convict labor profitable business. Every southern state placed at least a portion of its convicted criminals, the majority of them blacks imprisoned for minor offenses, in the hands of private businessmen. Railroads, mines, and lumber companies competed for this new form of cheap, involuntary labor. Conditions in labor camps were often barbaric, with disease rife and the death rates high. “One dies, get another” was the motto of the A group of Florida convict laborers. system’s architects. Southern states notoriously used convicts for public labor or leased T h e F a i l u r e o f t h e N e w S o u t h D r e a m them out to work in dire conditions for private employers. During the 1880s, Atlanta editor Henry Grady tirelessly promoted the promise of a New South, an era of prosperity based on industrial expan- sion and agricultural diversification. In fact, while planters, merchants, and industrialists prospered, the region as a whole sank deeper and deeper into poverty. Some industry did develop, such as new upcountry cotton factories that offered jobs to entire families of poor whites from the sur- rounding countryside. But since the main attractions for investors were the South’s low wages and taxes and the availability of convict labor, these enterprises made little contribution to regional economic develop- ment. With the exception of Birmingham, Alabama, which by 1900 had developed into an important center for the manufacture of iron and steel, southern cities were mainly export centers for cotton, tobacco, and rice, T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H 517 with little industry or skilled labor. Overall, the region remained depen- dent on the North for capital and manufactured goods. As late as the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would declare the South the nation’s “number one” economic problem. B l a c k L i f e i n t h e S o u t h Black farmers As the most disadvantaged rural southerners, black farmers suffered the most from the region’s condition. In the Upper South, economic develop- ment offered some opportunities—mines, iron furnaces, and tobacco facto- ries employed black laborers, and a good number of black farmers managed to acquire land. In the rice kingdom of coastal South Carolina and Georgia, most of the great plantations had fallen to pieces by the turn of the century, and many blacks acquired land and took up self-sufficient farming. In most Declining landownership of the Deep South, however, African-Americans owned a smaller percent- age of land in 1900 than they had at the end of Reconstruction. In southern cities, the network of institutions created after the Civil War—schools and colleges, churches, businesses, women’s clubs, and the like—served as the foundation for increasingly diverse black urban com- munities. They supported the growth of a black middle class, mostly pro- Coal miners, in a photograph by fessionals like teachers and physicians, or businessmen like undertakers Lewis Hine. Mining was one and shopkeepers serving the needs of black customers. But the labor mar- occupation in which blacks and whites often worked side by side. ket was rigidly divided along racial lines. Black men were excluded from supervisory positions in factories and work- shops and white-collar jobs such as clerks in offices. A higher percentage of black women than white worked for wages, but mainly as domestic servants. In most occupations, the few unions that existed in the South excluded blacks, forming yet another bar- rier to their economic advancement. T h e K a n s a s E x o d u s Trapped at the bottom of a stagnant economy, some blacks sought a way out through emigration from the South. In 1879 and 1880, an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 African-Americans migrated to Kansas, seeking political equality, freedom 518 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across the South? from violence, access to education, and economic opportunity. Those promoting the Exodus, including former fugitive slave Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, the organizer of a real estate company, distributed flyers and lithographs picturing Kansas as an idyllic land of rural plenty. Lacking the capital to take up farming, however, most black migrants ended up as unskilled laborers in towns and cities. But few chose to return to the South. In the words of one minister active in the movement, “We had rather suffer and be free.” Despite deteriorating prospects in the South, most African-Americans had little alternative but to stay in the region. The real expansion of job opportunities was taking place in northern cities. But most northern Northern jobs employers refused to offer jobs to blacks in the expanding industrial econ- omy, preferring to hire white migrants from rural areas and immigrants from Europe. T h e D e c l i n e o f B l a c k P o l i t i c s Neither black voting nor black officeholding came to an abrupt end in 1877. A few blacks even served in Congress in the 1880s and 1890s. Nonetheless, political opportunities became more and more restricted. Not until the 1990s would the number of black legislators in the South approach the level seen during Reconstruction. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton (on the left), who helped to organize the “Exodus” of 1879, superimposed on a photograph of a boat carrying African-Americans emigrating from the South to Kansas. T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H 519 With black men of talent and ambition turning away from poli- tics, the banner of political leadership passed to black women activists. The National Association of Colored Women, founded in 1896, brought Black women reformers together local and regional women’s clubs to press for both women’s rights and racial uplift. They aided poor families, offered lessons in home life and childrearing, and battled gambling and drinking in black communities. By insisting on the right of black women to be considered as “respectable” as their white counterparts, the women reformers challenged the racial ideology that consigned all blacks to the status of degraded second-class citizens. For nearly a generation after the end of Reconstruction, despite fraud and violence, black southerners continued to cast ballots in large num- Biracial politics bers. In some states, such as Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina, the Republican Party remained competitive and formed biracial political coalitions that challenged Democratic Party rule. Despite the lim- its of these alliances, especially those involving the Populists, the threat of a biracial political insurgency frightened the ruling Democrats and con- tributed greatly to the disenfranchisement movement. T h e E l i m i n a t i o n o f B l a c k V o t i n g Between 1890 and 1906, every southern state enacted laws or constitu- tional provisions meant to eliminate the black vote. Since the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited the use of race as a qualification for the suffrage, how were such measures even possible? Southern legislatures drafted laws that on paper appeared color-blind but that were actually designed Poll tax to end black voting. The most popular devices were the poll tax (a fee that each citizen had to pay in order to retain the right to vote), literacy tests, and the requirement that a prospective voter demonstrate to election offi- cials an “understanding” of the state constitution. Six southern states also adopted a “grandfather clause,” exempting from the new requirements descendants of persons eligible to vote before the Civil War (when only whites, of course, could cast ballots in the South). The racial intent of the Grandfather clause grandfather clause was so clear that the Supreme Court in 1915 invalidated such laws for violating the Fifteenth Amendment. The other methods of limiting black voting, however, remained on the books. Although election officials often allowed whites who did not meet the new qualifications to register, numerous poor and illiterate whites also lost the right to vote, a result welcomed by many planters and urban reformers. Louisiana, for example, reduced the number of blacks registered to vote 520 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across the South? from 130,000 in 1894 to 1,342 a decade later. But 80,000 white voters also lost the right. Disenfranchisement led directly to the rise of a generation Scope of disenfranchisement of southern demagogues, who mobilized white voters by extreme appeals to racism. As late as 1940, only 3 percent of adult black southerners were reg- istered to vote. The elimination of black and many white voters, which reversed the nineteenth-century trend toward more inclusive suffrage, could not have been accomplished without the approval of the North and the Supreme Court, both of which gave their approval to disenfranchise- ment laws, in clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As a result, southern congressmen wielded far greater power on the national scene than their tiny electorates warranted. T h e L a w o f S e g r e g a t i o n Along with disenfranchisement, the 1890s saw the widespread impo- sition of segregation in the South. Laws and local customs requiring the separation of the races had numerous precedents. They had existed in many parts of the pre–Civil War North. Southern schools and many other institutions had been segregated during Reconstruction. In the 1880s, however, southern race relations remained unsettled. Some railroads, the- aters, and hotels admitted blacks and whites on an equal basis while others separated them by race or excluded blacks altogether. In 1883, in the Civil Rights Cases, the Supreme Court invalidated Civil Rights Cases the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had outlawed racial discrimination by hotels, theaters, railroads, and other public facilities. In 1896, in the landmark decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court gave its approval to state laws requiring separate facilities for blacks and whites. The case arose in Louisiana, where the legislature had required railroad com- panies to maintain a separate car or section for black passengers. In an 8-1 decision, the Court upheld the Louisiana law, arguing that segregated facilities did not discriminate so long as they were “separate but equal.” The lone dissenter, John Marshall Harlan, reprimanded the majority with an oft-quoted comment: “Our constitution is color-blind.” Segregation, he insisted, violated the principle of equal liberty. To Harlan, freedom for the former slaves meant the right to participate fully and equally in American society. As Harlan predicted, states reacted to the Plessy decision by passing laws mandating racial segregation in every aspect of southern life, from Spread of segregation schools to hospitals, waiting rooms, toilets, and cemeteries. Some states T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H 521 In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws forbade taxi drivers to carry members of different races at the same time. establishing racial segregation did Despite the “thin disguise” (Harlan’s phrase) of equality required by the not violate the equal protection Court’s “separate but equal” doctrine, facilities for blacks were either non- clause of the Fourteenth Amendment existent or markedly inferior. so long as facilities were “separate More than a form of racial separation, segregation was one part of an but equal.” In fact, this was almost never the case, as illustrated by all-encompassing system of white domination, in which each component— these photographs of the elementary disenfranchisement, unequal economic status, inferior education— schools for black and white children reinforced the others. in South Boston, Virginia, in the early Segregation affected other groups as well as blacks. In some parts twentieth century. of Mississippi where Chinese laborers had been brought in to work the fields after the Civil War, three separate school systems—white, black, and Chinese—were established. In California, black, Hispanic, and American Indian children were frequently educated alongside whites, but state law required separate schools for those of “mongolian or Chinese descent.” In Segregation and other Texas and California, although Mexicans were legally considered “white,” minority groups they found themselves barred from many restaurants, places of entertain- ment, and other public facilities. T h e R i s e o f L y n c h i n g Those blacks who sought to challenge the system faced not only overwhelming political and legal power but also the threat of violent reprisal. In every year between 1883 and 1905, more than fifty persons, the vast majority of them black men, were lynched in the South—that Mob violence is, murdered by a mob. Lynching continued well into the twentieth century. By mid-century, the total number of victims since 1880 had reached nearly 5,000. Some lynchings occurred secretly at night; others 522 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the liberties of blacks after 1877 give way to legal segregation across the South? were advertised in advance and attracted large crowds of onlookers. Mobs engaged in activities that shocked the TABLE 17.1 States with civilized world. In 1899, Sam Hose, a plantation laborer Over 200 Lynchings, who killed his employer in self-defense, was brutally 1889–1918 murdered near Newman, Georgia, before 2,000 onlook- ers, some of whom arrived on a special excursion train STATE NUMBER OF LYNCHINGS from Atlanta. A crowd including young children watched as his executioners cut off Hose’s ears, fingers, and geni- tals, burned him alive, and then fought over pieces of his Georgia 386 bones as souvenirs. Mississippi 373 Like many victims of lynchings, Hose was accused after Texas 335 his death of having raped a white woman. Yet in nearly all Louisiana 313 cases, as activist Ida B. Wells argued in a newspaper edito- Alabama 276 rial after a Memphis lynching in 1892, the charge of rape was Arkansas 214 a “bare lie.” Born a slave in Mississippi in 1862, Wells had become a schoolteacher and editor. Her essay condemning the lynching of three black men in Memphis led a mob to destroy her newspaper, the Memphis Free Press, while she was out of the city. Wells moved to the North, where she became the nation’s leading antilynch- ing crusader. She bluntly insisted that given the conditions of southern blacks, the United States had no right to call itself the “land of the free.” Part of the crowd of 10,000 that P o l i t i c s , R e l i g i o n , a n d M e m o r y watched the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas. Smith was As the white North and South moved toward reconciliation in the 1880s accused of raping and murdering a and 1890s, one cost was the abandonment of the dream of racial equality four-year-old girl. The word “justice” spawned by the Civil War and written into the laws and Constitution dur- was painted on the platform. ing Reconstruction. In popular literature and memoirs by participants, at veterans’ reunions and in public memorials, the Civil War came to be remembered as a tragic family quarrel among white Americans in which blacks had played no signifi- cant part. It was a war of “brother against brother” in which both sides fought gal- lantly for noble causes—local rights on the part of the South, preservation of the Union for the North. Slavery increasingly came to be viewed as a minor issue, not the war’s fundamental cause, and Reconstruction as a regrettable period of “Negro rule.” T H E S E G R E G A T E D S O U T H 523 Southern governments erected monuments to the Lost Cause, a romanticized version of slavery, the Old South, and the Confederate expe- rience. Religion was central to the development of Lost Cause mythology— it offered a way for white southerners to come to terms with defeat in the Civil War without abandoning white supremacy. According to the Lost Cause, Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson were sterling representatives of Christian virtue, while the Yankees had represented the forces of evil. The death of the Confederacy, in many sermons, was equated with the death of Christ, who gave his life for the sins of mankind. Southern churches played a key role in keeping the values of the Old South alive by refusing to reunite with northern branches. In the 1840s, the Methodist and Baptist churches had divided This carving by an unknown into northern and southern branches. Methodists would not reunite until southerner from around 1875 well into the twentieth century; Baptists have yet to do so. juxtaposes Robert E. Lee and the crucified Christ, illustrating the strong religious overtones in the ideology of the Lost Cause. R E D R A W I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S As the nineteenth century drew to a close, American society seemed to be fracturing along lines of both class and race. The result, commented economist Simon Patten, was a widespread obsession with redrawing the boundary of freedom by identifying and excluding those unworthy of the blessings of liberty. “The South,” he wrote, “has its negro, the city has its slums. . . . The friends of American institutions fear the ignorant immi- grant, and the workingman dislikes the Chinese.” T h e N e w I m m i g r a t i o n a n d t h e N e w N a t i v i s m The 1890s witnessed a major shift in the sources of immigration to the United States. Despite the prolonged depression, 3.5 million newcom- ers entered the United States during the decade, seeking jobs in the industrial centers of the North and Midwest. Over half arrived not from Ireland, England, Germany, and Scandinavia, the traditional sources Southern and eastern Europe of immigration, but from southern and eastern Europe, especially Italy and the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The “new immigrants” were widely described by native-born Americans as members of distinct “races,” whose lower level of civilization explained everything from their willingness to work for substandard wages to their supposed inborn ten- dency toward criminal behavior. 524 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad In what ways did the boundaries of American freedom grow narrower in this period? A cartoon from the magazine Judge illustrates anti-immigrant sentiment. A tide of newcomers representing the criminal element of other countries washes up on American shores, to the consternation of Uncle Sam. Founded in 1894 by a group of Boston professionals, the Immigration Restriction League called for reducing immigration by barring the illit- erate from entering the United States. Such a measure was adopted by Congress early in 1897 but was vetoed by President Cleveland. Like the South, northern and western states experimented with ways to eliminate Restricting the vote undesirable voters. Nearly all the states during the 1890s adopted the secret or “Australian” ballot, meant both to protect voters’ privacy and to limit the participation of illiterates (who could no longer receive help from party officials at polling places). Suffrage throughout the country was increasingly becoming a privilege, not a right. C h i n e s e E x c l u s i o n a n d C h i n e s e R i g h t s The boundaries of nationhood, expanded so dramatically in the aftermath of the Civil War, slowly contracted. Leaders of both parties expressed vicious opinions regarding immigrants from China—they were “odious, abominable, dangerous, revolting,” declared Republican leader James G. Blaine. Between 1850 and 1870, nearly all Chinese immigrants had Anti-Chinese opinion been unattached men, brought in by labor contractors to work in western gold fields, railroad construction, and factories. In the early 1870s, entire Chinese families began to immigrate, leading Congress in 1875 to exclude Chinese women from entering the country. Beginning in 1882, Congress temporarily excluded immigrants from China from entering the country altogether. Although non-whites had long been barred from becoming naturalized citizens, this was the first R E D R A W I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S 525 time that race had been used to exclude an entire group of people from entering the United States. Congress renewed the restriction ten years later and made it permanent in 1902. At the time of exclusion, 105,000 persons of Chinese descent lived in the United States. Nearly all of them resided on the West Coast, where they suffered intense discrimination and periodic mob violence. In the late- nineteenth-century West, thousands of Chinese immigrants were expelled from towns and mining camps, and mobs assaulted Chinese residences and businesses. Between 1871 and 1885, San Francisco provided no public edu- cation for Chinese children. In 1885, the California Supreme Court, in Tape v. Hurley, ordered the city to admit Chinese students to public schools. The state legislature responded by passing a law authorizing segregated educa- tion. But Joseph and Mary Tape, who had lived in the United States since the 1860s, insisted that their daughter be allowed to attend her neighbor- A Chinese vegetable peddler in Idaho hood school like other children. “Is it a disgrace to be born a Chinese?” Mary City, Idaho. Tape wrote. “Didn’t God make us all!” But her protest failed. Not until 1947 did California repeal the law authorizing separate schools for the Chinese. The U.S. Supreme Court also considered the status of Chinese- Americans. In United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment awarded citizenship to children of Chinese immigrants born on American soil. Yet the justices also affirmed the right of Congress to set racial restrictions on immigration. And in its decision Expulsion without due process in Fong Yue Ting (1893), the Court authorized the federal government to expel Chinese aliens without due process of law. In his dissent, Justice David J. Brewer acknowledged that the power was now directed against a people many Americans found “obnoxious.” But “who shall say,” he continued, “it will not be exercised tomorrow against other classes and Result of an anti-Chinese riot in other people?” Brewer proved to be an accurate prophet. In 1904, the Court Seattle, Washington. cited Fong Yue Ting in upholding a law barring anarchists from entering the United States, demonstrating how restric- tions on the rights of one group can become a precedent for infringing on the rights of others. T h e E m e r g e n c e o f B o o k e r T . W a s h i n g t o n The social movements that had helped to expand the nineteenth-century boundaries of freedom now redefined their objectives so that they might be realized within the 526 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad In what ways did the boundaries of American freedom grow narrower in this period? new economic and intellectual framework. Prominent black leaders, for example, took to emphasizing economic self-help and individual advance- ment into the middle class as an alternative to political agitation. Symbolizing the change was the juxtaposition, in 1895, of the death of Frederick Douglass with Booker T. Washington’s widely praised speech at the Atlanta Cotton Exposition that urged blacks to adjust to segrega- tion and abandon agitation for civil and political rights. Born a slave in 1856, Washington had studied as a young man at Hampton Institute, Virginia. He adopted the outlook of Hampton’s founder, General Samuel Armstrong, who emphasized that obtaining farms or skilled jobs was far more important to African-Americans emerging from slavery than the rights of citizenship. Washington put this view into practice when he became head of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, a center for vocational edu- cation (education focused on training for a job rather than broad learning). Booker T. Washington, advocate of industrial education and economic In his Atlanta speech, Washington repudiated the abolitionist tra- self-help. dition, which stressed ceaseless agitation for full equality. He urged blacks not to try to combat segregation. Washington’s ascendancy rested in large part on his success in channeling aid from wealthy northern Washington’s appeal whites to Tuskegee and to black politicians and newspapers who backed his program. But his support in the black community also arose from a widespread sense that in the world of the late nineteenth century, frontal assaults on white power were impossible and that blacks should concen- trate on building up their segregated communities. T h e R i s e o f t h e A F L Within the labor movement, the demise of the Knights of Labor and the ascendancy of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) during the 1890s reflected a similar shift away from a broadly reformist past to more lim- ited goals. As the Homestead and Pullman strikes demonstrated, direct confrontations with the large corporations were likely to prove suicidal. Unions, declared Samuel Gompers, the AFL’s founder and longtime Samuel Gompers president, should not pursue the Knights’ utopian dream of creating a “cooperative commonwealth.” Rather, the labor movement should devote itself to negotiating with employers for higher wages and better work- ing conditions for its members. Like Washington, Gompers spoke the language of the era’s business culture. Indeed, the AFL policies he pio- neered were known as “business unionism.” During the 1890s, union membership rebounded from its decline in the late 1880s. But at the same time, the labor movement became less and less inclusive. Abandoning the Knights’ ideal of labor solidarity, the AFL R E D R A W I N G T H E B O U N D A R I E S 527 Skilled workers restricted membership to skilled workers—a small minority of the labor force—effectively excluding the vast majority of unskilled workers and, therefore, nearly all blacks, women, and new European immigrants. AFL membership centered on sectors of the economy like printing and building construction that were dominated by small competitive businesses with workers who frequently were united by craft skill and ethnic background. AFL unions had little presence in basic industries like steel and rubber, or in the large-scale factories that now dominated the economy. T h e W o m e n ’ s E r a Changes in the women’s movement reflected the same combination of expanding activities and narrowing boundaries. The 1890s launched what would later be called the “women’s era”—three decades during which women, although still denied the vote, enjoyed larger opportunities than in the past for economic independence and played a greater and greater Women in the workforce role in public life. Nearly 5 million women worked for wages in 1900. Although most were young, unmarried, and concentrated in traditional jobs such as domestic service and the garment industry, a generation of college-educated women was beginning to take its place in better-paying clerical and professional positions. Through a network of women’s clubs, temperance associations, and social reform organizations, women exerted a growing influence on pub- The Women’s Christian lic affairs. Founded in 1874, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union Temperance Union (WCTU) grew to become the era’s largest female organization, with a membership by 1890 of 150,000. Under the banner of Home Protection, it moved from demanding the prohibition of alcoholic beverages (blamed for leading men to squander their wages on drink and treat their wives abusively) to a comprehensive program of economic and political reform, including the right to vote. Women, insisted Frances Willard, the group’s president, must abandon the idea that “weakness” and dependence were their nature and join assertively in movements to change society. At the same time, the center of gravity of feminism shifted toward an outlook more in keeping with prevailing racial and ethnic norms. The movement continued to argue for women’s equality in employment, education, and politics. But with increasing frequency, the native-born, middle-class women who dominated the suffrage movement claimed the vote as educated members of a “superior race.” Immigrants and former slaves had been enfranchised with “ill- advised haste,” declared Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (created in 1890 to reunite the 528 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad In what ways did the boundaries of American freedom grow narrower in this period? rival suffrage organizations formed after the Civil War). Indeed, Catt suggested, extending the vote to native-born white women would help to counteract the grow- ing power of the “ignorant foreign vote” in the North and the dangerous potential for a second Reconstruction in the South. In 1895, the same year that Booker T. Washington delivered his Atlanta address, the National American Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention in that segregated city. Like other American institutions, the organized movement for woman suffrage had made its peace with nativism and racism. “A woman’s liquor raid,” an illustration in the National Police Gazette in 1879, depicts a group of temperance crusaders destroying B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R liquor containers in a Frederickstown, Ohio, saloon. T h e N e w I m p e r i a l i s m In world history, the last quarter of the nineteenth century is known as the age of imperialism, when rival European empires carved up large parts of the world among themselves. For most of this period, the United States remained a second-rate power. The “new imperialism” that arose after 1870 was dominated by European powers and Japan. Belgium, Great Britain, and France con- The global context solidated their hold on colonies in Africa, and newly unified Germany acquired colonies there as well. By the early twentieth century, most of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific had been divided among these empires. A m e r i c a n E x p a n s i o n i s m Territorial expansion, of course, had been a feature of American life from well before independence. But the 1890s marked a major turning point in America’s relationship with the rest of the world. Americans were increasingly aware of themselves as an emerging world power. “We are a great imperial Republic destined to exercise a controlling influence upon “A great imperial Republic” the actions of mankind and to affect the future of the world,” proclaimed Henry Watterson, an influential newspaper editor. B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 529 Until the 1890s, American expansion had taken place on the North American continent. Ever since the Monroe Doctrine (see Chapter 10), to be sure, many Americans had considered the Western Hemisphere an American sphere of influence. The last territorial acquisition before the 1890s had been Alaska, purchased from Russia by Secretary of State William H. Seward in 1867. Most Americans who looked overseas were interested in expanded Expanding trade trade, not territorial possessions. The country’s agricultural and industrial production could no longer be absorbed entirely at home. By 1890, compa- nies like Singer Sewing Machines and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company aggressively marketed their products abroad. Especially during economic downturns, business leaders insisted on the necessity of greater access to foreign customers. Middle-class American women, moreover, were becoming more and more desirous of clothing and food from abroad, and their demand for consumer goods such as “Oriental” fashions and exotic spices for cooking spurred the economic penetration of the Far East. T h e L u r e o f E m p i r e One group of Americans who spread the nation’s influence overseas Missionaries were religious missionaries, thousands of whom ventured abroad in the late nineteenth century to spread Christianity, prepare the world for the second coming of Christ, and uplift the poor. Inspired by Dwight Moody, a Methodist evangelist, the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions sent more than 8,000 missionaries to “bring light to heathen worlds” across the globe. A small group of late-nineteenth-century thinkers actively promoted American expansionism, warning that the country must not allow itself to be shut out of the scramble for empire. Naval officer Alfred T. Mahan, in The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), argued that no nation could prosper without a large fleet of ships engaged in international trade, protected by a powerful navy operating from overseas bases. His arguments influenced the outlook of James G. Blaine, who served as secretary of state during Benjamin Harrison’s presidency (1889–1893). Blaine urged the president to try to acquire Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Cuba as strategic naval bases. Hawaii Although independent, Hawaii was already closely tied to the United States through treaties that exempted imports of its sugar from tariff duties and provided for the establishment of an American naval base at Pearl Harbor. Hawaii’s economy was dominated by American-owned sugar plantations that employed a workforce of native islanders and Chinese, 530 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? Japanese, and Filipino laborers under long-term contracts. Early in 1893, a group of American planters organized a rebellion that overthrew the Hawaii government of Queen Liliuokalani. On the eve of leaving office, Harrison submitted a treaty of annexation to the Senate. After determining that a majority of Hawaiians did not favor the treaty, Harrison’s successor, Grover Cleveland, withdrew it. In July 1898, in the midst of the Spanish- American War, the United States finally annexed the Hawaiian Islands. The depression that began in 1893 heightened the belief that a more aggressive foreign policy was necessary to stimulate American exports. Fears of economic and ethnic disunity fueled an assertive nationalism. These were the years when rituals like the Pledge of Allegiance and the practice of standing for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” came into existence. New, mass-circulation newspapers also promoted nationalistic sentiments. By the late 1890s, papers like William Randolph A cartoon in Puck, December 1, 1897, Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World—dubbed imagines the annexation of Hawaii the “yellow press” by their critics after the color in which Hearst printed by the United States as a shotgun a popular comic strip—were selling a million copies each day by mixing wedding. The minister, President McKinley, reads from a book entitled sensational accounts of crime and political corruption with aggressive Annexation Policy. The Hawaiian appeals to patriotic sentiments. bride appears to be looking for a way to escape. Most Hawaiians did not support annexation. T h e “ S p l e n d i d L i t t l e W a r ” All these factors contributed to America’s emergence as a world power in the Spanish-American War of 1898. But the immediate origins of the war lay not at home but in the long Cuban struggle for independence from Spain. Ten years of guerrilla war had followed a Cuban revolt in 1868. The movement for independence resumed in 1895. As reports circulated of widespread suffering caused by the Spanish policy of rounding up civilians and moving them into detention camps, the Cuban struggle won growing support in the United States. Demands for intervention escalated after February 15, 1898, when an explosion—probably accidental, a later investigation concluded— destroyed the American battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, with the The U.S.S. Maine loss of nearly 270 lives. After Spain rejected an American demand for a cease-fire on the island and eventual Cuban independence, President McKinley in April asked Congress for a declaration of war. The purpose, declared Senator Henry Teller of Colorado, was to aid Cuban patriots in their struggle for “liberty and freedom.” To underscore the government’s humani- tarian intentions, Congress adopted the Teller Amendment, stating that the The Teller Amendment United States had no intention of annexing or dominating the island. B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 531 T H E S P A N I S H - A M E R I C A N T H E S P A N I S H - A M E R I C A N W A R : T H E P A C I F I C W A R : T H E C A R I B B E A N CHINA FORMOSA UNITED San Juan Hill (Taiwan) STATES Santiago July 1, 1898 Hong Kong (British) (Japanese) Pa c i f i c De O c e a n w Tampa Spanish fleet destroyed e H a i n a n y July 3, 1898 Lu z o n PHILIPPINE U.S.S. Maine sunk February 1898 A t l a n t i c ISLANDS BAHAMAS O c e a n Manila Havana FRENCH INDOCHINA CUBA South China Santiago PUERTO Sea HAITI RICO JAMAICA DOMINICAN Sulu (British) M i n d a n a o REPUBLIC Sea BRITISH NORTH BORNEO Caribbean Sea SARAWAK (British) Manila surrenders Bataan August 13, 1898 NETHERLANDS Manila EAST INDIES American victories Pa c i f i c Co r r e g i d o r American forces Spanish O c e a n American naval blockade Dewey fleet destroyed 0 200 400 miles 0 200 400 miles Spanish forces May 1, 1898 Spanish possessions 0 200 400 kilometers 0 200 400 kilometers In both the Caribbean and the Pacific, the United States achieved swift Secretary of State John Hay called the Spanish-American conflict a victories over Spain in the Spanish- “splendid little war.” It lasted only four months and resulted in fewer than American War. 400 American combat deaths. The war’s most decisive engagement took place not in Cuba but at Manila Bay, a strategic harbor in the Philippine Islands in the distant Pacific Ocean. Here, on May 1, the American navy under The Spanish-American War Admiral George Dewey defeated a Spanish fleet. Soon afterward, soldiers went ashore, becoming the first American army units to engage in combat outside the Western Hemisphere. July witnessed another naval victory off Santiago, Cuba, and the landing of American troops on Cuba and Puerto Rico. R o o s e v e l t a t S a n J u a n H i l l The most highly publicized land battle of the war took place in Cuba. Rough Riders This was the charge up San Juan Hill, outside Santiago, by Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. An ardent expansionist, Roosevelt had long 532 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? believed that a war would reinvigorate the nation’s unity and sense of manhood, which had suffered, he felt, during the 1890s. A few months shy of his fortieth birthday when war broke out, Roosevelt resigned his post as assistant secretary of the navy to raise a volunteer cavalry unit, which rushed to Cuba to participate in the fighting. His exploits made Roosevelt a national hero. He was elected governor of New York that fall and in 1900 Theodore Roosevelt became McKinley’s vice president. A n A m e r i c a n E m p i r e With the backing of the yellow press, the war quickly escalated from a cru- sade to aid the suffering Cubans to an imperial venture that ended with the United States in possession of a small overseas empire. McKinley became convinced that the United States could neither return the Philippines to Spain nor grant them independence, for which he believed the inhabit- ants unprepared. In an interview with a group of Methodist ministers, the president spoke of receiving a divine revelation that Americans had a duty to “uplift and civilize” the Filipino people and to train them for self- government. In the treaty with Spain that ended the war, the United States acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific island of Guam. Acquiring possessions As for Cuba, before recognizing its independence, McKinley forced the island’s new government to approve the Platt Amendment to the new Cuban constitution (drafted by Senator Orville H. Platt of Connecticut), which authorized the United States to intervene militarily whenever it saw fit. The United States also acquired a permanent lease on naval stations in Cuba, including what is now the facility at Guantánamo Bay. Charge of the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, a painting by Frederic Remington, depicts the celebrated unit, commanded by Theodore Roosevelt, in action in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898. Roosevelt, on horseback, leads the troops. Remington had been sent to the island the previous year by publisher William Randolph Hearst to provide pictures of Spanish atrocities during the Cuban war for independence in the hope of boosting the New York Journal’ s circulation. B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 533 A M E R I C A N E M P I R E , 1 8 9 8 Alaska (purchased from Russia, 1867) RUSSIAN Bering EMPIRE Strait CANADA Aleutian Islands (1867) OUTER MONGOLIA KOREA UNITED STATES JAPAN CHINA A t l a n t i c O c e a n Midway Islands (annexed 1867) Hawaiian Islands Puerto Rico Philippines (annexed 1898) MEXICO (ceded by Spain, (ceded by Spain after Wake Island 1898) Spanish-American War, 1898) (annexed 1898) Guam (ceded by Spain after Spanish-American War, 1898) Pa c i f i c O c e a n American Samoa I n d i a n (annexed 1899) O c e a n 0 1,000 2,000 miles 0 1,000 2,000 kilometers United States territory As a result of the Spanish-American War, the United States became the America’s interest in its new possessions had more to do with trade ruler of a far-flung overseas empire. than with gaining wealth from natural resources or large-scale American settlement. Puerto Rico and Cuba were gateways to Latin America, stra- tegic outposts from which American naval and commercial power could be projected throughout the hemisphere. The Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii lay astride shipping routes to the markets of Japan and China. In 1899, soon after the end of the Spanish-American War, Secretary of State John Hay announced the Open Door policy, demanding that European powers that had recently divided China into commercial spheres of Spheres of influence influence grant equal access to American exports. The Open Door referred to the free movement of goods and money, not people. Even as the United States banned the immigration of Chinese into this country, 534 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? it insisted on access to the markets and investment opportunities of Asia. T h e P h i l i p p i n e W a r Many Cubans, Filipinos, and Puerto Ricans had welcomed American intervention as a way of breaking Spain’s long hold on these colonies. Large planters looked forward to greater access to American markets. Nationalists and labor leaders admired America’s democratic ideals and believed that American participation in the destruc- tion of Spanish rule would lead to social reform and political self-government. In this cartoon comment on the But the American determination to exercise continued control, direct American effort to suppress or indirect, led to a rapid change in local opinion, nowhere more so than the movement for Philippine in the Philippines. Filipinos had been fighting a war against Spain since independence, Uncle Sam tries to subdue a knife-wielding insurgent. 1896. After Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay, their leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, established a provisional government with a constitution modeled on that of the United States. But once McKinley decided to retain possession of the islands, the Filipino movement turned against the United States. The result was a second war, far longer (it lasted from 1899 to 1903) and blood- ier (it cost the lives of more than 100,000 Filipinos and 4,200 Americans) Emilio Aguinaldo, leader of the than the Spanish-American conflict. Today, this is perhaps the least Philippine War against American remembered of all American wars. occupation, in a more dignified Once in control of the Philippines, the colonial administration took portrayal than in the cartoon above. seriously the idea of modernizing the islands. It expanded railroads and harbors, brought in American schoolteachers and public health officials, and sought to modernize agriculture (although efforts to persuade local farmers to substitute corn for rice ran afoul of Filipino climate and cultural traditions). The United States, said President McKinley, had an obligation to its “little brown brothers.” Yet in all the new possessions, American policies tended to serve the interests of land-based local elites—and bequeathed enduring poverty to the majority of the rural population. Under American rule, Puerto Rico, previously an island of diversified small farmers, became a low-wage plantation economy controlled by absentee American corpo- rations. By the 1920s, its residents were among the poorest in the entire Caribbean. B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 535 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m J o s i a h S t r o n g , O u r C o u n t r y ( 1 8 8 5 ) The Congregational minister Josiah Strong promoted both the Social Gospel—a desire, grounded in religious belief, to solve the nation’s social problems—and an updated version of manifest destiny and American expansionism strongly connected to ideas of racial superiority and a Christian missionary impulse. It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world’s future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history—the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it—the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization—having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the results of this competition of races will be the “survival of the fittest?”. . . Some of the stronger races, doubtless, may be able to preserve their integrity; but, in order to compete with the Anglo-Saxon, they will probably be forced to adopt his methods and instruments, his civilization and his religion. 536 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad F r o m “ A g u i n a l d o ’ s C a s e a g a i n s t t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s ” ( 1 8 9 9 ) Emilio Aguinaldo, who led the Filipino armed struggle for independence against Spain and then another war against the United States when President McKinley decided to annex the Philippines, explained his reasons for opposing American imperialism in an article in the widely read magazine the North American Review. He contrasted American traditions of self- government with the refusal to grant this right to the Philippines. We Filipinos have all along believed that if the American nation at large knew exactly, as we do, what is daily happening in the Philippine Islands, they would rise en masse, and demand that this barbaric war should stop [and] . . . she would cease to be the laughing stock of other civilized nations, as she became when she abandoned her traditions and set up a double standard of government—government by consent in America, government by force in the Philippine Islands. . . . You have been greatly deceived in the personality of my countrymen. You went to the Philippines under the impression that their inhabitants were ignorant savages. . . . We have been represented by your popular press as if we were Africans or Mohawk Indians. . . . You repeat constantly the dictum that we cannot govern ourselves. . . . With equal reason, you might have said the same thing some fifty or sixty years ago of Japan; and, little over a hundred years ago, it was extremely questionable, when you, also, were rebels against the English Government, if you could govern yourselves. . . . Now, the moral of all this obviously is: Give us the chance; treat us exactly as you demanded to be treated at the hands of England when you rebelled against her autocratic methods. Now, here is a unique spectacle—the Filipinos fighting for liberty, the American people fighting them to give them liberty. . . . You promised us your aid and protection in our attempt to form a government on the principles and after the model of the government of the United States. . . . In combination with our forces, you compelled Spain to surrender. . . . Joy abounded in every heart, Q U E S T I O N S and all went well . . . until . . . the Government at Washington . . . commenc[ed] by ignoring all 1. How does Strong justify the idea of promises that had been made and end[ed] by world domination by Anglo-Saxons? ignoring the Philippine people, their personality and rights, and treating them as a common 2. Why does Aguinaldo think that the enemy. . . . In the face of the world you emblazon United States is betraying its own humanity and Liberty upon your standard, while values? you cast your political constitution to the winds and attempt to trample down and exterminate a 3. How do these documents reflect brave people whose only crime is that they are different definitions of liberty? fighting for their liberty. V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 537 C i t i z e n s o r S u b j e c t s ? American rule also brought with it American racial attitudes. In an 1899 poem, the British writer Rudyard Kipling urged the United States to take up the “white man’s burden” of imperialism. American proponents of empire agreed that the domination of non-white peoples by whites formed part of the progress of civilization. America’s triumphant entry into the ranks of imperial powers sparked an intense debate over the relationship among political democracy, race, Colonies in the American and American citizenship. The American system of government had framework no provision for permanent colonies. The right of every people to self- government was one of the main principles of the Declaration of Independence. The idea of an “empire of liberty” assumed that new ter- ritories would eventually be admitted as equal states and their residents would be American citizens. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American This propaganda photograph War, however, nationalism, democracy, and American freedom emerged from 1898 depicts the Spanish- more closely identified than ever with notions of Anglo-Saxon superiority. American War as a source of national The Foraker Act of 1900 declared Puerto Rico an “insular terri- reconciliation in the United States tory,” different from previous territories in the West. Its 1 million inhab- (with Confederate and Union soldiers itants were defined as citizens of Puerto Rico, not the United States, and shaking hands) and of freedom for denied a future path to statehood. Filipinos occupied a similar status. In Cuba (personified by a girl whose arm holds a broken chain). a series of cases decided between 1901 and 1904 and known collectively as the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court held that the Constitution did not fully apply to the territories recently acquired by the United States—a significant limitation of the scope of American freedom. Thus, two principles central to American freedom since the War of Independence—no taxation without representation and government based on the consent of the governed— were abandoned when it came to the nation’s new pos- sessions. In the twentieth century, the territories acquired in 1898 would follow different paths. Hawaii, which had a sizable population of American missionaries and planters, became a traditional territory. Its popu- lation, except for Asian immigrant laborers, became American citizens, and it was admitted as a state in 1959. After nearly a half-century of American rule, the Philippines achieved independence in 1946. Until 1950, the U.S. Navy administered Guam, which remains today an “unincorporated” territory. As for Puerto Rico, 538 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? it is sometimes called “the world’s oldest colony,” because ever since the Puerto Rico Spanish conquered the island in 1493 it has lacked full self-government. It elects its own government but lacks a voice in Congress (and in the election of the U.S. president). D r a w i n g t h e G l o b a l C o l o r L i n e Just as American ideas about liberty and self- government had circulated An advertisement employs the idea of a “white man’s burden” (borrowed around the world in the Age of Revolution, American racial attitudes had from a poem by Rudyard Kipling) a global impact in the age of empire. The turn of the twentieth century was as a way of promoting the virtues a time of worldwide concern about immigration, race relations, and the of Pears’ Soap. Accompanying text “white man’s burden,” all of which inspired a global sense of fraternity claims that Pears’ is “the ideal toilet among “Anglo-Saxon” nations. Chinese exclusion in the United States soap” for “the cultured of all nations,” strongly influenced anti-Chinese laws adopted in Canada, and American and an agent of civilization in “the dark corners of the earth.” segregation and disenfranchisement became models for Australia and South Africa as they formed new governments; they read in particular the proceedings of the Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890, which pioneered ways to eliminate black voting rights. The Union of South Africa, inaugurated in 1911, saw its own policy of racial separation—later known as apartheid—as following in the footsteps of segregation in the United States. South Africa, however, went much further, enacting laws that limited skilled jobs to whites and dividing the country into areas where black Africans could and could not live. “ R e p u b l i c o r E m p i r e ? ” The emergence of the United States as an imperial power sparked intense debate. Opponents formed the Anti-Imperialist League. It united writers and social reformers who believed American energies should be directed at home, business- men fearful of the cost of maintaining overseas outposts, and racists who did not wish to bring non-white populations into the United States. America’s historic mission, the League declared, B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 539 was to “help the world by an example of successful self- government,” not to conquer other peoples. The presidential election In 1900, Democrats again nominated William Jennings Bryan to run of 1900 against McKinley. The Democratic platform opposed the Philippine War for placing the United States in the “un-American” position of “crushing with military force” another people’s desire for “liberty and self-government.” George S. Boutwell, president of the Anti-Imperialist League, declared that the most pressing question in the election was the nation’s future character—“republic or empire?” But without any sense of contradiction, proponents of an imperial foreign policy also adopted the language of freedom. America’s was a “benevolent” imperialism, they claimed, rooted in a national mission to uplift backward cultures and spread liberty across the globe. Riding the wave of patriotic sentiment inspired by the war, and with the economy having recovered from the depression of 1893–1897, McKinley in 1900 repeated his 1896 triumph. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the United States seemed poised to take its place among the world’s great powers. In 1900, many features that would mark American life for much of the twentieth century were A rising power already apparent. The United States had surpassed Britain, France, and Germany in industrial production. The political system had stabilized. The white North and South had achieved reconciliation, while rigid lines of racial exclusion—the segregation of blacks, Chinese exclusion, Indian reservations—limited the boundaries of freedom and citizenship. A Republican campaign poster from the election of 1900 links prosperity at home and benevolent imperialism abroad as achievements of William McKinley’s first term in office. 540 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad How did the United States emerge as an imperial power in the 1890s? Yet the questions central to nineteenth-century debates over freedom— the relationship between political and economic liberty, the role of govern- ment in creating the conditions of freedom, and the definition of those entitled to enjoy the rights of citizens—had not been permanently answered. Nor had the dilemma of how to reconcile America’s role as an empire with traditional ideas of freedom. These were the challenges bequeathed by the nineteenth century to the first generation of the twentieth. B E C O M I N G A W O R L D P O W E R 541 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. What economic and political issues gave rise to the People’s Party (or Populists) (p. 511) Populist Party, and what changes did the party advocate? Coxey’s Army (p. 514) “free silver” (p. 515) 2. How did employers use state and federal forces to protect Kansas Exodus (p. 518) their own economic interests, and what were the results? disenfranchisement (p. 521) Plessy v. Ferguson (p. 521) 3. Compare and contrast the goals, strategies, and member- “separate but equal” (p. 521) ship of the American Federation of Labor and the Knights lynching (p. 522) of Labor (you may want to refer back to Chapter 16). the Lost Cause (p. 524) Immigration Restriction League 4. Who were the Redeemers, and how did they change (p. 525) society and politics in the New South? Washington’s Atlanta Speech (p. 526) American Federation of Labor 5. Explain how changes in politics, economics, social factors, (p. 527) and violence interacted to affect the situation of African- “women’s era” (p. 528) Americans in the New South. Alfred T. Mahan (p. 530) “yellow press” (p. 531) 6. How did religion and the idea of the Lost Cause give U.S.S. Maine (p. 531) support to a new understanding of the Civil War? Platt Amendment (p. 533) Open Door policy (p. 534) 7. What ideas and interests motivated the United States to Insular Cases (p. 538) create an empire in the late nineteenth century? “white man’s burden” (p. 539) Anti-Imperialist League (p. 539) 8. Compare the arguments for and against U.S. imperialism. Be sure to consider the views of Josiah Strong and Emilio Aguinaldo. wwnorton.com 9. What rights did Chinese immigrants and Chinese /studyspace Americans gain in these years, and what limitations did they experience? How did their experiences set the stage VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE for other restrictions on immigration? RESOURCES AND MORE s s s s s 542 C h a p t e r 1 7  Freedom’s Boundaries, at Home and Abroad C H A P T E R 1 8 1889 Hull House founded 1901 Socialist Party founded in United States President McKinley assassinated 1903 Ford Motor Company established T H E P R O G R E S S I V E 1904 Northern Securities dissolved 1905 Industrial Workers of the E R A World established 1906 Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle Meat Inspection Act Pure Food and Drug Act Hepburn Act  John A. Ryan’s A Living Wage 1 9 0 0 – 1 9 1 6 1908 Muller v. Oregon 1909 Uprising of the 20,000 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire Society of American Indians founded 1912 Children’s Bureau established Theodore Roosevelt organizes the Progressive Party 1913 Sixteenth Amendment Seventeenth Amendment Federal Reserve established 1914 Federal Trade Commission established Clayton Act Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street, a 1907 painting by John Sloan, depicts a busy street in New York City in an area known as the Tenderloin, with an elevated railroad overhead. Sloan was one of a group of painters called the Ashcan School because of their focus on everyday city life. Here, he emphasizes the vitality of the city and the mingling of people of different social classes on its streets. F O C U S It was late afternoon on March 25, 1911, when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. The factory occupied the top three floors of a ten-story building in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Here some 500 workers, mostly young Jewish and Q U E S T I O N S Italian immigrant women, toiled at sewing machines producing ladies’ blouses, some earning as little as three dollars per week. Those who tried s to escape the blaze discovered that the doors to the stairwell had been central element in Progres- locked—the owner’s way, it was later charged, of discouraging theft and sive America? unauthorized bathroom breaks. The fire department rushed to the scene with high-pressure hoses. But their ladders reached only to the sixth s floor. Onlookers watched in horror as girls leaped from the upper stories. women’s movements By the time the blaze had been put out, 46 bodies lay on the street and expand the meanings of 100 more were found inside the building. American freedom? The Triangle fire was not the worst fire disaster in American history (seven years earlier, over 1,000 people had died in a blaze on the General s Slocum excursion boat in New York Harbor). But it had an unrivaled sivism include both demo- impact on public consciousness. In its wake, efforts to organize the city’s cratic and antidemocratic workers accelerated, and the state legislature passed new factory inspec- impulses? tion laws and fire safety codes. Triangle focused attention on the social divisions that plagued s American society during the first two decades of the twentieth century, presidents foster the rise of a period known as the Progressive era. These were years when economic the nation-state? expansion produced millions of new jobs and brought an unprecedented array of goods within reach of American consumers. Cities expanded rapidly—by 1920, for the first time, more Americans lived in towns and cities than in rural areas. Yet severe inequality remained the most visible feature of the urban landscape, and persistent labor strife raised anew the question of government’s role in combating social inequality. The word “Progressive” came into common use around 1910 as a way of describing a broad, loosely defined political movement of indi- viduals and groups who hoped to bring about significant change in American social and political life. Progressives included forward-looking businessmen who realized that workers must be accorded a voice in economic decision making, and labor activists bent on empowering industrial workers. Other major contributors to Progressivism were members of female reform organizations who hoped to protect women and children from exploitation, social scientists who believed that aca- demic research would help to solve social problems, and members of an anxious middle class who feared that their status was threatened by the rise of big business. 544 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America? As this and the following chapter will discuss, Progressive reform- ers addressed issues of American freedom in varied, contradictory ways. The era saw the expansion of political and economic freedom through the reinvigoration of the movement for woman suffrage, the use of politi- cal power to expand workers’ rights, and efforts to improve democratic government by weakening the power of city bosses and giving ordinary citizens more influence on legislation. It witnessed the flowering of understandings of freedom based on individual fulfillment and personal self-determination. At the same time, many Progressives supported efforts to limit the full enjoyment of freedom to those deemed fit to exer- cise it properly. The new system of white supremacy born in the 1890s became fully consolidated in the South. Growing numbers of native-born Americans demanded that immigrants abandon their traditional cultures and become fully “Americanized.” And efforts were made at the local and national levels to place political decision making in the hands of experts who did not have to answer to the electorate. Even as the idea of freedom expanded, freedom’s boundaries contracted in Progressive America. A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y F a r m s a n d C i t i e s The Progressive era was a period of explosive economic growth, fueled Economic growth by increasing industrial production, a rapid rise in population, and the continued expansion of the consumer marketplace. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the economy’s total output rose by about 85 per- cent. For the last time in American history, farms and cities grew together. Farm families poured into the western Great Plains. More than 1 million claims for free government land were filed under the Homestead Act of 1862—more than in the previous forty years combined. Irrigation trans- formed the Imperial Valley of California and parts of Arizona into major areas of commercial farming. But it was the city that became the focus of Progressive politics and Growth of the cities of a new mass-consumer society. The United States counted twenty-one cities whose population exceeded 100,000 in 1910, the largest of them A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y 545 New York, with 4.7 million residents. The TABLE 18.1 Rise of the City, 1880–1920 twenty-three square miles of Manhattan Island were home to over 2 million people, more than lived in thirty-three of the states. URBAN NUMBER OF CITIES POPULATION WITH The stark urban inequalities of the 100,000+ YEAR (PERCENTAGE) POPULATION 1890s continued into the Progressive era. Immigrant families in New York’s down- 1880 20% 12 town tenements often had no electricity 1890 28 15 or indoor toilets. Three miles to the north 1900 38 18 stood the mansions of Fifth Avenue’s Millionaire’s Row. According to one esti- 1910 50 21 mate, J. P. Morgan’s financial firm directly 1920 68 26 or indirectly controlled 40 percent of all financial and industrial capital in the United States. T h e M u c k r a k e r s Some observers saw the city as a place where corporate greed undermined traditional American values. At a time when more than 2 million children Lewis Hine used his camera to under the age of fifteen worked for wages, Lewis Hine photographed chronicle the plight of child laborers child laborers to draw attention to persistent social inequality. A new such as this young spinner in a generation of journalists writing for mass-circulation national magazines southern cotton factory. exposed the ills of industrial and urban life. The Shame of the Cities (1904) by Lincoln Steffens showed how party bosses and business leaders profited from political corruption. Theodore Roosevelt disparaged such writing as “muckraking,” the use of journalistic skills to expose the underside of American life. Major novelists took a similar unsparing approach to social ills. Perhaps the era’s most influential novel was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906), whose description of unsanitary slaughterhouses and the sale of rotten meat stirred public outrage and led directly to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. I m m i g r a t i o n a s a G l o b a l P r o c e s s If one thing characterized early-twentieth-century cities, it was their immigrant character. The “new immigration” from southern and eastern Europe (discussed in Chapter 17) had begun around 1890 but reached its peak during the Progressive era. Between 1901 and the outbreak of World 546 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America? War I in Europe in 1914, some 13 million immigrants came to the United Worldwide migration States, the majority from Italy, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian empire. In fact, Progressive-era immigration formed part of a larger process of worldwide migration set in motion by industrial expansion and the decline of traditional agriculture. During the years from 1840 to 1914 (when immigration to the United States would be virtually cut off, first by the outbreak of World War I and then by legislation), perhaps 40 million persons emigrated to the United States and another 20 million to other parts of the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and the Caribbean. Millions of persons migrated to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, mainly from India and China. Numerous causes inspired this massive uprooting of population. Causes of emigration Rural southern and eastern Europe and large parts of Asia were regions marked by widespread poverty and illiteracy, burdensome taxation, and declining economies. Political turmoil at home, like the revolution that engulfed Mexico after 1911, also inspired emigration. Most European immigrants to the United States entered through Ellis Island. Located in New York Harbor, this became in 1892 the nation’s main facility for processing immigrants. Millions of Americans today trace their ancestry to immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. At the same time, an influx of Asian and Mexican newcomers was taking place TABLE 18.2 Immigrants and Their in the West. After the exclusion of immi- Children as Percentage of Population, grants from China in the late nineteenth Ten Major Cities, 1920 century, approximately 72,000 Japanese arrived, primarily to work as agricultural laborers in California’s fruit and vegetable CITY PERCENTAGE fields and on Hawaii’s sugar plantations. Between 1910 and 1940, Angel Island New York City 76% in San Francisco Bay—the “Ellis Island Cleveland 72 of the West”—served as the main entry Boston 72 point for immigrants from Asia. Far larger Chicago 71 was Mexican immigration. Between 1900 Detroit 65 and 1930, some 1 million Mexicans (more San Francisco 64 than 10 percent of that country’s popula- Minneapolis 63 tion) entered the United States—a number Pittsburgh 59 exceeded by only a few European countries. Seattle 55 By 1910, one-seventh of the American Los Angeles 45 population was foreign-born, the highest percentage in the country’s history. A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y 547 T h e I m m i g r a n t Q u e s t f o r F r e e d o m Like their nineteenth-century predecessors, the new immigrants arrived imagining the United States as a land of freedom, where all persons enjoyed equality before the law, could worship as they pleased, enjoyed economic opportunity, and had been emancipated from the oppressive social hierarchies of their homelands. “America is a free country,” one Polish immigrant wrote home. “You don’t have to be a serf to anyone.” Agents sent abroad by the American government to investigate the reasons for large-scale immigration reported that the main impetus was a desire to share in the “freedom and prosperity enjoyed by the people of the United States.” Although some of the new immigrants, espe- cially Jews fleeing religious persecution in the Russian empire, thought of themselves as permanent emigrants, A greeting card for Rosh Hashanah, the majority initially planned to earn enough money to return home the Jewish New Year, marketed to and purchase land. Groups like Mexicans and Italians included many early-twentieth-century immigrants, “birds of passage,” who remained only temporarily in the United States. depicts Americanized Jews welcoming traditionally dressed new The new immigrants clustered in close-knit “ethnic” neighborhoods arrivals from Russia. The American with their own shops, theaters, and community organizations, and often eagle holds a banner reading, continued to speak their native tongues. Although most immigrants earned “Shelter us in the shadow of your more than was possible in the impoverished regions from which they came, wings.” Above the immigrants is the they endured low wages, long hours, and dangerous working conditions. In Imperial Russian coat of arms. the mines and factories of Pennsylvania and the Midwest, eastern European immigrants performed low-wage unskilled labor, whereas native-born workers dominated skilled and supervisory jobs. The vast majority of Mexican immigrants became poorly paid agricultural, mine, and railroad laborers, with little prospect of upward economic mobility. “My people are not in America,” remarked one Slavic priest, “they are under it.” C o n s u m e r F r e e d o m The rise of mass consumption Cities, however, were also the birthplace of a mass-consumption society that added new meaning to American freedom. During the Progressive era, large downtown department stores, neighborhood chain stores, and retail mail-order houses made available to consumers throughout the country the vast array of goods now pouring from the nation’s factories. By 1910, Americans could purchase, among many other items, electric sew- ing machines, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and record players. 548 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America? Leisure activities also took on the characteristics of mass consump- tion. Amusement parks, dance halls, and theaters attracted large crowds of city dwellers. By 1910, 25 million Americans per week, mostly working- class urban residents, were attending “nickelodeons”—motion-picture theaters whose five-cent admission charge was far lower than that of vaudeville shows. T h e W o r k i n g W o m a n The new visibility of women in urban public places—at work, as shoppers, and in places of entertainment like cinemas and dance halls—indicated that traditional gender roles were changing dramatically in Progressive America. As the Triangle fire revealed, more and more women were working Women at work in a shoe factory, for wages. Immigrant women were largely confined to low-paying factory 1908. employment. But for native-born white women, the kinds of jobs available expanded enormously. By 1920, around 25 percent of employed women were office workers or telephone operators. Female work was no longer con- fined to young, unmarried white women and adult black women. In 1920, of 8 million women working for wages, one-quarter were married and living with their husbands. The working woman—immigrant and native, working- class and professional—became a symbol of female emancipation. “We enjoy our independence and freedom” was the assertive statement of the Bachelor Girls Social Club, a group of female mail-order clerks in New York. The Return from Toil, a drawing by The desire to participate in the consumer society produced remark- John Sloan for the radical magazine ably similar battles within immigrant families of all nationalities between The Masses, pictures working parents and their self-consciously “free” children, especially daughters. women not as downtrodden but as independent-minded, stylish, and self-confident. TABLE 18.3 Percentage of Women 14 Years and Older in the Labor Force ALL MARRIED WOMEN AS % YEAR WOMEN WOMEN OF LABOR FORCE 1900 20.4% 5.6% 18% 1910 25.2 10.7 24 1920 23.3 9.0 24 1930 24.3 11.7 25 A N U R B A N A G E A N D A C O N S U M E R S O C I E T Y 549 Contemporaries, native and immigrant, TABLE 18.4 Percentage of Women noted how “the novelties and frivolities Workers in Various Occupations of fashion” appealed to young working women, who spent part of their meager wages on clothing and makeup and at places OCCUPATION 1900 1920 of entertainment. Daughters considered parents who tried to impose curfews or Professional, technical 8.2% 11.7% to prevent them from going out alone to Clerical 4.0 18.7 dances or movies as old-fashioned and not Sales workers 4.3 6.2 sufficiently “American.” Unskilled and semiskilled manufacturing 23.7 20.2 T h e R i s e o f F o r d i s m Household workers 28.7 15.7 If any individual exemplified the new con- sumer society, it was Henry Ford. Ford did not invent the automobile, but he developed the techniques of production and marketing that brought it within the reach of ordinary Americans. In 1905, he established the Ford Motor Company, one of dozens of small automobile manufacturing firms that emerged in these years. Three years later, he introduced the Model T, a simple, light vehicle sturdy enough to One of the numerous advertisements navigate the country’s poorly maintained roads. of the early twentieth century that In 1913, Ford’s factory in Highland Park, Michigan, adopted the invoked the Statue of Liberty to method of production known as the moving assembly line, in which car market consumer goods, in this case a brand of crackers. frames were brought to workers on a continuously moving conveyor belt. The process enabled Ford to expand output by greatly reducing the time it took to produce each car. In 1914, he raised wages at his factory to the unheard-of level of five dollars per day (more than double the pay of most industrial workers), enabling him to attract a steady stream of skilled laborers. When other businessmen criticized him for endangering profits by paying high wages, Ford replied that workers must be able to afford the goods being turned out by American factories. Ford’s output rose from 34,000 cars, priced at $700 each, in 1910, to 730,000 Model T’s that sold at a price of $316 (well within the reach of many workers) in 1916. The economic system based on mass production and mass consumption came to be called Fordism. T h e P r o m i s e o f A b u n d a n c e As economic production shifted from capital goods (steel, railroad equip- ment, etc.) to consumer products, the new advertising industry perfected ways of increasing sales, often by linking goods with the idea of freedom. 550 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era Why was the city such a central element in Progressive America? Numerous products took “liberty” as a brand name or used an image of the Statue TABLE 18.5 Sales of Passenger Cars of Liberty as a sales device. Economic abun- dance would eventually come to define the NUMBER OF CARS “American way of life,” in which personal YEAR (IN THOUSANDS) fulfillment was to be found through acquir- ing material goods. 1900 4.1 The maturation of the consumer 1905 24.2 economy gave rise to concepts—a “living 1910 181.0 wage” and an “American standard of liv- 1915 895.9 ing”—that offered a new language for criti- 1920 1,905.5 cizing the inequalities of wealth and power 1925 3,735.1 in Progressive America. Father John A. Ryan’s influential book A Living Wage (1906) described a decent standard of living (one that enabled a person to participate in the consumer economy) as a “natural and absolute” right of citizenship. His book sought to translate into American terms Pope Leo XIII’s powerful statement of 1894, Rerum Novarum, which criticized the divorce of economic life from ethical considerations, endorsed An advertisement for Palmolive soap the right of workers to organize unions, and repudiated competitive individu- illustrates how companies marketed alism in favor of a more cooperative vision of the good society. For the first goods to consumers by creating anxiety and invoking exotic images. time in the nation’s history, mass consumption came to occupy a central place The accompanying text promises in descriptions of American society and its future. “a perfect skin” and includes an imagined image of Cleopatra, claiming that the soap embodies “ancient beauty arts.” By 1915, Palmolive was the best-selling soap V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M in the world. The immediate task, in the Progressives’ view, was to humanize indus- trial capitalism and find common ground in a society still racked by labor conflict and experiencing massive immigration from abroad. Some Progressives proposed to return to a competitive marketplace populated by small producers. Others accepted the permanence of the large corpo- ration and looked to the government to reverse the growing concentra- tion of wealth and to ensure social justice. Still others would relocate freedom from the economic and political worlds to a private realm of personal fulfillment and unimpeded self-expression. But nearly all Progressives agreed that freedom must be infused with new meaning to deal with the economic and social conditions of the early twentieth century. V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 551 I n d u s t r i a l F r e e d o m In Progressive America, complaints of a loss of freedom came not only from the most poorly paid factory workers but from better-off employees as well. Large firms in the automobile, electrical, steel, and other industries sought to implement greater control over the work process. Efficiency expert Frederick W. Taylor pioneered what he called “scientific management.” Through scientific study, Taylor believed, the “one best way” of producing goods could be determined and implemented. The role of workers was to obey the detailed instructions of supervisors. Not surprisingly, many skilled workers saw the erosion of their traditional influence over the work process as a loss of freedom. These developments helped to place the ideas of “industrial freedom” Roller skaters with socialist leaflets and “industrial democracy,” which had entered the political vocabulary in during a New York City strike in 1916. the Gilded Age, at the center of political discussion during the Progressive A “scab” is a worker who crosses the picket line during a strike. era. Lack of “industrial freedom” was widely believed to lie at the root of the much-discussed “labor problem.” Many Progressives believed that the key to increasing industrial freedom lay in empowering workers to participate in economic decision making via strong unions. Louis D. Brandeis, an active ally of the labor movement whom President Woodrow Wilson appointed to the Supreme Court in 1916, maintained that unions embodied an essen- tial principle of freedom—the right of people to govern themselves. The contradiction between “political liberty” and “industrial slavery,” Brandeis insisted, was America’s foremost social problem. T h e S o c i a l i s t P r e s e n c e a n d E u g e n e D e b s Economic freedom was also a rallying cry of American socialism, which Peak of American socialism reached its greatest influence during the Progressive era. Founded in 1901, the Socialist Party called for immediate reforms such as free college educa- tion, legislation to improve the condition of laborers, and, as an ultimate goal, democratic control over the economy through public ownership of railroads and factories. By 1912, the Socialist Party claimed 150,000 dues-paying members, published hundreds of newspapers, enjoyed substantial support in the American Federation of Labor, and had elected scores of local officials. Centers of socialist strength Socialism flourished in diverse communities throughout the country. On the Lower East Side of New York City, it arose from the economic exploita- tion of immigrant workers and Judaism’s tradition of social reform. Here, a vibrant socialist culture developed, complete with Yiddish-language newspapers and theaters, as well as large public meetings and street demonstrations. In 1914, the district elected socialist Meyer London to 552 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the labor and women’s movements expand the meanings of American freedom? S O C I A L I S T T O W N S A N D C I T I E S , 1 9 0 0 - 1 9 2 0 Burlington Edmonds Tukwila Hillyard Coeur d'Alene Beatrice Camas WA Missoula Des Lacs Rugby CANADA (2 Commissioners) St. Hilaire Crookston Duluth ME Minot Tenstrike (Commissioner) Coquille Butte MT Minden (Commissioner) Laporte ND Pillager Cloquet Barre OR Brainerd Harbor Springs Sisseton Eagle Bend WI Traverse City Gustin ID VT Dawson Minneapolis NH S. Frankfort Schenectady MN Manitowoc Eureka SD Buffalo MA Wilson W Salem Sheboygan WY NY RI Naugatuck Milwaukee West Allis MI Haledon IA Davis Murray CT Stockton Davenport Rockaway PA Eureka Torino NE Berkeley NV Mammoth Madrid Longmont Silvis Phelps NJ Canton IN OH Daly City UT Nederland Lafayette Red Cloud Wymore MD Riverton Lincoln DE Grand Junction Edgewater Clinton Thayer MO IL Hymera Buena Vista Grafton Jerseyville CA KS WV Cedar City Victor Granite City O'Fallon VA Hillsboro Arma Mascoutah CO Curranville Brookneal Liberal Buckner DorrisvilleKY Girard Buffalo AZ Watts NM Frontenac Mindenmines Gibson NC Lackawanna Winslow Cardwell OK TN Flint Greenville Hartford Chant NY SC Osnaburg Antlers Ashtabula Amsterdam AR AL GA MI Birmingham Conneaut Union City Roulette MS Kalamazoo (Commissioner) Mineral Ridge PA Cleveland Wheatland Williamsport Winnfield Lorain New Castle (Commissioner) Salem TX Massillon Hazeldell McKeesport Shelby LA FL (Controller) Fostoria Mineral City Pitcairn Broad Jenera St. Mary's Canal Dover Toronto Top Twp. Gulfport Gas City Mt. Vernon Martins Ferry Garrett Lima Linden Byesville Lake Worth Barnhill Heights Star City Elwood Sugar Grove Piqua Hendricks Coshocton Adamston IN Hamilton OH WV 0 250 500 miles VA Miami 0 250 500 kilometers Socialist mayor KY Major municipal officer other than mayor Although the Socialist Party never Congress. Another center of socialist strength was Milwaukee, where won more than 6 percent of the Victor Berger, a German-born teacher and newspaper editor, mobilized vote nationally, it gained control of local AFL unions into a potent political force. Socialism also made inroads numerous small and medium-sized among tenant farmers in old Populist areas like Oklahoma, and in the min- cities between 1900 and 1920. ing regions of Idaho and Montana. No one was more important in spreading the socialist gospel or linking it to ideals of equality, self-government, and freedom than Eugene V. Debs, the railroad union leader who, as noted in the previous chapter, had been jailed during the Pullman Strike of 1894. For two decades, Debs crisscrossed Debs and socialism the country preaching that control of the economy by a democratic govern- ment held out the hope of uniting “political equality and economic freedom.” “While there is a lower class,” proclaimed Debs, “I am in it, . . . while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” Throughout the Atlantic world of the early twentieth century, social- ism was a rising presence. Debs would receive more than 900,000 votes V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 553 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m C h a r l o t t e P e r k i n s G i l m a n , W o m e n a n d E c o n o m i c s ( 1 8 9 8 ) Women and Economics, by the prolific feminist social critic and novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, influenced the new generation of women aspiring to greater independence. It insisted that how people earned a living shaped their entire lives and that therefore women must free themselves from the home to achieve genuine freedom. It is not motherhood that keeps the housewife on her feet from dawn till dark; it is house service, not child service. Women work longer and harder than most men. . . . A truer spirit is the increasing desire of young girls to be independent, to have a career of their own, at least for a while, and the growing objection of countless wives to the pitiful asking for money, to the beggary of their position. More and more do fathers give their daughters, and husbands their wives, a definite allowance,—a separate bank account,—something . . . all their own. The spirit of personal independence in the women of today is sure proof that a change has come. . . . The radical change in the economic position of women is advancing upon us. . . . The growing individualization of democratic life brings inevitable change to our daughters as well as to our sons. . . . One of its most noticeable features is the demand in women not only for their own money, but for their own work for the sake of personal expression. Few girls today fail to manifest some signs of this desire for individual expression. . . . Economic independence for women necessarily involves a change in the home and family relation. But, if that change is for the advantage of individual and race, we need not fear it. It does not involve a change in the marriage relation except in withdrawing the element of economic dependence, nor in the relation of mother to child save to improve it. But it does involve the exercise of human faculty in women, in social service and exchange rather than in domestic service solely. . . . [Today], when our still developing social needs call for an ever-increasing . . . freedom, the woman in marrying becomes the house-servant, or at least the housekeeper, of the man. . . . When women stand free as economic agents, they will [achieve a] much better fulfilment of their duties as wives and mothers and [contribute] to the vast improvement in health and happiness of the human race. 554 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era F r o m J o h n M i t c h e l l , “ T h e W o r k i n g m a n ’ s C o n c e p t i o n o f I n d u s t r i a l L i b e r t y ” ( 1 9 1 0 ) During the Progressive era, the idea of “industrial liberty” moved to the center of political discussion. Progressive reformers and labor leaders like John Mitchell, head of the United Mine Workers, condemned the prevailing idea of liberty of contract in favor of a broader definition of economic freedom. While the Declaration of Independence established civil and political liberty, it did not, as you all know, establish industrial liberty. . . . Liberty means more than the right to choose the field of one’s employment. He is not a free man whose family must buy food today with the money that is earned tomorrow. He is not really free who is forced to work unduly long hours and for wages so low that he can not provide the necessities of life for himself and his family; who must live in a crowded tenement and see his children go to work in the mills, the mines, and the factories before their bodies are developed and their minds trained. To have freedom a man must be free from the harrowing fear of hunger and want; he must be in such a position that by the exercise of reasonable frugality he can provide his family with all of the necessities and the reasonable comforts of life. He must be able to educate his children and to provide against sickness, accident, and old age. . . . A number of years ago the legislatures of several coal producing States enacted laws requiring employers to pay the wages of their workmen in lawful money of the United States and to cease the practice of paying wages in merchandise. From time immemorial it had been the custom of coal companies to conduct general supply stores, and the workingmen were required, as a condition of employment, to accept products in lieu of money in return for services rendered. This system was a great hardship to the workmen. . . . The question of the constitutionality of this legislation was carried into the courts and by the highest tribunal it was declared to be an invasion of the workman’s liberty to deny him the right to accept merchandise in lieu of money as payment of his wages. . . . [This is] typical of hundreds of instances in which laws Q U E S T I O N S that have been enacted for the protection of the 1. What does Gilman see as the main workingmen have been declared by the courts to be unconstitutional, on the grounds that they obstacles to freedom for women? invaded the liberty of the working people. . . . Is it 2. What does Mitchell believe will be nec- not natural that the workingmen should feel that essary to establish “industrial liberty”? they are being guaranteed the liberties they do not want and denied the liberty that is of real value to 3. How do the authors differ in their view them? May they not exclaim, with Madame Roland of the relationship of the family to [of the French Revolution], “O Liberty! Liberty! individual freedom? How many crimes are committed in thy name!” V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 555 for president (6 percent of the total) in 1912. In that year, the socialist Appeal to Reason, published in Girard, Kansas, with a circulation of 700,000, was the largest weekly newspaper in the country. A F L a n d I W W Socialism was only one example of widespread discontent in Progressive America. Having survived the depression of the 1890s, the American American Federation of Federation of Labor saw its membership triple to 1.6 million between Labor (AFL) 1900 and 1904. At the same time, its president, Samuel Gompers, sought to forge closer ties with forward-looking corporate leaders willing to deal with unions as a way to stabilize employee relations. Most employers nonetheless continued to view unions as an intolerable interference with their authority and resisted them stubbornly. The AFL mainly represented the most privileged American workers— skilled industrial and craft laborers, nearly all of them white, male, and native-born. In 1905, a group of unionists who rejected the AFL’s exclusion- Industrial Workers of ary policies formed the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Part trade the World (IWW) union, part advocate of a workers’ revolution that would seize the means of production and abolish the state, the IWW made solidarity its guiding principle. The organization sought to mobilize those excluded from the AFL—the immigrant factory-labor force, migrant timber and agricultural workers, women, blacks, and even the despised Chinese on the West Coast. T h e N e w I m m i g r a n t s o n S t r i k e A series of mass strikes among immigrant workers placed labor’s demand The right to collective for the right to bargain collectively at the forefront of the reform agenda. bargaining These strikes demonstrated that although ethnic divisions among work- ers impeded labor solidarity, ethnic cohesiveness could also be a basis of unity, so long as strikes were organized on a democratic basis. The IWW did not originate these confrontations but was sometimes called in by local unionists to solidify the strikers. IWW organizers printed leaflets, post- ers, and banners in multiple languages and insisted that each nationality enjoy representation on the committee coordinating a walkout. It drew on the sense of solidarity within immigrant communities to persuade local religious leaders, shopkeepers, and officeholders to support the strikes. The labor conflict that had the greatest impact on public conscious- ness took place in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The city’s huge woolen mills employed 32,000 men, women, and children representing twenty-five nationalities. When the state legislature in January 1912 enacted a fifty- 556 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the labor and women’s movements expand the meanings of American freedom? four-hour limit to the workweek, employ- ers reduced the weekly take-home pay of those who had been laboring longer hours. Workers spontaneously went on strike. In February, strikers devised the idea of sending strikers’ children out of the city for the duration of the walkout. Socialist fami- lies in New York City agreed to take them in. The sight of the children, many of whom appeared pale and half-starved, marching up Fifth Avenue from the train station led to a wave of sympathy for the strikers. The gov- ernor of Massachusetts soon intervened, and the strike was settled on the workers’ terms. A banner carried by the Lawrence strikers gave a new slogan to the labor movement: “We want bread and roses, too”—a declaration that workers sought not only Striking New York City garment higher wages but the opportunity to enjoy the finer things of life. workers carrying signs in multiple languages, 1913. L a b o r a n d C i v i l L i b e r t i e s The fiery organizer Mary “Mother” Jones, who at the age of eighty-three had been jailed after addressing striking Colorado miners, later told a New York audience that the union “had only the Constitution; the other side had the bayonets.” Yet the struggle of workers for the right to strike and The right to strike and the of labor radicals against restraints on open-air speaking made free speech right to free speech a significant public issue in the early twentieth century. By and large, the courts rejected their claims. But these battles laid the foundation for the rise of civil liberties as a central component of freedom in twentieth- century America. The IWW’s battle for freedom of expression is a case in point. Lacking union halls, its organizers relied on songs, street theater, impromptu orga- Forms of political activity nizing meetings, and street corner gatherings to spread their message and attract support. In response to IWW activities, officials in Los Angeles, Spokane, Denver, and more than a dozen other cities limited or prohibited outdoor meetings. To arouse popular support, the IWW filled the jails with members who defied local law by speaking in public. In nearly all the free-speech fights, however, the IWW eventually forced local officials to give way. “Whether they agree or disagree with its methods or aims,” wrote one journalist, “all lovers of liberty everywhere owe a debt to this organization for . . . [keeping] alight the fires of freedom.” V A R I E T I E S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 557 T h e N e w F e m i n i s m During the Progressive era, the word “feminism” first entered the politi- cal vocabulary. In 1914, a mass meeting at New York’s Cooper Union debated the question “What is Feminism?” Feminism, said one speaker, meant women’s emancipation “both as a human being and a sex-being.” Feminists’ forthright attack on traditional rules of sexual behavior added a new dimension to the discussion of personal freedom. One symbol of the new era was Isadora Duncan, who brought from California a new, expressive dance based on the free movement of a body liberated from the constraints of traditional technique and costume. “I beheld the dance I had always dreamed of,” wrote the novelist Edith Wharton on seeing a Duncan performance, “satisfying every sense as a flower does, or a phrase of Mozart’s.” During this era, as journalist William M. Reedy jested, it struck Isadora Duncan brought a new “sex o’clock” in America. Issues of intimate personal relations previ- freedom to an old art form. ously confined to private discussion blazed forth in popular magazines and public debates. For the generation of women who adopted the word “feminism” to express their demand for greater liberty, free sexual expression and reproductive choice emerged as critical definitions of women’s emancipation. T h e B i r t h - C o n t r o l M o v e m e n t The much-beloved and much-feared Emma Goldman, speaking in favor The growing presence of women in the labor market reinforced demands of birth control to an almost entirely for access to birth control, an issue that gave political expression to chang- male crowd in New York City in 1916. ing sexual behavior. Emma Goldman, who had emigrated to the United States from Lithuania at the age of sixteen, toured the country lecturing on subjects from anarchism to the need for more enlightened attitudes toward homosexuality. She regularly included the right to birth control in her speeches and distributed pamphlets with detailed information about various contraceptive devices. By forthrightly challenging the laws banning contraceptive infor- mation and devices, Margaret Sanger, one of eleven children of an Irish- American working-class family, placed the issue of birth control at the heart of the new feminism. In 1911, she began a column on sex education, “What Every Girl Should Know,” for The Call, a New York socialist news- paper. Postal officials barred one issue, containing a column on venereal disease, from the mails. The next issue of The Call included a blank page with the headline: “What Every Girl Should Know—Nothing; by order of the U. S. Post Office.” 558 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the labor and women’s movements expand the meanings of American freedom? By 1914, the intrepid Sanger was openly advertising birth-control devices in her own journal, The Woman Rebel. “No woman can call herself free,” she proclaimed, “who does not own and control her own body [and] can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” In 1916, Sanger opened a clinic in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn and began distributing contraceptive devices to poor Jewish and Italian women, an action for which she was sentenced to a month in prison. N a t i v e A m e r i c a n P r o g r e s s i v i s m Many groups participated in the Progressive impulse. Founded in 1911, the Society of American Indians was a reform organization typical of the era. It brought together Indian intellectuals to promote discussion of the plight of Native Americans in the hope that public exposure would be the first step toward remedying injustice. It created a pan-Indian public space independent of white control. Many of these Indian intellectuals were not unsympathetic to the basic goals of federal Indian policy, including the transformation of Goals of federal Indian policy communal landholdings on reservations into family farms. But Carlos Montezuma, a founder of the Society of American Indians, became an outspoken critic. Born in Arizona, he had been captured as a child by members of a neighboring tribe and sold to a traveling photographer, who brought him to Chicago. There Montezuma attended school and eventu- ally obtained a medical degree. In 1916, Montezuma established a newsletter, Wassaja (meaning “signal- ing”), that called for the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Convinced that outsiders exerted too much power over life on the reservations, he insisted that self-determination was the only way for Indians to escape poverty and marginalization. But he also demanded that Indians be granted full citizenship and all the constitutional rights of other Americans. Indian activists would later rediscover him as a forerunner of Indian radicalism. T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M E f f e c t i v e F r e e d o m Progressivism was an international movement. In the early twentieth Worldwide progressivism century, cities throughout the world experienced similar social strains arising from rapid industrialization and urban growth. Reformers across the globe exchanged ideas and envisioned new social policies. The Chinese T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 559 leader Sun Yat-Sen, for example, was influenced by the writings of Henry George and Edward Bellamy. As governments in Britain, France, and Germany instituted old-age pensions, minimum-wage laws, unemployment insurance, and the regu- lation of workplace safety, American reformers came to believe they had European social legislation much to learn from the Old World. The term “social legislation,” meaning governmental action to address urban problems and the insecurities of working-class life, originated in Germany but soon entered the political vocabulary of the United States. Drawing on the reform programs of the Gilded Age and the example of European legislation, Progressives sought to reinvigorate the idea of an activist, socially conscious government. Progressives could reject the traditional assumption that powerful government posed a threat to free- dom, because their understanding of freedom was itself in flux. “Effective Dewey and freedom freedom,” wrote the philosopher John Dewey, was far different from the “highly formal and limited concept of liberty” as protection from outside restraint. Freedom was a positive, not a negative, concept—the “power to do specific things.” It sometimes required the government to act on behalf of those with little wealth or power. Thus, freedom in the Progressive era inevitably became a political question. Children at play at the Hudson-Bank Gymnasium, built in 1898 in a New York immigrant neighborhood by S t a t e a n d L o c a l R e f o r m s the Outdoor Recreation League, one of many Progressive-era groups In the United States, with a political structure more decentralized than in that sought to improve life in urban European countries, state and local governments enacted most of the era’s centers. reform measures. In cities, Progressives worked to reform the structure of govern- ment to reduce the power of political bosses, establish public control of “natural monopo- lies” like gas and water works, and improve public transportation. They raised prop- erty taxes in order to spend more money on schools, parks, and other public facilities. Gilded Age mayors and governors pioneered urban Progressivism. A former factory worker who became a successful shoe manufacturer, Hazen Pingree served as mayor of Detroit from 1889 to 1897. He battled the business interests that had domi- nated city government, forcing gas and tele- phone companies to lower their rates, and 560 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and antidemocratic impulses? established a municipal power plant. Hiram Johnson, who as public pros- ecutor had secured the conviction for bribery of a San Francisco political boss, was elected governor of California in 1910. Having promised to “kick the Southern Pacific [Railroad] out of politics,” he secured passage of the Public Utilities Act, one of the country’s strongest railroad-regulation mea- Public Utilities Act sures, as well as laws banning child labor and limiting the working hours of women. The most influential Progressive administration at the state level was that of Robert M. La Follette, who made Wisconsin a “laboratory for democracy.” After serving as a Republican member of Congress, La Follette became convinced that an alliance of railroad and lumber com- panies controlled state politics. Elected governor in 1900, he instituted a Robert La Follette and the series of measures known as the Wisconsin Idea, including nominations Wisconsin Idea of candidates for office through primary elections rather than by political bosses, the taxation of corporate wealth, and state regulation of railroads and public utilities. To staff his administration, he drew on nonpartisan faculty members from the University of Wisconsin. P r o g r e s s i v e D e m o c r a c y Progressives hoped to reinvigorate democracy by restoring political power to the citizenry and civic harmony to a divided society. Alarmed Civic harmony by the upsurge in violent class conflict and the unrestricted power of cor- porations, they believed that political reforms could help to create a unified “people” devoted to greater democracy and social reconciliation. Yet increasing the responsibilities of government made it all the more impor- tant to identify who was entitled to political participation and who was not. The Progressive era saw a host of changes implemented in the politi- cal process, many seemingly contradictory in purpose. The electorate was simultaneously expanded and contracted, empowered and removed from direct influence on many functions of government. Democracy was enhanced by the Seventeenth Amendment (1917)—which provided that U.S. senators be chosen by popular vote rather than by state legislatures— by widespread adoption of the popular election of judges, and by the use of primary elections among party members to select candidates for office. Several states, including California under Hiram Johnson, adopted the initiative and referendum (the former allowed voters to propose leg- Initiative and referendum islation, the latter to vote directly on it) and the recall, by which officials could be removed from office by popular vote. The era culminated with a constitutional amendment enfranchising women—the largest expansion of democracy in American history. T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 561 But the Progressive era also witnessed numerous restrictions on democratic participation, most strikingly the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, as noted in Chapter 17. To make city government more honest and efficient, many localities replaced elected mayors with appointed non- Restricting democratic partisan commissions or city managers—a change that insulated officials participation from machine domination but also from popular control. New literacy tests and residency and registration requirements, common in northern as well as southern states, limited the right to vote among the poor. In the eyes of many Progressives, the “fitness” of voters, not their absolute numbers, defined a functioning democracy. Most Progressive thinkers were highly uncomfortable with the real world of politics, which seemed to revolve around the pursuit of narrow class, ethnic, and regional interests. Robert M. La Follette’s reliance on college professors to staff important posts in his administration reflected Government by experts a larger Progressive faith in expertise. The government could best exer- cise intelligent control over society through a democracy run by impar- tial experts who were in many respects unaccountable to the citizenry. Political freedom was less a matter of direct participation in government than of qualified persons devising the best public policies. J a n e A d d a m s a n d H u l l H o u s e But alongside this elitist politics, Progressivism also included a more dem- A staff member greets an immigrant ocratic vision of the activist state. As much as any other group, organized family at Hull House, the settlement house established in Chicago by Jane women reformers spoke for the more democratic side of Progressivism. Addams. Still barred from voting and holding office in most states, women none- theless became central to the political history of the Progressive era. The immediate catalyst was a growing awareness among women reformers of the plight of poor immigrant communities and the emergence of the condition of women and child laborers as a major focus of public concern. The era’s most prominent female reformer was Jane Addams, who had been born in 1860, the daughter of an Illinois businessman. In 1889, she founded Hull House in Chicago, a “settlement house” devoted to improving the lives of the immigrant poor. Unlike previous reformers who had aided the poor from afar, settlement-house workers moved into poor neighbor- hoods. They built kindergartens and playgrounds for children, established employment bureaus and health clinics, and showed female victims of domestic abuse how to gain legal protection. By 1910, more than 400 settle- ment houses had been established in cities throughout the country. Addams was typical of the Progressive era’s “new woman.” By 1900, there were more than 80,000 college-educated women in the United 562 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and antidemocratic impulses? States. Many found a calling in providing social services, nursing, and education to poor families in the growing cities. The efforts of middle-class women to uplift the poor, and of laboring women to uplift themselves, helped to shift the center of gravity of politics toward activist government. Women like Addams discovered that even well-organized social work was not enough to alleviate the problems of inadequate housing, income, and health. Government action was essential. Hull House instigated an array Hull House of reforms in Chicago, soon adopted elsewhere, including stronger build- ing and sanitation codes, shorter working hours and safer labor condi- tions, and the right of labor to organize. The settlement houses have been called “spearheads for reform.” Florence Kelley, a veteran of Hull House, went on to mobilize women’s Florence Kelley power as consumers as a force for social change. Under Kelley’s leader- ship, the National Consumers’ League became the nation’s leading advo- cate of laws governing the working conditions of women and children. T h e C a m p a i g n f o r W o m a n S u f f r a g e After 1900, the campaign for woman suffrage moved beyond the elit- ism of the 1890s to engage a broad coalition ranging from middle-class members of women’s clubs to unionists, socialists, and settlement house workers. For the first time, it became a mass movement. Membership in A mass movement the National American Woman Suffrage Association grew from 13,000 in 1893 to more than 2 million by 1917. By 1900, more than half the states allowed women to vote in local elections dealing with school issues, and A “suffrage float” promotes equal rights for women in Nebraska. Although most of its neighboring states had extended the right to vote to women, Nebraska’s male voters rejected woman suffrage in a 1914 referendum. T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 563 Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah had adopted full woman suffrage. Between 1910 and 1914, seven more western states enfranchised women. In 1913, Illinois became the first state east of the Mississippi River to allow women to vote in presidential elections. State campaigns for suffrage These campaigns, which brought women aggressively into the public sphere, were conducted with a new spirit of militancy. They also made effective use of the techniques of advertising, publicity, and mass enter- tainment characteristic of modern consumer society. California’s success- ful 1911 campaign utilized automobile parades, numerous billboards and electric signs, and countless suffrage buttons and badges. Nonetheless, state campaigns were difficult, expensive, and usually unsuccessful. The movement increasingly focused its attention on securing a national consti- tutional amendment giving women the right to vote. M a t e r n a l i s t R e f o r m Ironically, the desire to exalt women’s role within the home did much to inspire the reinvigoration of the suffrage movement. Female reform- Government aid to women and ers helped to launch a mass movement for direct government action to children improve the living standards of poor mothers and children. Laws provid- ing for mothers’ pensions (state aid to mothers of young children who lacked male support) spread rapidly after 1910. These “maternalist” reforms rested on the assumption that the government should encourage women’s capacity for bearing and raising children and enable them to be economically independent at the same time. Both feminists and believers Louisine Havemeyer, one of New York City’s wealthiest women, was a strong advocate of woman suffrage. Here, in a 1915 photograph, she passes the Torch of Liberty to a group of New Jersey women. 564 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era In what ways did Progressivism include both democratic and antidemocratic impulses? in conventional domestic roles supported such measures. The former hoped that these laws would subvert women’s dependence on men, the latter that they would strengthen traditional families and the mother-child bond. Other Progressive legislation recognized that large numbers of women did in fact work outside the home but defined them as a dependent group (like children) in need of state protection in ways male workers were Louis D. Brandeis and not. In 1908, in the landmark case of Muller v. Oregon, Louis D. Brandeis Muller v. Oregon filed a famous brief citing scientific and sociological studies to demon- strate that because they had less strength and endurance than men, long hours of labor were dangerous for women, while their unique ability to bear children gave the government a legitimate interest in their working conditions. Per suaded by Brandeis’s argument, the Supreme Court unani- mously upheld the constitutionality of an Oregon law setting maximum working hours for women. Thus, three years after the notorious Lochner decision invalidating a New York law limiting the working hours of male bakers (discussed in Chapter 16), the Court created the first large breach in “liberty of contract” doctrine. But the cost was high: at the very time that women in unprec- The unintended effects of edented numbers were entering the labor market and earning college Muller degrees, Brandeis’s brief and the Court’s opinion solidified the view of women workers as weak, dependent, and incapable of enjoying the same economic rights as men. By 1917, thirty states had enacted laws limiting the hours of labor of female workers. The maternalist agenda that built gender inequality into the early foundations of the welfare state by extension raised the idea that gov- ernment should better the living and working conditions of men as well. Indeed, Brandeis envisioned the welfare state as one rooted in the notion of universal economic entitlements, including the right to a decent income and protection against unemployment and work-related accidents. This vision, too, enjoyed considerable support in the Progressive era. By 1913, twenty-two states had enacted workmen’s compensation laws to benefit workers, male or female, injured on the job. This legislation was the first wedge that opened the way for broader programs of social insurance. A form of social insurance But state minimum-wage laws and most laws regulating working hours applied only to women. Women and children may have needed protection, but interference with the freedom of contract of adult male workers was still widely seen as degrading. The establishment of a standard of living and working conditions beneath which no American should be allowed to fall would await the coming of the New Deal. T H E P O L I T I C S O F P R O G R E S S I V I S M 565 T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S Despite creative experiments in social policy at the city and state levels, the tradition of localism seemed to most Progressives an impediment to a renewed sense of national purpose. Poverty, economic insecurity, and lack of industrial democracy were national problems that demanded national Herbert Croly solutions. The democratic national state, wrote New Republic editor Herbert Croly, offered an alternative to control of Americans’ lives by narrow inter- ests that manipulated politics or by the all-powerful corporations. Croly proposed a new synthesis of American political traditions. To achieve the “Jeffersonian ends” of democratic self-determination and individual free- dom, he insisted, the country needed to employ the “Hamiltonian means” of government intervention in the economy. Each in his own way, the Progressive presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson—tried to address this challenge. T h e o d o r e R o o s e v e l t In September 1901, the anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated William McKinley’s assassination McKinley while the president visited the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. At the age of forty-two, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest man ever to hold the office of president. In many ways, he became the model for the twentieth-century president, an official actively and continuously engaged in domestic and foreign affairs. (The foreign policies of the Progressive presidents will be dis- cussed in the next chapter.) He moved aggressively to set the political President Theodore Roosevelt agenda. addressing a crowd in Evanston, Roosevelt’s domestic program, which he called the Square Deal, Illinois, in 1902. attempted to confront the problems caused by economic consolidation by distinguishing between “good” and “bad” corporations. The former, among which he included U.S. Steel and Standard Oil, served the public interest. The latter were run by greedy financiers interested only in profit and had no right to exist. Soon after assuming office, Roosevelt shocked the corporate world by announcing his intention to prosecute under the Sherman Antitrust Act the Northern Securities Company. Created by financier J. P. Morgan, this “holding company” owned the stock and directed the affairs of three major western railroads. It monopolized transportation between the Great Lakes and the Pacific. In 1904, the Supreme Court ordered Northern Securities dissolved, a major victory for the antitrust movement. 566 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the Progressive presidents foster the rise of the nation-state? Reelected that same year, Roosevelt pushed for more direct federal regulation of the economy. He proposed to strengthen the Interstate Commerce Commission, which the Supreme Court had essentially limited to collecting economic statistics. By this time, journalistic exposés, labor unrest, and the agitation of Progressive reformers had created significant public support for Roosevelt’s regulatory program. In 1906, Congress passed the Hepburn Act, giving the ICC the power to examine railroads’ business records and to set reasonable rates, a significant step in the devel- opment of federal intervention in the corporate economy. That year, as has been noted, also saw the Pure Food and Drug Act. Many businessmen sup- ported these measures, recognizing that they would benefit from greater public confidence in the quality and safety of their products. But they were Putting the Screws on Him, a 1904 alarmed by Roosevelt’s calls for federal inheritance and income taxes and cartoon, depicts President Theodore the regulation of all interstate businesses. Roosevelt squeezing ill-gotten gains out of the trusts. J o h n M u i r a n d t h e S p i r i t u a l i t y o f N a t u r e If the United States lagged behind Europe in many areas of social policy, it led the way in the conservation of natural resources. The first national park, Yellowstone in Wyoming, was created in 1872, partly to preserve an area of remarkable natural beauty and partly at the urging of the Northern Pacific Railroad, which was anxious to promote western tourism. In the 1890s, the Scottish-born naturalist John Muir organized the Sierra Club to help preserve forests from uncontrolled logging by timber companies. Muir’s love of nature stemmed from deep religious feelings. Nearly The Old Faithful geyser, the most blinded in an accident in an Indianapolis machine shop where he worked in famous site in Yellowstone, the his twenties, he found in the restoration of his sight an inspiration to appre- nation’s first national park, in a ciate God’s creation. He called forests “God’s first temples.” In nature, photograph from the 1880s. he believed, men could experience directly the presence of God. Muir was inspired by the Transcendentalists of the pre–Civil War era—like Henry David Thoreau, he lamented the intrusions of civilization on the natural environment. But unlike them, Muir developed a broad following. As more and more Americans lived in cities, they came to see nature less as something to conquer and more as a place for recreation and personal growth. Muir’s spiritual understanding of nature resonated with these urbanites. T h e C o n s e r v a t i o n M o v e m e n t In the 1890s, Congress authorized the president to withdraw “forest reserves” from economic development, a restriction on economic freedom in the name of a greater social good. But it was under Theodore Roosevelt T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S 567 that conservation became a concerted federal policy. A dedicated outdoors- man who built a ranch in North Dakota in the 1880s, Roosevelt moved to preserve parts of the natural environment from economic exploitation. Relying for advice on Gifford Pinchot, the head of the U.S. Forest Service, he ordered that millions of acres be set aside as wildlife preserves and encouraged Congress to create new national parks. In some ways, conservation was a typical Progressive reform. Manned by experts, the government could stand above political and economic battles, serving the public good while preventing “special interests” from causing irreparable damage to the environment. The aim was less to end the economic utili- zation of natural resources than to develop responsible, scientific plans for their use. Pinchot halted timber companies’ reckless assault on the nation’s forests. But unlike Muir, he believed that development and con- Theodore Roosevelt and the conservationist John Muir at Glacier servation could go hand in hand and that logging, mining, and grazing on Point, Yosemite Valley, California, in public lands should be controlled, not eliminated. 1906. Yosemite was set aside as a national park in 1890. T a f t i n O f f i c e Having served nearly eight years as president, Roosevelt did not run again in 1908. His chosen successor, William Howard Taft, defeated William Jennings Bryan, making his third unsuccessful race for the White House. Although temperamentally more conservative than Roosevelt, Taft Taft’s antitrust policy pursued antitrust policy even more aggressively. He persuaded the Supreme Court in 1911 to declare John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company (one of Roosevelt’s “good” trusts) in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and to order its breakup into separate marketing, produc- ing, and refining companies. The government also won a case against American Tobacco, which the Court ordered to end pricing policies that were driving smaller firms out of business. Taft supported the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which The income tax authorized Congress to enact a graduated income tax (one whose rate of taxation is higher for wealthier citizens). It was ratified shortly before he left office. A 2 percent tax on incomes over $4,000 had been included in a tariff enacted in 1894 but had been quickly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as a “communistic threat to property.” A key step in the modernization of the federal government, the income tax provided a reliable and flexible source of revenue for a national state whose powers, responsibilities, and expenditures were growing rapidly. Despite these accomplishments, Taft seemed to gravitate toward the more conservative wing of the Republican Party. Taft’s rift with Progressives grew deeper when Richard A. Ballinger, the new secretary 568 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the Progressive presidents foster the rise of the nation-state? of the interior, concluded that Roosevelt had exceeded his authority in placing land in forest reserves. Ballinger decided to return some of this land to the public domain, where mining and lumber companies would have access to it. Gifford Pinchot accused Ballinger of colluding with busi- Ballinger and Pinchot ness interests and repudiating the environmental goals of the Roosevelt administration. When Taft fired Pinchot in 1910, the breach with party Progressives became irreparable. In 1912, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican nomination. Defeated, Roosevelt launched an independent campaign as the head of the new Progressive Party. T h e E l e c t i o n o f 1 9 1 2 All the crosscurrents of Progressive-era thinking came together in the pres- idential campaign of 1912. The four-way contest between Taft, Roosevelt, Democrat Woodrow Wilson, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs became a national debate on the relationship between political and economic free- A key election dom in the age of big business. At one end of the political spectrum stood Taft, who stressed that economic individualism could remain the founda- tion of the social order so long as government and private entrepreneurs cooperated in addressing social ills. At the other end was Debs. Relatively few Americans supported the Socialist Party’s goal of abolishing the “capitalistic system” altogether, but its immediate demands—including public ownership of the railroads and banking system, government aid to Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate, speaking in Chicago the unemployed, and laws establishing shorter working hours and a mini- during the 1912 presidential mum wage—summarized forward-looking Progressive thought. campaign. But it was the battle between Wilson and Roosevelt over the role of the fed- eral government in securing economic freedom that galvanized public attention in 1912. The two represented competing strands of Progressivism. Both believed government action necessary to preserve individual freedom, but they differed over the dangers of increasing the gov- ernment’s power and the inevitability of economic concentration. N e w F r e e d o m a n d N e w N a t i o n a l i s m Strongly influenced by Louis D. Brandeis, with whom he consulted frequently during T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S 569 the campaign, Wilson insisted that democracy must be reinvigorated by restoring market competition and freeing government from domination by big business. Wilson feared big government as much as he feared the power Woodrow Wilson’s New of the corporations. The New Freedom, as he called his program, envisioned Freedom the federal government strengthening antitrust laws, protecting the right of workers to unionize, and actively encouraging small businesses—creat- ing, in other words, the conditions for the renewal of economic competition without increasing government regulation of the economy. Wilson warned that corporations were as likely to corrupt government as to be managed by it, a forecast that proved remarkably accurate. To Roosevelt’s supporters, Wilson seemed a relic of a bygone era; his program, they argued, served the needs of small businessmen but ignored the inevitability of economic concentration and the interests of profession- Roosevelt’s New Nationalism als, consumers, and labor. Espousing the New Nationalism, his program of 1912, Roosevelt insisted that only the “controlling and directing power of the government” could restore “the liberty of the oppressed.” He called for heavy taxes on personal and corporate fortunes and federal regulation of industries, including railroads, mining, and oil. The Progressive Party platform offered numerous proposals to promote social justice. Drafted by a group of settlement-house activists, labor reformers, and social scientists, the platform laid out a blueprint for a modern, democratic welfare state, complete with woman suffrage, federal supervision of corporate enterprise, national labor and health The Progressive Party legislation for women and children, an eight-hour day and “living wage” Platform of 1912 for all workers, and a national system of social insurance covering unem- ployment, medical care, and old age. Roosevelt’s campaign helped to give freedom a modern social and economic content and established an agenda that would define political liberalism for much of the twentieth century. W i l s o n ’ s F i r s t T e r m The Republican split ensured a sweeping victory for Wilson, who won about 42 percent of the popular vote, although Roosevelt humiliated Taft by winning about 27 percent to the president’s 23 percent. In office, Wilson proved himself a strong executive leader. He was the first president to hold regular press conferences, and he delivered messages personally to Congress rather than sending them in written form, as did all his predeces- sors since John Adams. 570 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era How did the Progressive presidents foster the rise of the nation-state? With Democrats in control of Congress, T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N Wilson moved aggressively to implement O F 1 9 1 2 his version of Progressivism. The first sig- nificant measure of his presidency was 7 the Underwood Tariff, which substantially 4 5 4 4 6 reduced duties on imports and, to make 5 12 4 up for lost revenue, imposed a gradu- 5 13 45 18 3 15 5 ated income tax on the richest 5 percent of 38 3 8 13 7 29 15 24 14 3 Americans. There followed the Clayton Act 11 4 6 8 10 18 12 8 13 of 1914, which exempted labor unions from 12 2 12 antitrust laws and barred courts from issu- 3 3 10 9 9 ing injunctions curtailing the right to strike. 10 12 14 20 10 In 1916 came the Keating-Owen Act, outlaw- 6 ing child labor in the manufacture of goods sold in interstate commerce; the Adamson Electoral Vote Popular Vote Act, establishing an eight-hour workday on Party Candidate (Share) (Share) the nation’s railroads; and the Warehouse Democrat Wilson 435 (82%) 6,293,454 (41.9%) Act, reminiscent of the Populist subtreasury Progressive Roosevelt 88 (17%) 4,119,207 (27.4%) Republican Taft 8 (1%) 3,483,922 (23.2%) plan, which extended credit to farmers when Socialist Debs 900,369 (6.0%) they stored their crops in federally licensed warehouses. T h e E x p a n d i n g R o l e o f G o v e r n m e n t Some of Wilson’s policies seemed more in tune with Roosevelt’s New Nationalism than the New Freedom of 1912. Wilson presided over the cre- ation of two powerful new public agencies. In 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve System, consisting of twelve regional banks. They were The Federal Reserve System overseen by a central board appointed by the president and empowered to handle the issuance of currency, aid banks in danger of failing, and influ- ence interest rates so as to promote economic growth. A second expansion of national power occurred in 1914, when Congress established the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate and prohibit “unfair” business activities such as price-fixing and monopo- listic practices. Both the Federal Reserve and the FTC were welcomed by many business leaders as a means of restoring order to the economic marketplace and warding off more radical measures for curbing corporate power. But they reflected the remarkable expansion of the federal role in the economy during the Progressive era. T H E P R O G R E S S I V E P R E S I D E N T S 571 By 1916, the social ferment and political mobilizations of the A new nation-state Progressive era had given birth to a new American state. With new laws, administrative agencies, and independent commissions, government at the local, state, and national levels had assumed the authority to protect and advance “industrial freedom.” Government had established rules for labor relations, business behavior, and financial policy, protected citi- zens from market abuses, and acted as a broker among the groups whose conflicts threatened to destroy social harmony. But a storm was already engulfing Europe that would test the Progressive faith in empowered gov- ernment as the protector of American freedom. 572 C h a p t e r 1 8  The Progressive Era C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S muckrakers (p. 546) 1. Identify the main groups and ideas that drove the Ellis Island and Angel Island Progressive movement. (p. 547) Fordism (p. 550) 2. Explain how immigration to the United States in this Rerum Novarum (p. 551) period was part of a global movement of peoples. “scientific management” (p. 552) Industrial Workers of the World 3. Describe how Fordism transformed American industrial (p. 556) and consumer society. collective bargaining (p. 556) new feminism (p. 558) 4. Socialism was a rising force across the globe in the early birth-control movement (p. 558) twentieth century. How successful was the movement in Society of American Indians (p. 559) the United States? “social legislation” (p. 560) Seventeenth Amendment (p. 561) 5. Explain why the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) “maternalist” reforms (p. 564) grew so rapidly and aroused so much opposition. Muller v. Oregon (p. 565) workmen’s compensation laws 6. How did immigrants adjust to life in America? What (p. 565) institutions or activities became important to their Conservation Movement (p. 567) adjustment, and why? Sixteenth Amendment (p. 568) New Freedom and New 7. What did Progressive era feminists want to change in Nationalism (p. 569) Federal Trade Commission (p. 571) society, and how did their actions help to spearhead broader reforms? 8. How did ideas of women’s roles, shared by maternal- ist reformers, lead to an expansion of activism by and rights for women? wwnorton.com /studyspace 9. How did each Progressive era president view the role of the federal government? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE 10. Pick a Progressive era reform (a movement, a specific s legislation, or an organization) and describe how it s shows how Progressives could work for both the expan- s sion of democracy and restrictions on it. s s C h a p t e r R e v i e w a n d O n l i n e R e s o u r c e s 573 1903 United States secures the C H A P T E R 1 9 Panama Canal Zone W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine 1905 The Niagara movement S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : established 1907 Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S 1909 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People organized 1910 Mexican Revolution begins A N D W O R L D W A R I 1911 Bailey v. Alabama 1914 Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand 1914– World War I  1919 1915 D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a 1 9 1 6 – 1 9 2 0 Nation premieres Lusitania sinks 1917 Zimmerman Telegram intercepted United States enters the war Espionage Act passed Russian Revolution 1918 Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” speech 1918– Worldwide flu epidemic 1920 1919 Eighteenth Amendment Treaty of Versailles signed 1919– Red Scare 1920 1920 Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles Nineteenth Amendment ratified 1921 Tulsa Riot The Greatest Department Store on Earth, a cartoon from Puck, November 29, 1899, depicts Uncle Sam selling goods, mostly manufactured products, to the nations of the world. The search for markets overseas would be a recurring theme of twentieth- century American foreign policy. In 1902, W. T. Stead published a short volume with the arresting title The Americanization of the World; or, the Trend of the Twentieth Century, in which he predicted that the United States would soon emerge as F O C U S “the greatest of world-powers.” But what was most striking about his Q U E S T I O N S work was that Stead located the source of American power less in the realm of military might or territorial acquisition than in the country’s single-minded commitment to the “pursuit of wealth” and the relentless s international spread of American culture—art, music, journalism, even Progressive presidents ideas about religion and gender relations. He foresaw a future in which promote the expansion of the United States promoted its interests and values through an unending American power overseas? involvement in the affairs of other nations. Stead proved to be an accurate prophet. s The Spanish-American War had established the United States as an get involved in World international empire. Despite the conquest of the Philippines and Puerto War I? Rico, however, the country’s overseas holdings remained tiny compared to those of Britain, France, and Germany. And no more were added, s except for a strip of land surrounding the Panama Canal, acquired in mobilize resources and 1903, and the Virgin Islands, purchased from Denmark in 1917. In 1900, public opinion for the war Great Britain ruled over more than 300 million people in possessions effort? scattered across the globe, and France had nearly 50 million subjects in Asia and Africa. Compared with these, the American presence in the s world seemed very small. As Stead suggested, America’s empire differed race relations in the significantly from those of European countries—it was economic, cul- United States? tural, and intellectual, rather than territorial. The world economy at the dawn of the twentieth century was s already highly globalized. An ever-increasing stream of goods, invest- watershed year for the ments, and people flowed from country to country. Although Britain still United States and the dominated world banking and the British pound remained the major world? currency of international trade, the United States had become the leading industrial power. By 1914, it produced more than one-third of the world’s manufactured goods. Spearheads of American culture like movies and popular music were not far behind. Europeans were fascinated by American ingenuity and mass- production techniques. Many feared American products and culture would overwhelm their own. “What are the chief new features of London life?” one British writer asked in 1901. “They are the telephone, the por- table camera, the phonograph, the electric street car, the automobile, the typewriter. . . . In every one of these the American maker is supreme.” America’s growing connections with the outside world led to increasing military and political involvement. In the two decades after 1900, many of the basic principles that would guide American foreign S A F E F O R D E M O C R A C Y : T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S A N D W O R L D W A R I 575 policy for the rest of the century were formulated. The “open door”—the free flow of trade, investment, information, and culture—emerged as a key principle of American foreign relations. Americans in the twentieth century often discussed foreign policy in the language of freedom. A supreme faith in America’s historic destiny and in the righteousness of its ideals enabled the country’s leaders to think of the United States simultaneously as an emerging great power and as the worldwide embodiment of freedom. More than any other individual, Woodrow Wilson articulated this vision of America’s relationship to the rest of the world. His foreign policy, called by historians “liberal internationalism,” rested on the conviction that economic and political progress went hand in hand. Thus, greater worldwide freedom would follow inevitably from increased American investment and trade abroad. Frequently during the twentieth century, this conviction would serve as a mask for American power and self- interest. It would also inspire sincere efforts to bring freedom to other peoples. In either case, liberal internationalism represented a shift from the nineteenth-century tradition of promoting freedom primarily by example to active intervention to remake the world in the American image. A N E R A O F I N T E R V E N T I O N Just as they expanded the powers of the federal government in domestic affairs, the Progressive presidents were not reluctant to project American power outside the country’s borders. At first, their interventions were confined to the Western Hemisphere, whose affairs the United States had claimed a special right to oversee ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The Caribbean Between 1901 and 1920, U.S. marines landed in Caribbean countries more than twenty times. Usually, they were dispatched to create a welcoming economic environment for American companies that wanted stable access to raw materials like bananas and sugar, and for bankers nervous that their loans to local governments might not be repaid. “ I T o o k t h e C a n a l Z o n e ” Theodore Roosevelt became far more active in international diplomacy than most of his predecessors, helping, for example, to negotiate a settle- ment of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, a feat for which he was awarded 576 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I In what ways did the Progressive presidents promote the expansion of American power overseas? T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S I N T H E C A R I B B E A N , 1 8 9 8 – 1 9 4 1 UNITED STATES Columbus A t l a n t i c U.S. Expeditionary Force, 1916–1917 O c e a n Santa Ysabel Houston New Orleans Parral U.S. troops, 1898–1902, 1906–1909, Miami U.S. troops, 1915–1934 MEXICO B a h a m a s Financial supervision, 1916–1941 1912, 1917–1922 Platt Amendment, 1903–1934 ( B r. ) U.S. takes control of customs house, 1905 DOMINICAN Havana U.S. troops, 1916–1924 Tampico Financial supervision, 1905–1941 REPUBLIC U.S. seizure, Mexico City 1914 CUBA Guantanamo U.S. possession after 1898 Veracruz U.S. Naval base, 1903 HAITI V i rg i n I s l a n d s Pu e r t o (p u r c h a s e d f r o m D e n m a r k , 1 9 1 7 ) U.S. troops, 1907, BRITISH J a m a i ca R i co G u a d e l o u p e ( Fr. ) 1924–1925 ( B r. ) HONDURAS U.S. troops, 1909–1910, 1912–1925, 1926–1933, M a r t i n i q u e ( Fr. ) Financial supervision, 1911–1924 GUATEMALA B a r b a d o s ( B r. ) U.S. leases Corn Island, HONDURAS 1914 EL SALVADOR Tr i n i d a d ( B r. ) NICARAGUA PANAMA Caracas COSTA RICA VENEZUELA BRITISH FRENCH Venezuela U.S. acquired Canal Zone, 1904 debt crisis, GUIANA GUIANA Canal completed, 1914 Bogotá 1903–1904 Pa c i f i c DUTCH O c e a n COLOMBIA GUIANA ECUADOR 0 250 500 miles BRAZIL 0 250 500 kilometers PERU Between 1898 and 1941, the United the Nobel Peace Prize. Closer to home, his policies were more aggressive. States intervened militarily numerous “I have always been fond of the West African proverb,” he wrote, “‘ Speak times in Caribbean countries, softly and carry a big stick.’” generally to protect the economic The idea of a canal across the fifty-one-mile-wide Isthmus of Panama interests of American banks and investors. had a long history. A long-time proponent of American naval develop- ment, Roosevelt was convinced that a canal would facilitate the move- ment of naval and commercial vessels between the two oceans. In 1903, when Colombia, of which Panama was a part, refused to cede land for the project, Roosevelt helped set in motion an uprising by Panamanian conspirators. An American gunboat prevented the Colombian army from suppressing the rebellion. On establishing its independence, Panama signed a treaty giving the United States both the right to construct and operate a canal and The Panama Canal sovereignty over the Canal Zone, a ten-mile-wide strip of land through A N E R A O F I N T E R V E N T I O N 577 which the route would run. A remarkable feat of engineering, the canal was the largest construction project in history to that date. Like the build- ing of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s and much construction Immigrant labor work today, it involved the widespread use of immigrant labor. Most of the 60,000 workers came from the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Jamaica, but others hailed from Europe, Asia, and the United States. When completed in 1914, the canal reduced the sea voyage between the East and West Coasts of the United States by 8,000 miles. “I took the Canal Zone,” Roosevelt exulted. But the manner in which the canal had been initiated, and the continued American rule over the Canal Zone, would long remain a source of tension. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter negotiated treaties that led to turning over the canal’s operation and control of the Canal Zone to Panama in the year 2000 (see Chapter 26). T h e R o o s e v e l t C o r o l l a r y Roosevelt’s actions in Panama reflected a principle that came to be called the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This held that the An international police power United States had the right to exercise “an international police power” in the Western Hemisphere—a significant expansion of James Monroe’s pledge to defend the hemisphere against European intervention. In 1904, Roosevelt ordered American forces to seize the customs houses of the Dominican Republic to ensure payment of its debts to European and American investors. In 1906, he dispatched troops to Cuba to oversee a disputed election; they remained in the country until 1909. The World’s Constable, a cartoon commenting on Theodore Roosevelt’s “new diplomacy,” in Judge, January 14, 1905, portrays Roosevelt as an impartial policeman, holding in one hand the threat of force and in the other the promise of the peaceful settlement of disputes. Roosevelt stands between the undisciplined non-white peoples of the world and the imperialist powers of Europe and Japan. 578 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I In what ways did the Progressive presidents promote the expansion of American power overseas? Roosevelt’s successor, William Howard Taft, landed marines in Nicaragua to protect a government friendly to American economic inter- ests. In general, however, Taft emphasized economic investment and loans from American banks, rather than direct military intervention, as the best way to spread American influence. As a result, his foreign policy became known as Dollar Diplomacy. M o r a l I m p e r i a l i s m The son of a Presbyterian minister, Woodrow Wilson brought to the Woodrow Wilson presidency a missionary zeal and a sense of his own and the nation’s moral righteousness. He appointed as secretary of state William Jennings Bryan, a strong anti-imperialist. Wilson promised a new foreign policy that would respect Latin America’s independence and free it from foreign economic domination. But Wilson could not abandon the conviction that the United States had a responsibility to teach other peoples the lessons of democracy. Wilson’s “moral imperialism” produced more military interventions in Latin America than any president before or since. In 1915, he sent marines to occupy Haiti after the government refused to allow American banks to Wilson’s military interventions oversee its financial dealings. In 1916, he established a military govern- in Latin America ment in the Dominican Republic, with the United States controlling the country’s customs collections and paying its debts. American soldiers remained in the Dominican Republic until 1924 and in Haiti until 1934. Wilson’s foreign policy underscored a paradox of modern American history: the presidents who spoke the most about freedom were likely to intervene most frequently in the affairs of other countries. W i l s o n a n d M e x i c o Wilson’s major preoccupation in Latin America was Mexico, where in 1911 a revolution led by Francisco Madero overthrew the government of dictator Porfirio Díaz. Two years later, without Wilson’s knowledge but with the backing of the U.S. ambassador and of American companies Political turmoil that controlled Mexico’s oil and mining industries, military commander Victoriano Huerta assassinated Madero and seized power. Wilson was appalled. He would “teach” Latin Americans, he added, “to elect good men.” When civil war broke out in Mexico, Wilson ordered American troops to land at Vera Cruz to prevent the arrival of weapons meant for Huerta’s forces. But to Wilson’s surprise, Mexicans greeted the marines as invaders rather than liberators. A N E R A O F I N T E R V E N T I O N 579 In 1916, the war spilled over into the United States when “Pancho” Pancho Villa Villa, the leader of one faction, attacked Columbus, New Mexico, where he killed seventeen Americans. Wilson ordered 10,000 troops into northern Mexico on an expedition that unsuccessfully sought to arrest Villa. Mexico was a warning that it might be difficult to use American might to reorder the internal affairs of other nations. A M E R I C A A N D T H E G R E A T W A R In June 1914, a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Fer dinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This deed set in motion a chain of events that plunged Europe into the most Outbreak of war devastating war the world had ever seen. In the years before 1914, European nations had engaged in a scramble to obtain colonial possessions overseas and had constructed a shifting series of alliances seeking military domination within Europe. Within a little more than a month, because of the European powers’ interlocking military alliances, Britain, France, Russia, and Japan (the Allies) found themselves at war with the Central Powers—Germany, Austria- Hungary, and the Ottoman empire, whose holdings included modern-day Turkey and much of the Middle East. German forces quickly overran Belgium and part of northern France. The war then settled into a prolonged stalemate, with bloody, indecisive battles succeeding one another. New military technologies—submarines, New technologies airplanes, machine guns, tanks, and poison gas—produced unprecedented slaughter. In one five-month battle at Verdun, in 1916, 600,000 French In this painting from 1917, the Austrian painter Albin Egger-Leinz portrays World War I soldiers as faceless automatons marching in unison to the slaughter. By this time, the massive loss of life had produced widespread revulsion against the war. 580 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the United States get involved in World War I? and German soldiers perished—nearly as many combatants as in the entire American Civil War. By the time the war ended, an estimated 10 million soldiers, and uncounted millions of civilians, had perished. And Casualties of the Great War the war was followed by widespread famine and a worldwide epidemic of influenza that killed an estimated 21 million people more. The Great War, or World War I as it came to be called, dealt a severe blow to the optimism and self-confidence of Western civilization. For decades, philosophers, reformers, and politicians had hailed the triumph of reason and human progress, an outlook hard to reconcile with the mass slaughter of World War I. The conflict was also a shock to European socialist and labor movements. Karl Marx had called on the “workers of the world” to unite against their oppressors. Instead, they marched off to kill each other. N e u t r a l i t y a n d P r e p a r e d n e s s As war engulfed Europe, Americans found themselves sharply divided. Americans divided British-Americans sided with their nation of origin, as did many other Americans who associated Great Britain with liberty and democracy and Germany with repressive government. On the other hand, German- Americans identified with Germany, and Irish-Americans bitterly opposed any aid to the British. Immigrants from the Russian empire, especially Jews, had no desire to see the United States aid the czar’s regime. When war broke out in 1914, President Wilson proclaimed American The liner Lusitania, pictured on a “peace” postcard. Its sinking neutrality. But naval warfare in Europe reverberated in the United States. by a German submarine in 1915 Britain declared a naval blockade of Germany and began to stop American strengthened the resolve of those merchant vessels. Germany launched submarine warfare against ships who wished to see the United States entering and leaving British ports. In May 1915, a German submarine enter the European war. sank the British liner Lusitania (which was carrying a large cache of arms) off the coast of Ireland, causing the death of 1,198 pas- sengers, including 124 Americans. Wilson composed a note of protest so strong that Bryan resigned as secretary of state, fearing that the president was laying the founda- tion for military intervention. The sinking of the Lusitania outraged American public opinion and strength- ened the hand of those who believed that the United States must prepare for pos- sible entry into the war. Wilson himself A M E R I C A A N D T H E G R E A T W A R 581 had strong pro-British sympathies and viewed Germany as “the natu- ral foe of liberty.” By the end of 1915, he had embarked on a policy of Preparedness “preparedness”—a crash program to expand the American army and navy. T h e R o a d t o W a r In May 1916, Germany announced the suspension of submarine war- fare against noncombatants. Wilson’s preparedness program seemed to have succeeded in securing the right of Americans to travel freely on the high seas. “He kept us out of war” became the slogan of his campaign for reelection. With the Republican Party reunited after its split in 1912, the election proved to be one of the closest in American history. Wilson defeated Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes by only twenty- Wilson’s reelection three electoral votes and about 600,000 popular votes out of more than 18 million cast. Partly because he seemed to promise not to send American soldiers to Europe, Wilson carried ten of the twelve states that had adopted woman suffrage. Without the votes of women, Wilson would not have been reelected. Almost immediately, however, Germany announced its intention to resume submarine warfare against ships sailing to or from the British Isles, and several American merchant vessels were sunk. In March 1917, British spies intercepted and made public the Zimmerman Telegram, a message by German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman calling on Mexico to join in a coming war against the United States and promis- A 1916 Wilson campaign truck ing to help it recover territory lost in the Mexican War of 1846–1848. (a new development in political On April 2, Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war campaigning), promising peace, against Germany. “The world,” he proclaimed, “must be made safe for prosperity, and preparedness. democracy.” The war resolution passed the Senate 82–6 and the House 373–50. T h e F o u r t e e n P o i n t s Not until the spring of 1918 did American forces arrive in Europe in large numbers. By then, the world situation had taken a dramatic turn. In November 1917, a commu- nist revolution headed by Vladimir Lenin overthrew the Russian government. Shortly thereafter, Lenin withdrew Russia from the war and published the secret treaties by which the Allies had agreed to divide up 582 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the United States get involved in World War I? W O R L D W A R I : T H E W E S T E R N F R O N T Zeebrugge NETHERLANDS Düsseldorf ENGLAND Dover Nieuport Antwerp Ghent over Calais E Cologne r Ypres Brussels ft R Sieg R. . Lys Offensive R Lys R. Strait of D BELGIUM Liège h August 19– in November 11, 1918A e r Meuse R. R m . Lens istice Sambre R. Coblenz Lahn R. Arras Dinant Abbeville Cambrai Li Frankfurt n S e o mme Somme Offensive R. Amiens August 19– November 11, 1918 LUXEMBOURG Sedan Trier Aisne-Marne Offensive July 18–August 6, 1918 Luxembourg GERMANY Rouen No Aisne R. v S A r g o n n e e aa Soissons m Fo re s t b r R Reims er . S 1 Saarbrücken e 1 in , e 1 9 1 8 R. Meuse-Argonne L September– OR Paris November 1918 RA FRANCE INE Rhine R. Toul Strasbourg Chartres Melun Seine R. Aube Troyes R. ts. 0 25 50 miles Épinal 0 25 50 kilometers Sens es M sg ALSACE Vo Allied victory Allies Armistice line Mulhouse U.S. offensives Central Powers Stabilized front, 1915–1917 Belfort German offensives Neutral nations Maximum advance of Central Powers, 1918 SWITZERLAND After years of stalemate on the western front in World War I, the conquered territory after the war—an embarrassment for Wilson, who arrival of American troops in 1917 had promised a just peace. and 1918 shifted the balance of Partly to assure the country that the war was being fought for a power and made possible the Allied moral cause, Wilson in January 1918 issued the Fourteen Points, the clear- victory. est statement of American war aims and of his vision of a new international order. Among the key principles were self-determination for all nations, freedom of the seas, free trade, open diplomacy (an end to secret treaties), the readjustment of colonial claims with colonized people given “equal weight” in deciding their futures, and the creation of a “general association of nations” to preserve the peace. Wilson envisioned this last provision, which led to the establishment after the war of the League of Nations, as a kind of League of Nations global counterpart to the regulatory commissions Progressives had created A M E R I C A A N D T H E G R E A T W A R 583 at home to maintain social harmony. The Fourteen Points established the agenda for the peace conference that followed the war. The United States threw its economic resources and manpower into the Turning the tide of battle war. When American troops finally arrived in Europe, they turned the tide of battle. In the spring of 1918, they helped repulse a German advance near Paris and by July were participating in a major Allied counter offensive. In September, in the Meuse-Argonne campaign, more than 1 million American soldiers under General John J. Pershing helped push back the outnumbered and exhausted German army. With his forces in full retreat, the German kaiser abdicated on November 9. Two days later, Germany sued for peace. Over 100,000 Americans had died, a substantial number, but they were only 1 percent of the 10 million soldiers killed in the Great War. T H E W A R A T H O M E T h e P r o g r e s s i v e s ’ W a r For most Progressives, the war offered the possibility of reforming American society along scientific lines, instilling a sense of national unity and self-sacrifice, and expanding social justice. That American power could now disseminate Progressive values around the globe heightened the war’s appeal. Almost without exception, Progressive intellectuals and reformers, joined by prominent labor leaders and native-born socialists, rallied to Wilson’s support. The roster included intellectuals like John Dewey, AFL head Samuel Gompers, socialist writers like Upton Sinclair, and promi- nent reformers including Florence Kelley and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. T h e W a r t i m e S t a t e Like the Civil War, World War I created, albeit temporarily, a national An expanded state state with unprecedented powers and a sharply increased presence in Americans’ everyday lives. Under the Selective Service Act of May 1917, 24 million men were required to register with the draft. New federal agencies moved to regulate industry, transportation, labor relations, and agriculture. Headed by Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, the War Industries Board presided over all elements of war production from the distribution of raw materials to the prices of manufactured goods. To spur efficiency, it established standardized specifications for everything from automobile tires to shoe colors (three were permitted—black, brown, and 584 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the United States mobilize resources and public opinion for the war effort? white). The Railroad Administration took control of the nation’s trans- portation system, and the Fuel Agency rationed coal and oil. The Food Administration instructed farmers on modern methods of cultivation and promoted the more efficient preparation of meals. All combatants raised money by The War Labor Board, which included representatives of govern- selling war bonds. In the German ment, industry, and the American Federation of Labor, pressed for the poster, the text reads: “The war loan establishment of a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, and the right is the way to peace. The enemies want it this way [referring to the to form unions. During the war, wages rose substantially, working condi- mailed fist]. So subscribe.” The tions in many industries improved, and union membership doubled. To fist conveys sheer power—it offers finance the war, corporate and individual income taxes rose enormously. an image rather different from the By 1918, the wealthiest Americans were paying 60 percent of their income representation of liberty on the in taxes. Tens of millions of Americans answered the call to demonstrate American war poster. their patriotism by purchasing Liberty bonds. T h e P r o p a g a n d a W a r During the Civil War, it had been left to private agencies—Union Leagues, the Loyal Publication Society, and others—to mobilize prowar public opin- ion. But the Wilson administration decided that patriotism was too impor- tant to leave to the private sector. Many Americans opposed American participation, notably the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the bulk of the Socialist Party, which in 1917 condemned the declaration of war as “a crime against the people of the United States” and called on “the workers of all countries” to refuse to fight. In April 1917, the Wilson administration created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to explain to Americans and the world, as its director, George Creel, put it, “the cause that compelled America to take arms in defense of its liberties and free institutions.” The CPI flooded the country with prowar propaganda, using every available medium from pamphlets (of which it issued 75 million) to posters, newspaper advertise- ments, and motion pictures. The CPI couched its appeal in the Progressive language of social coop- eration and expanded democracy. Abroad, this meant a peace based on the principle of national self-determination. At home, it meant improving “industrial democracy.” The CPI distributed pamphlets foreseeing a postwar society complete with a “universal eight-hour day” and a living wage for all. Although “democracy” served as the key term of wartime mobiliza- tion, “freedom” also took on new significance. The war, a CPI advertise- ment proclaimed, was being fought in “the great cause of freedom.” The most common visual image in wartime propaganda was the Statue of Liberty, employed especially to rally support among immigrants. Buying T H E W A R A T H O M E 585 Liberty bonds became a demonstration of patriotism. Wilson’s speeches cast the United States as a land of liberty fighting alongside a “concert of free people” to secure self-determination for the oppressed peoples of the world. Government propaganda whipped up hatred of the wartime foe by portraying Germany as a nation of barbaric Huns. T h e C o m i n g o f W o m a n S u f f r a g e The enlistment of “democracy” and “freedom” as ideological war weapons inevitably inspired demands for their expansion at home. In 1916, Wilson had cautiously endorsed votes for women. America’s entry into the war threatened to tear the suffrage movement apart, because many advocates had been associated with opposition to American involvement. Indeed, among those who voted against the declaration of war was the first woman Jeannette Rankin member of Congress, the staunch pacifist Jeannette Rankin of Montana. Although defeated in her reelection bid in 1918, Rankin would return to Congress in 1940. She became the only member to oppose the declaration of war against Japan in 1941, which ended her political career. In 1968, at the age of eighty-five, Rankin took part in a giant march on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. Women and the war As during the Civil War, however, most leaders of woman suffrage organizations enthusiastically enlisted in the effort. Women sold war bonds, organized patriotic rallies, and went to work in war production jobs. Some 22,000 served as clerical workers and nurses with American forces in Europe. At the same time, a new generation of college-educated activists, orga- The National Women’s Party nized in the National Women’s Party, pressed for the right to vote with mili- tant tactics many older suffrage advocates found scandalous. The party’s A 1915 cartoon showing the western states where women had won the right to vote. Women in the East reach out to a western woman carrying a torch of liberty. 586 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the United States mobilize resources and public opinion for the war effort? leader, Alice Paul, had studied in England between 1907 and 1910, when the British suffrage movement adopted a strategy that included arrests, impris- onments, and vigorous denunciations of a male-dominated political system. Paul compared Wilson to the kaiser, and a group of her followers chained themselves to the White House fence, resulting in a seven-month prison sentence. When they began a hunger strike, the prisoners were force-fed. The combination of women’s patriotic service and widespread outrage over the treatment of Paul and her fellow prisoners pushed the adminis- tration toward full-fledged support of woman suffrage. In 1920, the long struggle ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which The Nineteenth Amendment barred states from using sex as a qualification for the suffrage. The United States became the twenty-seventh country to allow women to vote. P r o h i b i t i o n The war gave a powerful impulse to other campaigns that had engaged the energies of many women in the Progressive era. Prohibition, a move- ment inherited from the nineteenth century that had gained new strength and militancy in Progressive America, finally achieved national success during the war. Employers hoped it would create a more disciplined labor force. Urban reformers believed that it would promote a more orderly city environment and undermine urban political machines, which used saloons A 1916 cartoon from the publication of the Women’s Christian as places to organize. Women reformers hoped Prohibition would protect Temperance Union shows petitions wives and children from husbands who engaged in domestic violence for Prohibition flooding into Congress. when drunk or who squandered their wages at saloons. Many native-born Protestants saw Prohibition as a way of imposing “American” values on immigrants. After some success at the state level, Prohibitionists came to see national legislation as their best strategy. The war gave them added ammunition. Many prominent breweries were owned by German-Americans, making beer seem unpatriotic. The Food Administration insisted that grain must be used to produce food, not brewed into beer or distilled into liquor. In December 1917, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor. It was ratified by the states in 1919 and went into effect at the beginning of 1920. L i b e r t y i n W a r t i m e World War I raised questions already glimpsed during the Civil War that would trouble the nation again during the T H E W A R A T H O M E 587 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m E u g e n e V . D e b s , S p e e c h t o t h e J u r y b e f o r e S e n t e n c i n g u n d e r t h e E s p i o n a g e A c t ( 1 9 1 8 ) The most prominent spokesman for American socialism and a fervent opponent of American participation in World War I, Eugene V. Debs was arrested for delivering an antiwar speech and convicted of violating the Espionage Act. In his speech to the jury, he defended the right of dissent in wartime. I wish to admit the truth of all that has been testified to in this proceeding. . . . Gentlemen, you have heard the report of my speech at Canton on June 16, and I submit that there is not a word in that speech to warrant the charges set out in the indictment. . . . In what I had to say there my purpose was to have the people understand something about the social system in which we live and to prepare them to change this system by perfectly peaceable and orderly means into what I, as a Socialist, conceive to be a real democracy. . . . I have never advocated violence in any form. I have always believed in education, in intelligence, in enlightenment; and I have always made my appeal to the reason and to the conscience of the people. In every age there have been a few heroic souls who have been in advance of their time, who have been misunderstood, maligned, persecuted, sometimes put to death. . . . Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and their compeers were the rebels of their day. . . . But they had the moral courage to be true to their convictions. . . . William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Elizabeth Cady Stanton . . . and other leaders of the abolition movement who were regarded as public enemies and treated accordingly, were true to their faith and stood their ground. . . . You are now teaching your children to revere their memories, while all of their detractors are in oblivion. This country has been engaged in a number of wars and every one of them has been condemned by some of the people. The war of 1812 was opposed and condemned by some of the most influential citizens; the Mexican War was vehemently opposed and bitterly denounced, even after the war had been declared and was in progress, by Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Daniel Webster. . . . They were not indicted; they were not charged with treason. . . . I believe in the Constitution. Isn’t it strange that we Socialists stand almost alone today in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States? The revolutionary fathers . . . understood that free speech, a free press and the right of free assemblage by the people were fundamental principles in democratic government. . . . I believe in the right of free speech, in war as well as in peace. 588 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I F r o m W . E . B . D u B o i s , “ R e t u r n i n g S o l d i e r s , ” T h e C r i s i s ( 1 9 1 9 ) Scholar, poet, activist, and founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and editor of its magazine, The Crisis, W. E. B. Du Bois was the most prominent black leader of the first half of the twentieth century. He supported black participation in World War I, but he insisted that black soldiers must now join in the struggle for freedom at home. We are returning from war! The Crisis and tens of thousands of black men were drafted into a great struggle. For bleeding France and what she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in Washington, we fought in bitter resignation. For the America that represents and gloats in lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality and devilish insult—for this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of things, we were forced by vindictive fate to fight, also. But today we return! . . . We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land. It lynches. And lynching is barbarism of a degree of contemptible nastiness unparalleled in human history. Yet for fifty years we have lynched two Negroes a week, and we have kept this up right through the war. It disfranchises its own citizens. Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white. The land that disfranchises its citizens and calls itself a democracy lies and knows it lies. It encourages ignorance. It has never really tried to educate the Negro. Q U E S T I O N S A dominate minority does not want Negroes educated. It wants servants. . . . 1. Why does Debs relate the history of It insults us. wartime dissent in America? It has organized a nationwide and latterly a worldwide propaganda of deliberate and 2. What connections does Du Bois draw continuous insult and defamation of black blood between blacks fighting abroad in the wherever found. . . . war and returning to fight at home? This is the country to which we Soldiers of 3. In what ways does each author Democracy return. This is the fatherland for point up the contradiction between which we fought! But it is our fatherland. It was right for us to fight. . . . America’s professed values and its We return fighting. actual conduct? Make way for Democracy! V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 589 McCarthy era and in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001: What is Security and freedom the balance between security and freedom? Does the Constitution protect citizens’ rights during wartime? Should dissent be equated with lack of patriotism? Despite the administration’s idealistic language of democracy and freedom, the war inaugurated the most intense repression of civil liberties the nation has ever known. “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war,” Wilson remarked in his speech asking Congress to bring America into the conflict. Even he could not have predicted how significant an impact the war would have on American freedom. T h e E s p i o n a g e A c t For the first time since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the federal Restrictions on freedom government enacted laws to restrict freedom of speech. The Espionage of speech Act of 1917 prohibited not only spying and interfering with the draft but also “false statements” that might impede military success. The postmaster general barred from the mails numerous news papers and magazines criti- cal of the administration. In 1918, the Sedition Act made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or dis- repute” on the “form of government,” or that advocated interference with the war effort. The government charged more than 2,000 persons with vio- lating these laws. Over half were convicted. A court sentenced Ohio farmer John White to twenty-one months in prison for saying that the murder of innocent women and children by German soldiers was no worse than what the United States had done in the Philippines in the war of 1899–1903. The most prominent victim was Eugene V. Debs, convicted in 1918 under the Espionage Act for delivering an antiwar speech. Germany sent a Douglas Fairbanks, one of the socialist leader to prison for four years for opposing the war; in the United era’s most celebrated movie stars, addressing a 1918 rally urging people States, Debs’s sentence was ten years. After the war’s end, Wilson rejected to buy Liberty Bonds. the advice of his attorney general that he commute Debs’s sentence. Debs ran for president while still in prison in 1920 and received 900,000 votes. It was left to Wilson’s successor, Warren G. Harding, to release Debs from prison in 1921. C o e r c i v e P a t r i o t i s m Even more extreme repression took place at the hands of state governments and private groups. During the war, thirty-three states outlawed the possession or display of red or black flags (symbols, respectively, of communism and anarchism), and 590 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the United States mobilize resources and public opinion for the war effort? twenty-three outlawed a newly created offense, “criminal syndicalism,” the advocacy of unlawful acts to accomplish political change or “a change in industrial ownership.” “Who is the real patriot?” Emma Goldman asked when the United States entered the war. She answered, those who “love America with open eyes,” who were not blind to “the wrongs committed in the name of patriotism.” But from the federal government to local authorities and private groups, patriotism came to be equated with support for the gov- ernment, the war, and the American economic system. Throughout the country, schools revised their course offerings to ensure their patriotism and required teachers to sign loyalty oaths. The 250,000 members of the newly formed American Protective The American Protective League League (APL) helped the Justice Department identify radicals and critics of the war by spying on their neighbors and carrying out “slacker raids” in which thousands of men were stopped on the streets of major cities and required to produce draft registration cards. Employers cooperated with the government in crushing the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a move long demanded by business interests. In September 1917, operating under one of the broadest warrants in American history, federal agents swooped down on IWW offices throughout the country, arresting hundreds of leaders and seizing files and publications. Although some Progressives protested individual excesses, most Progressives and civil liberties failed to speak out against the broad suppression of freedom of expres- sion. Civil liberties, by and large, had never been a major concern of Progressives, who had always viewed the national state as the embodi- ment of democratic purpose and insisted that freedom flowed from partici- pating in the life of society, not standing in opposition. Strong believers in the use of national power to improve social conditions, Progressives found themselves ill prepared to develop a defense of minority rights against majority or governmental tyranny. W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? T h e “ R a c e P r o b l e m ” Even before American participation in World War I, what contemporaries called the “race problem”—the tensions that arose from the country’s increasing ethnic diversity—had become a major subject of public concern. “Race” referred to far more than black-white relations. The Dictionary of Races of Peoples, published in 1911 by the U.S. Immigration Commission, W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? 591 listed no fewer than forty-five immigrant “races,” each supposedly with its own inborn characteristics. They ranged from Anglo-Saxons at the top down to Hebrews, Northern Italians, and, lowest of all, Southern Italians—supposedly violent, undisciplined, and incapable of assimila- tion. The new science of eugenics, which studied the alleged mental characteristics of different races, gave anti-immigrant sentiment an air of professional expertise. Somehow, the very nationalization of politics and economic life served to heighten awareness of ethnic and racial difference and spurred Demands for Americanization demands for “Americanization”—the creation of a more homogeneous national culture. A 1908 play by the Jewish immigrant writer Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, gave a popular name to the process by which newcomers were supposed to merge their identity into existing American nationality. Public and private groups of all kinds—including educators, employers, labor leaders, social reformers, and public officials—took up the task of Americanizing new immigrants. Fearful that adult newcomers remained too stuck in their Old World ways, public schools paid great attention to Americanizing immigrants’ children. Moreover, the federal and state governments demanded that immigrants demonstrate their unwavering devotion to the United States. A minority of Progressives questioned Americanization efforts and insisted on respect for immigrant subcultures. Probably the most pen- etrating critique issued from the pen of Randolph Bourne, whose 1916 Randolph Bourne’s “Trans- essay, “Trans-National America,” exposed the fundamental flaw in the National America” Americanization model. “There is no distinctive American culture,” Bourne pointed out. Interaction between individuals and groups had produced the nation’s music, poetry, and other cultural expressions. Bourne envisioned a democratic, cosmopolitan society in which immigrants and natives alike submerged their group identities in a new “trans-national” culture. T h e A n t i - G e r m a n C r u s a d e German-Americans bore the brunt of forced Americanization. The first wave of German immigrants had arrived before the Civil War. By 1914, German-Americans numbered nearly 9 million, including immigrants and persons of German parentage. They had created thriving ethnic insti- German culture in America tutions including clubs, sports associations, schools, and theaters. On the eve of the war, many Americans admired German traditions in literature, music, and philosophy, and one-quarter of all the high school students in the country studied the German language. But after American entry into the war, the use of German and expressions of German culture became a target of prowar organizations. 592 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the war affect race relations in the United States? By 1919, the vast majority of the states had enacted laws restricting the teaching of foreign languages. Popular words of German origin were changed: “hamburger” became “liberty sandwich,” and “sauerkraut” was renamed “liberty cabbage.” The government jailed Karl Müch, the director of the Boston Symphony and a Swiss citizen, as an enemy alien after he insisted on including the works of German composers like Beethoven in his concerts. T o w a r d I m m i g r a t i o n R e s t r i c t i o n A 1919 cartoon, Close the Gate, Even as Americanization programs sought to assimilate immigrants warns that unrestricted immigration into American society, the war strengthened the conviction that certain allows dangerous radicals to enter kinds of undesirable persons ought to be excluded altogether. The new the United States. immigrants, one advocate of restriction declared, appreciated the values of democracy and freedom far less than “the Anglo-Saxon.” Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman introduced the term “IQ” (intel- ligence quotient) in 1916, claiming that this single number could measure an individual’s mental capacity. Intelligence tests administered to recruits by the army seemed to confirm scientifically that blacks and the new immi- grants stood far below native white Protestants on the IQ scale, further spurring demands for immigration restriction. The war accelerated other efforts to upgrade the American population. Some were inspired by the idea of improving the human race by discour- aging reproduction among less “desirable” persons. Indiana in 1907 had passed a law authorizing doctors to sterilize insane and “feeble-minded” inmates in mental institutions so that they would not pass their “defective” genes on to children. Numerous other states now followed suit. In Buck v. Buck v. Bell Bell (1927), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these laws. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s opinion included the famous statement, “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” By the time the practice ended in the 1960s, some 63,000 persons had been involuntarily sterilized. G r o u p s A p a r t : M e x i c a n s a n d A s i a n - A m e r i c a n s No matter how coercive, Americanization programs assumed that European immigrants and especially their children could eventually adjust to the conditions of American life, embrace American ideals, and become productive citizens enjoying the full blessings of American free- dom. This assumption did not apply to non-white immigrants or to blacks. The war led to further growth of the Southwest’s Mexican popula- Mexicans in the Southwest tion. Wartime demand for labor from the area’s mine owners and large farmers led the government to exempt Mexicans temporarily from the W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? 593 literacy test enacted in 1917. Segregation, by law and custom, was com- mon in schools, hospitals, theaters, and other institutions in states with significant Mexican populations. By 1920, nearly all Mexican children in California and the Southwest were educated in their own schools or class- rooms. Phoenix, Arizona, established separate public schools for Indians, Mexicans, blacks, and whites. Even more restrictive were policies toward Asian-Americans. In 1906, the San Francisco school board ordered all Asian students confined to a single public school. When the Japanese government protested, President Theodore Roosevelt persuaded the city to rescind the order. The Gentlemen’s Agreement He then negotiated the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, whereby Japan agreed to end migration to the United States except for the wives and children of men already in the country. In 1913, California barred all aliens incapable of becoming naturalized citizens (that is, Asians) from owning or leasing land. T h e C o l o r L i n e By far the largest non-white group, African-Americans, were excluded from nearly every Progressive definition of freedom described in Chapter 18. After their disenfranchisement in the South, few could participate in Exclusion of blacks American democracy. Barred from joining most unions and from skilled employment, black workers had little access to “industrial freedom.” Nor could blacks, the majority desperately poor, participate fully in the emerg- ing consumer economy, either as employees in the new department stores (except as janitors and cleaning women) or as purchasers of the consumer goods now flooding the marketplace. Progressives and race Progressive intellectuals, social scientists, labor reformers, and suf- frage advocates displayed a remarkable indifference to the black condition. Most settlement house reformers accepted segregation as natural and equi- table. White leaders of the woman suffrage movement said little about black disenfranchisement. The amendment that achieved woman suffrage left the states free to limit voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Living in the South, the vast majority of the country’s black women did not enjoy its benefits. R o o s e v e l t , W i l s o n , a n d R a c e The Progressive presidents shared prevailing attitudes concerning blacks. Theodore Roosevelt shocked white opinion by inviting Booker T. Washington to dine with him in the White House and by appointing a Brownsville affair number of blacks to federal offices. But in 1906, when a small group of 594 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the war affect race relations in the United States? black soldiers shot off their guns in Brownsville, Texas, killing one resi- dent, and none of their fellows would name them, Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of three black companies—156 men in all, includ- ing six winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Woodrow Wilson, a native of Virginia, could speak without irony of the South’s “genuine representative government” and its exalted “stan- dards of liberty.” His administration imposed racial segregation in federal departments in Washington, D.C., and dismissed numerous black federal employees. Wilson allowed D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan as the defender of white civilization during Reconstruction, to have its premiere at the White House in 1915. Blacks subject to disenfranchisement and segregation were under- standably skeptical of the nation’s claim to embody freedom. In one of hun- dreds of lynchings during the Progressive era, a white mob in Springfield, A cartoon from the St. Louis Post- Missouri, in 1906 falsely accused three black men of rape, hanged them Dispatch, April 17, 1906, commenting from an electric light pole, and burned their bodies in a public orgy of vio- on the lynching of three black men lence. Atop the pole stood a replica of the Statue of Liberty. in Springfield, Missouri. The shadow cast by the Statue of Liberty forms a gallows on the ground. W . E . B . D u B o i s a n d t h e R e v i v a l o f B l a c k P r o t e s t Black leaders struggled to find a strategy to rekindle the national commitment to equality that had flickered brightly, if briefly, during Reconstruction. No one thought more deeply, or over so long a period, about the black condition and the challenge it posed to American democ- racy than the scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois. Born in 1868, and educated at Fisk and Harvard universities, Du Bois lived to his ninety-fifth year. The unifying theme of Du Bois’s career was his effort to reconcile the contradiction between what he called “American freedom for whites and the continuing subjection of Negroes.” His book The Souls of Black Folk The Souls of Black Folk (1903) issued a clarion call for blacks dissatisfied with the accommoda- tionist policies of Booker T. Washington to press for equal rights. Du Bois believed that educated African-Americans like himself—the “talented tenth” of the black community—must use their education and training to challenge inequality. In some ways, Du Bois was a typical Progressive who believed that investigation, exposure, and education would lead to solutions for social problems. But he also understood the necessity of political action. In 1905, Du Bois gathered a group of black leaders at Niagara Falls (meet- The Niagara movement ing on the Canadian side because no American hotel would provide accommodations) and organized the Niagara movement, which sought to reinvigorate the abolitionist tradition. “We claim for ourselves,” Du Bois W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? 595 wrote in the group’s manifesto, “every single right that belongs to a free- born American.” Four years later, Du Bois joined with a group of mostly white reformers shocked by a lynching in Springfield, Illinois (Lincoln’s adult home), to create the National Association for the Advancement of The NAACP Colored People. The NAACP, as it was known, launched a long struggle for the enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The NAACP’s legal strategy won a few victories. In Bailey v. Alabama (1911), the Supreme Court overturned southern “peonage” laws that made it a crime for sharecroppers to break their labor contracts. Six years later, it ruled unconstitutional a Louisville zoning regulation excluding blacks from living in certain parts of the city (primarily because it interfered with whites’ right to sell their property as they saw fit). Overall, however, the Progressive era witnessed virtually no progress toward racial justice. C l o s i n g R a n k s Among black Americans, the wartime language of freedom inspired hopes for a radical change in the country’s racial system. The black press A 1918 poster celebrates black rallied to the war. Du Bois himself, in a widely reprinted editorial in the soldiers in World War I as “True Sons of Freedom.” At the upper right, NAACP’s monthly magazine, The Crisis, called on African-Americans to Abraham Lincoln looks on, with a “close ranks” and enlist in the army, to help “make our own America a somewhat modified quotation from real land of the free.” the Gettysburg Address. Black participation in the Civil War had helped to secure the destruction of slavery and the achievement of citizenship. But during World War I, closing ranks did not bring significant gains. The navy barred blacks entirely, and the segregated army confined most of the 400,000 blacks who served in the war to supply units rather than combat. Contact with African colonial soldiers fighting alongside the British and French did widen the horizons of black American soldiers. But although colonial troops marched in the victory parade in Paris, the Wilson administration did not allow black Americans to participate. T h e G r e a t M i g r a t i o n Nonetheless, the war unleashed social changes that altered the contours of American race relations. The combination of increased wartime production and a drastic falloff in immigration from Europe once war broke out opened thousands of industrial jobs to black 596 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I How did the war affect race relations in the United States? TABLE 19.1 The Great Migration BLACK POPULATION, BLACK POPULATION, PERCENT CITY 1910 1920 INCREASE New York 91,709 152,467 66.3% Philadelphia 84,459 134,229 58.9 Chicago 44,103 109,458 148.2 St. Louis 43,960 69,854 58.9 Detroit 5,741 40,838 611.3 Pittsburgh 25,623 37,725 47.2 Cleveland 8,448 34,451 307.8 laborers for the first time, inspiring a large-scale migration from South to North. On the eve of World War I, 90 percent of the African-American population still lived in the South. But between 1910 and 1920, half a million blacks left the South. The black population of Chicago more than doubled, New York City’s rose 66 percent, and smaller industrial cities like Akron, Buffalo, and Trenton showed similar gains. Many motives sustained the Great Migration—higher wages in northern factories than Higher wages in northern factories were available in the South (even if blacks remained confined to menial and unskilled positions), opportunities for educating their children, escape from the threat of lynching, and the prospect of exercising the right to vote. The black migrants, mostly young men and women, carried with them “a new vision of opportunity, of social and economic freedom,” as Alain Locke explained in the preface to his influential book, The New Negro (1925). Yet the migrants encountered vast disappointments—severely Racial restrictions in the North restricted employment opportunities, exclusion from unions, rigid hous- ing segregation, and outbreaks of violence that made it clear that no region of the country was free from racial hostility. The new black presence, coupled with demands for change inspired by the war, created a racial tinderbox that needed only an incident to trigger an explosion. R a c i a l V i o l e n c e , N o r t h a n d S o u t h Dozens of blacks were killed during a 1917 riot in East St. Louis, Illinois, where employers had recruited black workers in an attempt to weaken unions (most of which excluded blacks from membership). In 1919, more W H O I S A N A M E R I C A N ? 597 than 250 persons died in riots in the urban North. Most notable was the violence in Chicago, touched off by the drowning by white bathers of a black teenager who acci- dentally crossed the unofficial dividing line between black and white beaches on Lake Michigan. By the time the National Guard restored order, 38 persons had been killed and more than 500 injured. Violence was not confined to the North. In the year after the war ended, seventy-six persons were lynched in the South, includ- Buildings in Tulsa, Oklahoma, burn ing several returning black veterans wearing their uniforms. The worst during the city’s riot of June 1921. race riot in American history occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, when An estimated 300 people died when white mobs destroyed the city’s black more than 300 blacks were killed and over 10,000 left homeless after a neighborhood in the worst outbreak white mob, including police and National Guardsmen, burned an all-black of racial violence in American history. section of the city to the ground. T h e R i s e o f G a r v e y i s m World War I kindled a new spirit of militancy. The East St. Louis riot of 1917 inspired a widely publicized Silent Protest Parade on New York’s Fifth Avenue in which 10,000 blacks silently carried placards reading, “Mr. President, Why Not Make America Safe for Democracy?” In the new densely populated black ghettos of the North, widespread support The “silent parade” down Fifth emerged for the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a move- Avenue, July 28, 1917, in which ment for African independence and black self-reliance launched by 10,000 black marchers protested the East St. Louis race riot. Marcus Garvey, a recent immigrant from Jamaica. To Garveyites, free- dom meant national self-determination. Blacks, they insisted, should enjoy the same internationally recognized identity enjoyed by other peoples in the aftermath of the war. Du Bois and other established black leaders viewed Garvey as little more than a demagogue. They applauded when the government deported him after a conviction for mail fraud. But the mas- sive following his movement achieved testified to the sense of betrayal that had been kindled in black communities dur- ing and after the war. 598 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world? 1 9 1 9 A W o r l d w i d e U p s u r g e The combination of militant hopes for social change and disappointment with the war’s outcome was evident far beyond the black community. In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (or Soviet Union), as Russia had been renamed after the revolution, Lenin’s government had nationalized landholdings, banks, and factories and proclaimed the socialist dream of a workers’ government. The Russian Revolution and the democratic Global uprisings aspirations unleashed by World War I sent tremors of hope and fear throughout the world. General strikes demanding the fulfillment of war- time promises of “industrial democracy” took place in Belfast, Glasgow, and Winnipeg. In Spain, anarchist peasants began seizing land. Crowds in India challenged British rule, and nationalist movements in other colonies demanded independence. The worldwide revolutionary upsurge produced a countervailing mobilization by opponents of radical change. Despite Allied attempts to overturn its government, the Soviet regime survived, but in the rest of the world the tide of change receded. By the fall, the mass strikes had been suppressed and conservative governments had been installed in central Europe. U p h e a v a l i n A m e r i c a In the United States, 1919 also brought unprecedented turmoil. It seemed all the more disorienting for occurring in the midst of a worldwide flu epidemic that killed between 20 and 40 million persons, including nearly 700,000 Americans. Racial violence, as noted above, was widespread. In June, bombs exploded at the homes of prominent Americans, including the attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, who escaped uninjured. Among aggrieved American workers, wartime language linking patriotism with democracy and freedom inspired hopes that an era of social justice and economic empowerment was at hand. In 1917, Wilson had told the AFL, “While we are fighting for freedom, we must see to it among other things that labor is free.” Labor took him seriously—more seriously, it seems, than Wilson intended. In 1919, more than 4 million workers engaged in strikes—the Wave of strikes greatest wave of labor unrest in American history. There were walk- outs, among many others, by textile workers, telephone operators, and Broadway actors. They were met by an unprecedented mobilization of employers, government, and private patriotic organizations. 1 9 1 9 599 The wartime rhetoric of economic democracy and freedom helped to inspire the era’s greatest labor uprising, the 1919 steel strike. Centered in Chicago, it united some 365,000 mostly immigrant workers in demands for union recognition, higher wages, and an eight-hour workday. Before 1917, the steel mills were little autocracies where managers arbitrarily established wages and working conditions and suppressed all efforts at union organizing. During the war, workers won an eight-hour day. “For why this war?” asked one Polish immigrant steelworker at a union meet- ing. “For why we buy Liberty bonds? For the mills? No, for freedom and America—for everybody.” In response to the strike, steel magnates launched a concerted coun- terattack. Employers appealed to anti-immigrant sentiment among native-born workers, many of whom returned to work, and conducted a Local police with literature seized propaganda campaign that associated the strikers with the IWW, com- from a Communist Party office munism, and disloyalty. With middle-class opinion having turned against in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the labor movement and the police in Pittsburgh assaulting workers on the November 1919. streets, the strike collapsed in early 1920. T h e R e d S c a r e Wartime repression of dissent reached its peak with the Red Scare of 1919–1920, a short-lived but intense period of political intolerance inspired by the postwar strike wave and the social tensions and fears generated by the Russian Revolution. Convinced that episodes like the steel strike were A. Mitchell Palmer part of a worldwide communist conspiracy, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer in November 1919 and January 1920 dispatched federal agents to raid the offices of radical and labor organizations throughout the country. More than 5,000 persons were arrested, most of them without warrants, and held for months without charge. The government deported hundreds of immigrant radicals, including Emma Goldman, the prominent radical speaker mentioned in the previous chapter. The abuse of civil liberties in early 1920 was so severe that Palmer came under heavy criticism from Congress and much of the press. Even the explosion of a bomb outside the New York Stock Exchange in September 1920, which killed forty persons, failed to rekindle the repres- sion of the Red Scare years. (The perpetrators of this terrorist explosion, the worst on American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, were never identified.) The reaction to the Palmer Raids planted the seeds for a new appre- ciation of the importance of civil liberties that would begin to flourish Effects of Red Scare during the 1920s. But in their immediate impact, the events of 1919 and 600 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world? 1920 dealt a devastating setback to radi- cal and labor organizations of all kinds and kindled an intense identification of patriotic Americanism with support for the political and economic status quo. The IWW had been effectively destroyed, and many moderate unions lay in disarray. The Socialist Party crumbled under the weight of governmental repression (the New York legislature expelled five Socialist mem- bers, and Congress denied Victor Berger the seat to which he had been elected from Wisconsin) and internal differences over the Russian Revolution. W i l s o n a t V e r s a i l l e s Part of the crowd that greeted President Woodrow Wilson in The beating back of demands for fundamental social change was a severe November 1918 when he traveled rebuke to the hopes with which so many Progressives had enlisted in the to Paris to take part in the peace war effort. Wilson’s inability to achieve a just peace based on the Fourteen conference. An electric sign proclaims Points compounded the sense of failure. Late in 1918, the president trav- “Long Live Wilson.” eled to France to attend the Versailles peace conference. But he proved a less adept negotiator than his British and French counterparts, David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau. Although the Fourteen Points had called for “open covenants openly arrived at,” the negotiations were conducted in secret. The Versailles Treaty did accomplish some of Wilson’s goals. It established the League of Nations, the body central to his vision of a new international order. It applied the principle of self-determination to eastern Europe and redrew the map of that region. From the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian empire and parts of Germany and czarist Russia, new European nations New boundaries in Eastern Europe emerged from the war—Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Yugoslavia. Some enjoyed ethno- linguistic unity, whereas others comprised unstable combinations of diverse nationalities. Despite Wilson’s pledge of a peace without territorial acquisitions or vengeance, the Versailles Treaty was a harsh document that all but guar- anteed future conflict in Europe. Lloyd George persuaded Wilson to agree to a clause declaring Germany morally responsible for the war and setting astronomical reparations payments (they were variously estimated at German reparations between $33 billion and $56 billion), which crippled the German economy. 1 9 1 9 601 E U R O P E I N 1 9 1 4 0 250 500 miles NORWAY 0 250 500 kilometers Petrograd SWEDEN Moscow North Sea GREAT DENMARK BRITAIN Baltic Sea NETHERLANDS RUSSIA London Berlin GERMANY LUXEMBOURG BELGIUM Paris Prague A t l a n t i c Vienna O c e a n FRANCE SWITZERLAND AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE ROMANIA Black Sea Sarajevo PORTUGAL SERBIA BULGARIA SPAIN ITALY MONTENEGRO Rome Constantinople ALBANIA TURKEY (OTTOMAN EMPIRE) GREECE S i c i l y Allies Central Powers Cy p r u s Neutral nations Mediterranean Sea C r e t e World War I and the Versailles Treaty redrew the map of Europe and the T h e W i l s o n i a n M o m e n t Middle East. The Austro-Hungarian Like the ideals of the American Revolution, the Wilsonian rhetoric of self- and Ottoman empires ceased to exist, and Germany and Russia determination reverberated across the globe, especially among oppressed were reduced in size. A group of minorities (including blacks in the United States) and colonial peoples new states emerged in eastern seeking independence. In fact, these groups took Wilson’s rhetoric more Europe, embodying the principle of seriously than he did. Despite his belief in self-determination, he had sup- self-determination, one of Woodrow ported the American annexation of the Philippines, believing that colonial Wilson’s Fourteen Points. peoples required a long period of tutelage before they were ready for independence. Nonetheless, Wilsonian ideals quickly spread around the globe. In Wilsonian ideals around eastern Europe, whose people sought to carve new, independent nations the world from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, many consid- ered Wilson a “popular saint.” The leading Arabic newspaper Al-Ahram, pub- lished in Egypt, then under British rule, gave extensive coverage to Wilson’s 602 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world? E U R O P E I N 1 9 1 9 0 250 500 miles FINLAND 0 250 500 kilometers NORWAY SWEDEN ESTONIA North LATVIA Sea GREAT DENMARK RUSSIA LITHUANIA BRITAIN Baltic Sea NETHERLANDS EAST PRUSSIA Danzig (GERMANY) (Free City) GERMANY POLAND LUXEMBOURG BELGIUM Rhineland Saar A t l a n t i c CZECHOSLOVAKIA O c e a n Lorraine FRANCE Alsace SWITZERLAND AUSTRIA HUNGARY ROMANIA YUGOSLAVIA Black Sea PORTUGAL BULGARIA SPAIN Co r s i ca ITALY ( Fr. ) ALBANIA TURKEY S a rd i n i a ( I t . ) GREECE S i c i l y New nations D o d e ca n e s e Cy p r u s Demilitarized or Allied occupied zone Mediterranean Sea C r e t e I s . ( I t a l y) speech asking Congress to declare war in the name of democracy, and to the Fourteen Points. In Beijing, students demanding that China free itself of foreign domination gathered at the American embassy shouting, “Long live Wilson.” Japan proposed to include in the charter of the new League of Nations a clause recognizing the equality of all people, regardless of race. Outside of Europe, however, the idea of “self-determination” was Self-determination stillborn. When the Paris peace conference opened, Secretary of State Robert Lansing warned that the phrase was “loaded with dynamite” and would “raise hopes which can never be realized.” As Lansing anticipated, advocates of colonial independence descended on Paris to lobby the peace negotiators. Arabs demanded that a unified independent state be carved from the old Ottoman empire in the Middle East. Nguyen That Thanh, a young Vietnamese patriot working in Paris, pressed his people’s claim for 1 9 1 9 603 greater rights within the French empire. W. E. B. Du Bois organized a Pan- African Congress in Paris that put forward the idea of a self-governing nation to be carved out of Germany’s African colonies. Koreans, Indians, Irish, and others also pressed claims for self-determination. The British and French, however, had no intention of applying this principle to their own empires. During the war, the British had encour- Imperial interests aged Arab nationalism as a weapon against the Ottoman empire and had also pledged to create a homeland in Palestine for the persecuted Jews of Europe. In fact, the victors of World War I divided Ottoman territory into a series of new territories, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine, con- trolled by the victorious Allies under League of Nations “mandates.” South Africa, Australia, and Japan acquired former German colonies in Africa and Asia. Nor did Ireland achieve its independence at Versailles. Only at the end of 1921 did Britain finally agree to the creation of the Irish Free State while continuing to rule the northeastern corner of the island. As for the Japanese proposal to establish the principle of racial equality, Wilson, with the support of Great Britain and Australia, engineered its defeat. T h e S e e d s o f W a r s t o C o m e Disappointment at the failure to apply the Fourteen Points to the non- European world created a pervasive cynicism about Western use of the language of freedom and democracy. Wilson’s apparent willingness to accede to the demands of the imperial powers helped to spark a series of popular protest movements across the Middle East and Asia, and The rise of anti-Western the rise of a new anti-Western nationalism. Some leaders, like Nguyen nationalism That Thanh, who took the name Ho Chi Minh, turned to communism, in whose name he would lead Vietnam’s long and bloody struggle for independence. The Soviet leader Lenin, in fact, had spoken of “the right of nations to self-determination” before Wilson, and with the collapse of the Wilsonian moment, Lenin’s reputation in the colonial world began to eclipse that of the American president. But whether communist or not, these movements announced the emergence of anticolonial nationalism as a major force in world affairs, which it would remain for the rest of the twentieth century. “Your liberalness,” one Egyptian leader remarked, speaking of Britain and America, “is only for yourselves.” Yet ironically, when colo- nial peoples demanded to be recognized as independent members of the international community, they would invoke the heritage of the American Revolution—the first colonial struggle that produced an independent nation. 604 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I Why was 1919 such a watershed year for the United States and the world? World War I sowed the seeds not of a last- ing peace but of wars to come. German resent- ment over the peace terms would help to fuel the rise of Adolf Hitler and the coming of World War II. In the breakup of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, violence over the status of Northern Ireland, and the seemingly unending conflict in the Middle East between Arabs and Israelis, the world was still haunted by the ghost of Versailles. T h e T r e a t y D e b a t e One final disappointment awaited Wilson on his return from Europe. He viewed the new League of Nations as the war’s finest legacy. But many Americans feared that membership in the League would commit the United States to an open-ended involvement in the affairs of other countries. A considerable majority of senators would Interrupting the Ceremony, a 1918 have accepted the treaty with “reservations” ensuring that the obligation cartoon from the Chicago Tribune, to assist League members against attack did not supersede the power of depicts Senate opponents of the Congress to declare war. Convinced, however, that the treaty reflected “the Versailles Treaty arriving just in time hand of God,” Wilson refused to negotiate with congressional leaders. In to prevent the United States from October 1919, in the midst of the League debate, Wilson suffered a serious becoming permanently ensnared in stroke. Although the extent of his illness was kept secret, he remained “foreign entanglements” through the League of Nations. incapacitated for the rest of his term. In effect, his wife, Edith, headed the government for the next seventeen months. In November 1919 and again in March 1920, the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty. American involvement in World War I lasted barely nineteen months, but it cast a long shadow over the following decade—and, indeed, the rest of the century. In its immediate aftermath, the country retreated from international involvements. But in the long run, Wilson’s combination of idealism and power politics had an enduring impact. His appeals to The enduring impact of Wilsonian policy democracy, open markets, and a special American mission to instruct the world in freedom, coupled with a willingness to intervene abroad militar- ily to promote American interests and values, would create the model for twentieth-century American international relations. On its own terms, the war to make the world safe for democracy failed. It also led to the eclipse of Progressivism. Republican candidate Warren 1 9 1 9 605 G. Harding, who had no connection with the party’s Progressive wing, swept to victory in the presidential election of 1920. Harding’s campaign “Return to normalcy” centered on a “return to normalcy” and a repudiation of what he called “Wilsonism.” He received 60 percent of the popular vote. Begun with ide- alistic goals and grand hopes for social change, American involvement in the Great War laid the foundation for one of the most conservative decades in the nation’s history. 606 C h a p t e r 1 9  Safe for Democracy: The United States and World War I C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. Explain the role of the United States in the global “liberal internationalism” (p. 576) Panama Canal Zone (p. 577) economy by 1920. Roosevelt Corollary (p. 578) 2. What were the assumptions underlying the Roosevelt Dollar Diplomacy (p. 579) “moral imperialism” (p. 579) Corollary? How did the doctrine affect our relations with sinking of the Lusitania (p. 581) European nations and those in the Western Hemisphere? Zimmerman Telegram (p. 582) Fourteen Points (p. 582) 3. What did President Wilson mean by “moral imperial- Selective Service Act (p. 584) ism,” and what measures were taken to apply this to War Industries Board (p. 584) Latin America? Espionage Act (p. 590) Sedition Act (p. 590) 4. How did the ratification of the Eighteenth and National Association for the Nineteenth Amendments show the restrictive Advancement of Colored and democratizing nature of Progressivism? People (p. 596) Great Migration (p. 596) 5. Why did Progressives see in the expansion of govern- Tulsa riot of 1921 (p. 598) mental powers in wartime an opportunity to reform Garveyites (p. 598) American society? flu epidemic (p. 599) Red Scare of 1919–1920 6. What were the goals and methods of the Committee on (p. 600) Public Information during World War I? Versailles Treaty (p. 601) 7. What are governmental and private examples of coercive patriotism during the war? What were the effects of those efforts? 8. What were the major causes—both real and imaginary— of the Red Scare? wwnorton.com /studyspace 9. How did World War I and its aftermath provide African-Americans with opportunities? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE 10. Describe how World War I and the U.S. failure to s join the League of Nations sowed the seeds of future s twentieth-century wars. s s 11. Identify the goals of those pressing for global change in s 1919, and of those who opposed them. C h a p t e r R e v i e w a n d O n l i n e R e s o u r c e s 607 1915 Reemergence of the C H A P T E R 2 0 Ku Klux Klan 1919 Schenck v. United States Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” 1920 American Civil Liberties Union established 1921 Trial of Sacco and Vanzetti F R O M B U S I N E S S 1922 Washington Naval Arms Conference Hollywood adopts the Hays code C U L T U R E T O G R E A T Cable Act Herbert Hoover’s American Individualism D E P R E S S I O N 1923 Adkins v. Children’s Hospital Meyer v. Nebraska  1924 Immigration Act of 1924 Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 T H E T W E N T I E S , 1 9 2 0 – 1 9 3 2 1925 Scopes trial Bruce Barton’s Man Nobody Knows 1927 Charles Lindbergh flies nonstop over the Atlantic Sacco and Vanzetti executed 1929 Robert and Helen Lynd’s Middletown Sheppard-Towner Act repealed Stock market crashes 1930 Hawley-Smoot Tariff 1932 Reconstruction Finance Corporation established Bonus march on Washington City Activities with Dance Hall. This mural, painted in 1930 by Thomas Hart Benton for the New School for Social Research in New York City, portrays aspects of 1920s urban life. On the left, hands reach for a bottle of liquor, a businessman reads a stock ticker, and patrons enjoy themselves at a dance hall and movie theater. Images on the right include a circus, a woman at a soda fountain, and scenes of family life. In May 1920, at the height of the postwar Red Scare, police arrested two Italian immigrants accused of participating in a robbery at a F O C U S South Braintree, Massachusetts, factory in which a security guard was killed. Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Q U E S T I O N S itinerant unskilled laborer, were anarchists who dreamed of a society in which government, churches, and private property would be abolished. They saw violence as an appropriate weapon of class warfare. But very s little evidence linked them to this particular crime. In the atmosphere of who suffered in the new anti-radical and anti-immigrant fervor, however, their conviction was a consumer society of the certainty. 1920s? Although their 1921 trial had aroused little public interest outside the Italian-American community, the case of Sacco and Vanzetti attracted s considerable attention during the lengthy appeals that followed. There ernment promote business were mass protests in Europe against their impending execution. On interests in the 1920s? August 23, 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti died in the electric chair. The Sacco-Vanzetti case laid bare some of the fault lines beneath s the surface of American society during the 1920s. To many native-born civil liberties gain impor- Americans, the two men symbolized an alien threat to their way of life. tance in the 1920s? To Italian-Americans, including respectable middle-class organizations like the Sons of Italy that raised money for the defense, the outcome sym- s bolized the nativist prejudices and stereotypes that haunted immigrant points between fundamen- communities. talism and pluralism in the 1920s? s the Great Depression, and how effective were the government’s responses by 1932? A 1927 photograph shows Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti outside the courthouse in Dedham, Massachusetts, surrounded by security agents and onlookers. They are about to enter the courthouse, where the judge will pronounce their death sentence. F R O M B U S I N E S S C U L T U R E T O G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 609 In popular memory, the decade that followed World War I is recalled as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties. With its flappers (young, sexu- ally liberated women), speakeasies (nightclubs that sold liquor in viola- tion of Prohibition), and a soaring stock market fueled by easy credit and a get-rich-quick outlook, it was a time of revolt against moral rules inherited from the nineteenth century. Observers from Europe, where class divisions were starkly visible in work, politics, and social rela- tions, marveled at the uniformity of American life. Factories poured out standardized consumer goods, their sale promoted by national advertis- ing campaigns. Conservatism dominated a political system from which radical alternatives seemed to have been purged. Radio and the movies spread mass culture throughout the nation. Many Americans, however, did not welcome the new secular, com- mercial culture. They resented and feared the ethnic and racial diversity of America’s cities and what they considered the lax moral standards of Advertisements, like this one for a urban life. The 1920s was a decade of profound social tensions—between refrigerator, promised that consumer goods would enable Americans to rural and urban Americans, traditional and “modern” Christianity, par- fulfill their hearts’ desires. ticipants in the burgeoning consumer culture and those who did not fully share in the new prosperity. T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A A D e c a d e o f P r o s p e r i t y “The chief business of the American people,” said Calvin Coolidge, who became president after Warren G. Harding’s sudden death from a heart attack in 1923, “is business.” Rarely in American history had economic growth seemed more dramatic, cooperation between business and govern- ment so close, and business values so widely shared. Productivity and eco- Industrial growth nomic output rose dramatically as new industries—chemicals, aviation, electronics—flourished and older ones like food processing and the manu- facture of household appliances adopted Henry Ford’s moving assembly line. Annual automobile production tripled during the 1920s, from 1.5 to 4.8 million, stimulating steel, rubber, and oil production, and other sectors of the economy. By 1929, half of all Americans owned a car. Multinational corporations During the 1920s, American multinational corporations extended their sway throughout the world. With Europe still recovering from the Great War, American investment overseas far exceeded that of other countries. The dollar replaced the British pound as the most important 610 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s? currency of international trade. American companies produced 85 percent of the world’s cars and 40 percent of its manufactured goods. General Electric and International Telephone and Telegraph bought up companies in other countries. International Business Machines (IBM) was the world’s leader in office supplies. American companies took control of raw materi- als abroad, from rubber in Liberia to oil in Venezuela. A N e w S o c i e t y During the 1920s, consumer goods of all kinds proliferated, marketed Consumer goods by salesmen and advertisers who promoted them as ways of satisfy- ing Americans’ psychological desires and everyday needs. Frequently purchased on credit through new installment buying plans, they rapidly altered daily life. Telephones made communication easier. Vacuum clean- ers, washing machines, and refrigerators transformed work in the home and reduced the demand for domestic servants. Boosted by Prohibition and an aggressive advertising campaign that, according to the company’s sales director, made it “impossible for the consumer to escape” the product, Coca-Cola became a symbol of American life. Americans spent more and more of their income on leisure activities Leisure activities like vacations, movies, and sporting events. By 1929, weekly movie atten- dance had reached 80 million, double the figure of 1922. Hollywood films now dominated the world movie market. Radios and phonographs brought mass enter- tainment into American living rooms. The number of radios in American homes rose from 190,000 in 1923 FIGURE 20.1 Household to just under 5 million in 1929. These developments helped create and spread a new celebrity culture, in Appliances, 1900–1930 which recording, film, and sports stars moved to the top of the list of American heroes. During the 1920s, 100 more than 100 million records were sold each year. 90 80 RCA Victor sold so many recordings of the great opera 70 tenor Enrico Caruso that he is sometimes called the first 60 modern celebrity. He was soon joined by the film actor ving an appliance 50 Charlie Chaplin, baseball player Babe Ruth, and boxer electricity 40 Jack Dempsey. Perhaps the decade’s greatest celebrity, telephone 30 in terms of intensive press coverage, was the aviator 20 Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 made the first solo vacuum cleaner 10 washing machine nonstop flight across the Atlantic. refrigerator 0 Widespread acceptance of going into debt to pur- 1900 1910 Percentage of households ha 1920 1930 Year chase consumer goods replaced the values of thrift and T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A 611 self-denial, central to nineteenth-century notions of upstanding character. Work, once seen as a source of pride in craft skill or collective empower- ment via trade unions, now came to be valued as a path to individual ful- fillment through consumption and entertainment. T h e L i m i t s o f P r o s p e r i t y But signs of future trouble could be seen beneath the prosperity of the 1920s. The fruits of increased production were very unequally distrib- uted. Real wages for industrial workers (wages adjusted to take account of inflation) rose by one-quarter between 1922 and 1929, but corporate profits Economic concentration and rose at more than twice that rate. The process of economic concentration its consequences continued unabated. A handful of firms dominated numerous sectors of the economy. In 1929, 1 percent of the nation’s banks controlled half of its financial resources. Most of the small auto companies that had existed earlier in the century had fallen by the wayside. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler now controlled four-fifths of the industry. At the beginning of 1929, a majority of families had no savings, and an estimated 40 percent of the population remained in poverty, unable to Economic weakness participate in the flourishing consumer economy. Improved productivity meant that goods could be produced with fewer workers. During the 1920s, more Americans worked in the professions, retailing, finance, and educa- tion, but the number of manufacturing workers declined by 5 percent, the first such drop in the nation’s history. Parts of New England were already experiencing the chronic unemployment caused by deindustrialization. Many of the region’s textile companies failed in the face of low-wage com- petition from southern factories or shifted production to take advantage of the South’s cheap labor. T h e F a r m e r s ’ P l i g h t Nor did farmers share in the decade’s prosperity. The “golden age” of American farming had reached its peak during World War I, when the need to feed war-torn Europe and government efforts to maintain high farm prices had raised farmers’ incomes and promoted the purchase of more land on credit. Thanks to mechanization and the increased use of fertilizer and insecticides, agricultural production continued to rise even when government subsidies ended and world demand stagnated. As a Rural depression result, farm incomes in the 1920s declined steadily, and banks foreclosed tens of thousands of farms. 612 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s? Facing dire conditions, some 3 mil- lion persons migrated out of rural areas. Many headed for southern California, whose rapidly growing economy needed new labor. The population of Los Angeles, the West’s leading industrial center, a pro- ducer of oil, automobiles, aircraft, and, of course, Hollywood movies, rose from 575,000 to 2.2 million during the decade, largely because of an influx of displaced farmers from the Midwest. Well before the 1930s, rural America was in an economic depression. T h e I m a g e o f B u s i n e s s Farmers, such as this family of potato growers in rural Minnesota, did not Despite America’s underlying economic problems, businessmen like share in the prosperity of the 1920s. Henry Ford and engineers like Herbert Hoover were cultural heroes. Photographers like Lewis Hine and Margaret Bourke-White and painters like Charles Sheeler celebrated the beauty of machines and factories. Numerous firms established public relations departments. They aimed to justify corporate practices to the public and counteract its long- standing distrust of big business. They even succeeded in changing popu- lar attitudes toward Wall Street. In the 1920s, as the steadily rising price of stocks made front-page Rise of the stock market news, the market attracted more investors. Many assumed that stock val- ues would keep rising forever. By 1928, an estimated 1.5 million Americans owned stock—still a small minority of the country’s 28 million families, but far more than in the past. T h e D e c l i n e o f L a b o r With the defeat of the labor upsurge of 1919 and the dismantling of the war- time regulatory state, business appropriated the rhetoric of Americanism and “industrial freedom” as weapons against labor unions. Some corpo- rations during the 1920s implemented a new style of management. They provided their employees with private pensions and medical insurance plans, job security, and greater workplace safety. They spoke of “welfare capitalism,” a more socially conscious kind of business leadership, and T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A 613 River Rouge Plant, by the artist Charles Sheeler, exemplifies the “machine-age aesthetic” of the 1920s. Sheeler found artistic beauty in Henry Ford’s giant automobile assembly factory. trumpeted the fact that they now paid more attention to the “human factor” in employment. At the same time, however, employers in the 1920s embraced The American Plan the American Plan, at whose core stood the open shop—a workplace free of both government regulation and unions, except, in some cases, “company unions” created and controlled by management. Even the most forward-looking companies continued to employ strikebreakers, private detectives, and the blacklisting of union organizers to prevent or defeat strikes. During the 1920s, organized labor lost more than 2 million mem- bers, and unions agreed to demand after demand by employers in The decline of unions an effort to stave off complete elimination. Uprisings by the most downtrodden workers did occur sporadically throughout the decade. Southern textile mills witnessed desperate strikes by workers who charged employers with “making slaves out of the men and women” who labored there. Facing the combined opposition of business, local politi- cians, and the courts, as well as the threat of violence, such strikes were doomed to defeat. 614 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s? T h e E q u a l R i g h t s A m e n d m e n t Like the labor movement, feminists struggled to adapt to the new politi- cal situation. The achievement of suffrage in 1920 eliminated the bond of unity among various activists, each “struggling for her own conception of freedom,” in the words of labor reformer Juliet Stuart Poyntz. Black femi- nists insisted that the movement must now demand enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment in the South, but they won little support from their white counterparts. The long-standing division between two competing conceptions of Debate over the ERA woman’s freedom—one based on motherhood, the other on individual autonomy and the right to work—now crystallized in the debate over an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution promoted by Alice Tipsy, a 1930 painting by the Paul and the National Women’s Party. This amendment proposed to Japanese artist Kobayakawa Kiyoshi, eliminate all legal distinctions “on account of sex.” In Paul’s opinion, the illustrates the global appeal of the ERA followed logically from winning the right to vote. Having gained “new woman” of the 1920s. The political equality, she insisted, women no longer required special legal subject, a moga (“modern girl” in Japanese), sits alone in a nightclub protection—they needed equal access to employment, education, and all wearing Western clothing, makeup, the other opportunities of citizens. To supporters of mothers’ pensions and hairstyle and enjoying a cigarette and laws limiting women’s hours of labor, which the ERA would sweep and a martini. The title of the work away, the proposal represented a giant step backward. Apart from the suggests that Kiyoshi does not National Women’s Party, every major female organization opposed entirely approve of her behavior, but the ERA. he presents her as self-confident and alluring. Japanese police took a dim The ERA campaign failed, and only six states ratified a proposed con- view of “modern” women, arresting stitutional amendment giving Congress the power to prohibit child labor, those who applied makeup in public. which farm groups and business organizations opposed. In 1929, Congress repealed the Sheppard-Towner Act of 1921, a major achievement of the maternalist reformers that had provided federal assistance to programs for infant and child health. W o m e n ’ s F r e e d o m If political feminism faded, the prewar feminist demand for personal free- dom survived in the vast consumer marketplace and in the actual behavior of the decade’s much-publicized liberated young women. No longer one element in a broader program of social reform, sexual freedom now meant individual autonomy or personal rebellion. With her bobbed hair, short skirts, public smoking and drinking, and unapologetic use of birth-control methods such as the diaphragm, the young, single “flapper” epitomized the change in standards of sexual behavior, at least in large cities. She frequented dance halls and attended sexually charged Hollywood films T H E B U S I N E S S O F A M E R I C A 615 ( Left) Advertisers marketed cigarettes to women as symbols of female independence. This 1929 ad for Lucky Strike reads: “Legally, politically and socially, woman has been emancipated from those chains which bound her. . . . Gone is that ancient prejudice against cigarettes.” ( Right) An ad for Procter & Gamble laundry detergent urges modern women to modernize the methods of their employees. The text relates how a white woman in the Southwest persuaded Felipa, her Mexican-American domestic worker, to abandon her “primitive washing methods.” Felipa, according to the ad, agrees that the laundry is now “whiter, cleaner, and fresher.” featuring stars like Clara Bow, the provocative “ ‘ It’ Girl,” and Rudolph Valentino, the original on-screen “Latin Lover.” Women’s self-conscious pursuit of personal pleasure became a device to market goods from automobiles to cigarettes. In 1904, a woman had been arrested for smoking in public in New York City. Two decades later, Edward Bernays, the “father” of modern public relations, masterminded a campaign to persuade women to smoke, dubbing cigarettes women’s “torches of freedom.” The new freedom, however, was available only dur- Marriage and the new freedom ing one phase of a woman’s life. Marriage, according to one advertisement, remained “the one pursuit that stands foremost in the mind of every girl and woman.” Having found husbands, women were expected to seek free- dom within the confines of the home. B U S I N E S S A N D G O V E R N M E N T Robert and Helen Lynd, In 1929, the sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd published Middletown, a clas- Middletown sic study of life in Muncie, Indiana, a typical community in the American heartland. The Lynds found that new leisure activities and a new empha- sis on consumption had replaced politics as the focus of public concern. Elections were no longer “lively centers” of public attention as in the nine- teenth century, and voter participation had fallen dramatically. National 616 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression In what ways did the government promote business interests in the 1920s? statistics bore out their point; the turnout of eligible voters, over 80 percent Decline in voter in 1896, had dropped to less than 50 percent in 1924. Many factors helped to participation explain this decline, including the consolidation of one-party politics in the South, the long period of Republican dominance in national elections, and the enfranchisement of women, who for many years voted in lower numbers than men. But the shift from public to private concerns also played a part. “The American citizen’s first importance to his country,” declared a Muncie newspaper, “is no longer that of a citizen but that of a consumer.” T h e R e p u b l i c a n E r a Pro-business government Government policies reflected the pro-business ethos of the 1920s. Business policies lobbyists dominated national conventions of the Republican Party. They called on the federal government to lower taxes on personal incomes and business profits, maintain high tariffs, and support employers’ continuing campaign against unions. The administrations of Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge obliged. Under William Howard Taft, appointed chief justice in 1921, the Supreme Court remained strongly conservative. A resurgence of laissez-faire jurisprudence eclipsed the Progressive ideal of a socially active national state. The Court struck down a federal law that barred goods pro- duced by child labor from interstate commerce. It even repudiated Muller v. Oregon (see Chapter 18) in a 1923 decision overturning a minimum wage law for women in Washington, D.C. Now that women enjoyed the vote, the justices declared, they were entitled to the same workplace freedom as men. The policies of President Calvin Coolidge were music to the ears of C o r r u p t i o n i n G o v e r n m e n t big business, according to one 1920s cartoonist. Warren G. Harding took office as president in 1921 promising a return to “normalcy” after an era of Progressive reform and world war. Reflecting the prevailing get-rich-quick ethos, his administration quickly became one of the most corrupt in American history. Although his cabinet included men of integrity and talent, like Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, Harding also surrounded himself with cronies who used their offices for private gain. Attorney General Harry Daugherty accepted payments not to prosecute accused criminals. The most notorious scandal involved Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall, who accepted nearly $500,000 from private busi- nessmen to whom he leased government oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. Fall became the first cabinet member in history to be convicted of a felony. B U S I N E S S A N D G O V E R N M E N T 617 A 1924 cartoon commenting on the scandals of the Harding administration. The White House, Capitol, and Washington Monument have been sold to the highest bidder. T h e E l e c t i o n o f 1 9 2 4 Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, who as governor of Massachusetts had won national fame for using state troops against striking Boston policemen in 1919, was a dour man of few words. But in contrast to his The election of Coolidge predecessor he seemed to exemplify Yankee honesty. In 1924, Coolidge was elected in a landslide, defeating John W. Davis, a Wall Street lawyer nominated on the 103rd ballot by a badly divided Democratic convention. (This was when the comedian Will Rogers made the quip, often repeated in future years, “I am a member of no organized political party; I am a Democrat.”) One-sixth of the electorate in 1924 voted for Robert La Follette, run- ning as the candidate of a new Progressive Party, which called for greater taxation of wealth, the conservation of natural resources, public owner- ship of the railroads, farm relief, and the end of child labor. La Follette carried only his native Wisconsin. But his candidacy demonstrated the survival of some currents of dissent in a highly conservative decade. E c o n o m i c D i p l o m a c y Business and foreign affairs Foreign affairs also reflected the close working relationship between busi- ness and government. The 1920s marked a retreat from Wilson’s goal of internationalism in favor of unilateral American actions mainly designed to increase exports and investment opportunities overseas. Indeed, what is sometimes called the “isolationism” of the 1920s represented a reaction 618 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression Why did the protection of civil liberties gain importance in the 1920s? against the disappointing results of Wilson’s military and diplomatic pursuit of freedom and democracy abroad. The United States did play host to the Washington Naval Arms Conference of 1922, which negotiated reductions in the navies of Britain, France, Japan, Italy, and the United States. But the country remained outside the League of Nations. Even as American diplomats continued to press for access to markets overseas, the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 raised taxes on imported goods to their highest levels in history, a repudiation of Wilson’s principle of promoting free trade. As before World War I, the government dispatched soldiers when a change in government in the Caribbean threatened American economic interests. Having been stationed in Nicaragua since 1912, American Intervention in Nicaragua marines withdrew in 1925. But the troops soon returned in an effort to suppress a nationalist revolt headed by General Augusto César Sandino. Having created a National Guard headed by General Anastasio Somoza, the marines finally departed in 1933. A year later, Somoza assassinated Sandino and seized power. For the next forty-five years, he and his fam- ily ruled and plundered Nicaragua. Somoza was overthrown in 1978 by a popular movement calling itself the Sandinistas (see Chapter 26). T H E B I R T H O F C I V I L L I B E R T I E S Among the casualties of World War I and the 1920s was Progressivism’s faith that an active federal government embodied the national purpose and enhanced the enjoyment of freedom. Wartime and postwar repres- sion, Prohibition, and the pro-business policies of the 1920s all illustrated, in the eyes of many Progressives, how public power could go grievously wrong. This lesson opened the door to a new appreciation of civil liberties— rights an individual may assert even against democratic majorities—as essential elements of American freedom. In the name of a “new freedom for the individual,” the 1920s saw the birth of a coherent concept of civil Rights of the individual liberties and the beginnings of significant legal protection for freedom of speech against the government. Wartime repression continued into the 1920s. Artistic works with sexual themes were subjected to rigorous censorship. The Postal Service removed from the mails books it deemed obscene. The Customs T H E B I R T H O F C I V I L L I B E R T I E S 619 Service barred works by the sixteenth-century French satirist Rabelais, Wartime repression continued the modern novelist James Joyce, and many others from entering the country. A local crusade against indecency made the phrase “Banned in Boston” a term of ridicule among upholders of artistic freedom. Boston’s Watch and Ward Committee excluded sixty-five books from the city’s bookstores, including works by the novelists Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, and Ernest Hemingway. In 1922, the film industry adopted the Hays code, a sporadically enforced set of guidelines that prohibited movies from depicting nudity, long kisses, and adultery, and barred scripts that portrayed clergymen in a negative light or criminals sympathetically. Disillusionment with the conservatism of American politics and the materialism of the culture inspired some American artists and writ- The Lost Generation ers to emigrate to Paris. The Lost Generation of cultural exiles included novelists and poets like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Europe, they felt, valued art and culture, and appreciated unrestrained freedom of expression (and, of course, allowed individuals to drink legally). A “ C l e a r a n d P r e s e n t D a n g e r ” The arrest of antiwar dissenters under the Espionage and Sedition Acts inspired the formation in 1917 of the Civil Liberties Bureau, which in 1920 became the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). For the rest of the century, the ACLU would take part in most of the landmark cases that helped to bring about a “rights revolution.” Its efforts helped to give mean- ing to traditional civil liberties like freedom of speech and invented new ones, like the right to privacy. When it began, however, the ACLU was a small, beleaguered organization. Prior to World War I, the Supreme Court had done almost nothing to protect the rights of unpopular minorities. Now, it was forced to address the question of the permissible limits on political and economic dissent. In 1919, the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act and the conviction of Charles T. Schenck, a socialist who had distributed antidraft leaflets through the mails. Speaking for the Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that the First Amendment did not prevent Congress from prohibiting speech that presented a “clear and present Schenck v. United States danger” of inspiring illegal actions. A week after Schenck v. United States, the Court unanimously upheld the conviction of Eugene V. Debs for a speech condemning the war. 620 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression Why did the protection of civil liberties gain importance in the 1920s? T h e C o u r t a n d C i v i l L i b e r t i e s Also in 1919, the Court upheld the conviction of Jacob Abrams and five other men for distributing pamphlets critical of American intervention in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution. This time, however, Holmes and Louis Brandeis dissented, marking the emergence of a court minority com- mitted to a broader defense of free speech. The tide of civil-liberties decision making slowly began to turn. By the end of the 1920s, the Supreme Court had voided a Kansas law that made it a crime to advocate unlawful acts to change the political or economic sys- A broader defense of free tem and one from Minnesota authorizing censorship of the press. The new speech regard for free speech went beyond political expression. In 1933, a federal court overturned the Customs Service’s ban on James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, a turning point in the battle against the censorship of works of literature. A judicial defense of civil liberties was slowly being born. As Brandeis insisted, “Those who won our independence believed . . . that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are indispensable to the dis- covery and spread of political truth. . . . The greatest menace to freedom is an inert people.” T H E C U L T U R E W A R S T h e F u n d a m e n t a l i s t R e v o l t Although many Americans embraced modern urban culture with its religious and ethnic pluralism, mass entertainment, and liberated sexual rules, others found it alarming. Many evangelical Protestants felt threat- ened by the decline of traditional values and the increased visibility of Catholicism and Judaism because of immigration. They also resented the growing presence within mainstream Protestant denominations of “modernists” who sought to integrate science and religion and adapt Christianity to the new secular culture. Convinced that the literal truth of the Bible formed the basis of Christian belief, fundamentalists launched a campaign to rid Protestant denominations of modernism and to combat the new individual freedoms that seemed to contradict traditional morality. Their most flamboyant apostle was Billy Sunday, a talented professional baseball player who Billy Sunday became a revivalist preacher. Between 1900 and 1930, Sunday drew huge crowds with a highly theatrical preaching style and a message denouncing T H E C U L T U R E W A R S 621 A 1923 lithograph by George Bellows captures the dynamic style of the most prominent evangelical preacher of the 1920s, Billy Sunday. sins ranging from Darwinism to alcohol. Fundamentalism remained an important strain of 1920s culture and politics. Prohibition, which funda- mentalists strongly supported, succeeded in reducing the consumption of alcohol as well as public drunkenness and drink-related diseases. Prohibition, however, remained a deeply divisive issue. The greatest expansion of national authority since Reconstruction, it raised major ques- tions of local rights, individual freedom, and the wisdom of attempting to impose religious and moral values on the entire society through legisla- Federal agents with confiscated liquor in Colorado in 1920, shortly after the tion. It divided the Democratic Party into “wet” and “dry” wings, leading advent of Prohibition. to bitter internal battles at the party’s 1924 and 1928 national conventions. Too many Americans deemed Prohi- bition a violation of individual freedom for the flow of illegal liquor to stop. In urban areas, Prohibition led to large profits for the owners of illegal speakeasies and the “boot- leggers” who supplied them. It produced widespread corruption as police and public officials accepted bribes to turn a blind eye to violations of the law. T h e S c o p e s T r i a l In 1925, a trial in Tennessee threw into sharp relief the division between tradi- tional values and modern, secular culture. 622 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the major flash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920s? John Scopes, a teacher in a Tennessee pub- lic school, was arrested for violating a state law that prohibited the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. His trial became a national sensation. The Scopes trial reflected the endur- ing tension between two American defi- nitions of freedom. Fundamentalist Christians, strongest in rural areas of the South and West, clung to the traditional idea of “moral” liberty— voluntary adher- ence to time-honored religious beliefs. The theory that man had evolved over millions of years from ancestors like apes contra- Because of extreme heat, some dicted the biblical account of creation. To Scopes’s defenders, including the sessions of the Scopes trial were held American Civil Liberties Union, freedom meant above all the right to inde- outdoors, in front of the courthouse in pendent thought and individual self-expression. To them, the Tennessee Dayton, Tennessee. A photographer law offered a lesson in the dangers of religious intolerance and the merger snapped this picture of the trial’s of church and state. climactic moment, when Clarence Darrow (standing at the center) The renowned labor lawyer Clarence Darrow defended Scopes. The questioned William Jennings Bryan trial’s highlight came when Darrow called William Jennings Bryan to the (seated) about his interpretation of stand as an “expert witness” on the Bible. Bryan revealed an almost com- the Bible. plete ignorance of modern science and proved unable to respond effectively to Darrow’s sarcastic questioning. Asked whether God had actually created the world in six days, Bryan replied that these should be understood as Clarence Darrow and William ages, “not six days of twenty-four hours”—thus opening the door to the very Jennings Bryan nonliteral interpretation of the Bible that the fundamentalists rejected. The jury found Scopes guilty, although the Tennessee supreme court later overturned the decision on a technicality. Fundamentalists retreated for many years from battles over public education, preferring to build their own schools and colleges where teaching could be done as they saw fit. The battle would be rejoined, however, toward the end of the twentieth cen- tury. To this day, the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools arouses intense debate in parts of the United States. T h e S e c o n d K l a n Few features of urban life seemed more alien to rural and small-town native-born Protestants than their immigrant populations and cultures. The wartime obsession with “100 percent Americanism” continued “100 percent Americanism” into the 1920s. In 1922, Oregon became the only state ever to require T H E C U L T U R E W A R S 623 all students to attend public schools—a measure aimed, said the state’s attorney general, at abolishing parochial education and preventing “bolshevists, syndicalists and communists” from organizing their own schools. Perhaps the most menacing expres- sion of the idea that enjoyment of American freedom should be limited on religious and ethnic grounds was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s. The Klan had been reborn in Atlanta in 1915 after the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish fac- tory manager accused of killing a teenage A Ku Klux Klan gathering in girl. By the mid-1920s, it claimed more than 3 million members, nearly all Seattle, Washington, in 1923. The white, native-born Protestants, many of whom held respected positions unrobed members of the audience in their communities. Unlike the Klan of Reconstruction, the organiza- are covering their faces to avoid tion now sank deep roots in parts of the North and West. It became the identification. Unlike the Klan of the largest private organization in Indiana and for a time controlled the state Reconstruction era, the second Ku Klux Klan was more powerful in Republican Party. American civilization, the new Klan insisted, was the North and West than the South. endangered not only by blacks but by immigrants (especially Jews and Catholics) and all the forces (feminism, unions, immorality, even, on occa- sion, the giant corporations) that endangered “individual liberty.” C l o s i n g t h e G o l d e n D o o r The Klan’s influence faded after 1925, when its leader in Indiana was convicted of assaulting a young woman. But the Klan’s attacks on modern secular culture and political radicalism and its demand that control of the nation be returned to “citizens of the old stock” reflected sentiments widely shared in the 1920s. The 1920s produced a fundamental change in immigration policy. Prior to World War I virtually all the white persons who wished to pass through the “golden door” into the United States and become citizens were able to do so. During the 1920s, however, the pressure for wholesale immi- gration restriction became irresistible. Restrictions on European In 1921, a temporary measure restricted immigration from Europe immigration to 357,000 per year (one-third of the annual average before the war). Three years later, Congress permanently limited European immigration to 150,000 per year, distributed according to a series of national quotas 624 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the major flash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920s? that severely restricted the numbers from southern and eastern Europe. However, to satisfy the demands of large farmers in California who relied heavily on sea- sonal Mexican labor, the 1924 law estab- lished no limits on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. The immigration law did bar the entry of all those ineligible for naturalized citizenship—that is, the entire population of Asia, even though Japan had fought on the American side in World War I. Although a few Chinese had tried to enter the country in the past in spite of exclusion legislation, the law of 1924 estab- lished, in effect, for the first time a new category—the “illegal alien.” With The immigration law of 1924 it came a new enforcement mechanism, the Border Patrol, charged with established the Border Patrol to policing the land boundaries of the United States and empowered to arrest stop those barred from entry from sneaking into the United States from and deport persons who entered the country in violation of the new nation- Mexico. At first, the patrol was a ality quotas or other restrictions. A term later associated almost exclusively modest operation. Here, two officers with Latinos, “illegal aliens” at first referred mainly to southern and eastern police the California-Mexico border. Europeans who tried to sneak across the border from Mexico or Canada. R a c e a n d t h e L a w The new immigration law reflected the heightened emphasis on “race” as a determinant of public policy. By the early 1920s, political leaders of both North and South agreed on the relegation of blacks to second-class citizenship. But “race policy” meant far more than black-white relations. When President Coolidge signed the new law, his secretary of labor, James J. Davis, commented that immigration policy must now rest on a A “biologically ideal” biological definition of the ideal population. Although enacted by a highly population conservative Congress strongly influenced by nativism, the 1924 immi- gration law also reflected the Progressive desire to improve the “quality” of democratic citizenship and to employ scientific methods to set public policy. It revealed how these aims were overlaid with pseudo-scientific assumptions about the superiority and inferiority of particular “races.” But the entire concept of race as a basis for public policy lacked any rational foundation. The Supreme Court admitted as much in 1923 when it rejected the claim of Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian-born World War I T H E C U L T U R E W A R S 625 TABLE 20.1 Selected Annual Immigration Quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act COUNTRY QUOTA IMMIGRANTS IN 1914 .ORTHERN Great Britain and Northern 65,721 48,729 (Great Britain only) Ireland Germany 25,957 35,734 Ireland 17,853 24,688 (includes Northern Ireland) Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, 7,241 29,391 Denmark, Finland) 3OUTHERN Poland 6,524 (Not an independent state; included in Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary) Italy 5,802 283,738 Russia 2,784 255,660 /THER Africa (total of various 1,000 1,539 colonies and countries) Western Hemisphere No quota limit 122,695 Asia (China, India, Japan, Korea) 0 11,652 veteran, who asserted that as a “pure Aryan,” he was actually white and could therefore become an American citizen. “White,” the Court declared, was not a scientific concept at all, but part of “common speech, to be inter- preted with the understanding of the common man” (a forthright state- ment of what later scholars would call the “social construction” of race). P r o m o t i n g T o l e r a n c e In the face of immigration restriction, Prohibition, a revived Ku Klux Klan, and widespread anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, immigrant groups asserted the validity of cultural diversity and identified toleration of difference—religious, cultural, and individual—as the essence of American Ethnic Americans freedom. In effect, they reinvented themselves as “ethnic” Americans, claiming an equal share in the nation’s life but, in addition, the right to remain in 626 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the major flash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920s? many respects culturally distinct. The Roman Catholic Church urged immigrants to learn English and embrace “American principles,” but it continued to maintain sep- arate schools and other institutions. Throughout the country, organizations like the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (founded in 1916 to combat anti-Semitism) and the National Catholic Welfare Council lobbied, in the name of “personal liberty,” for laws prohibiting discrimi- nation against immigrants by employers, colleges, and government agencies. The efforts of immigrant communities to resist coerced American ization and of the Catholic Church to defend its school system broadened the definition of liberty for all Americans. In landmark decisions, the Su preme Court struck down Oregon’s law, mentioned earlier, requiring all students to attend public schools and Nebraska’s law prohibiting teaching in a language other than English—one of the anti-German measures of World War I. The Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) decision expanded the freedom of all immigrant groups. In its aftermath, federal Racism severely limited the courts overturned various Hawaii laws imposing special taxes and regu- opportunities open to black Americans. Here, the internationally lations on private Japanese-language schools. In these cases, the Court renowned Peabody Conservatory also interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal lib- of Music informs a black applicant erty to include the right to “marry, establish a home and bring up chil- that he cannot pursue his musical dren” and to practice religion as one chose, “without interference from education there. the state.” The decisions gave pluralism a constitutional foundation. T h e E m e r g e n c e o f H a r l e m The 1920s also witnessed an upsurge of self-consciousness among black Americans, especially in the North’s urban ghettos. With European immigration all but halted, the Great Migration of World War I contin- ued apace as nearly 1 million blacks left the South during the decade. New York’s Harlem gained an international reputation as the “capital” of black America, a mecca for migrants from the South and immigrants from Caribbean immigrants the West Indies, 150,000 of whom entered the United States between 1900 and 1930. Unlike the southern newcomers, most of whom had been agricultural workers, the West Indians included a large number of well- educated professional and white-collar workers. Their encounter with American racism appalled them. “I had heard of prejudice in America,” wrote the poet and novelist Claude McKay, who emigrated from Jamaica in 1912, “but never dreamed of it being so intensely bitter.” T H E C U L T U R E W A R S 627 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m A n d r é S i e g f r i e d , “ T h e G u l f B e t w e e n , ” A t l a n t i c M o n t h l y ( M a r c h 1 9 2 8 ) The French writer André Siegfried in 1928 commented on the rise of an industrial economy and consumer culture and the changes they produced in American society. Never has Europe more eagerly observed, studied, discussed America; and never . . . have the two continents been wider apart in their aspirations and ideals. . . . Europe, after all, is not very different from what it was a generation ago; but there has been born since then a new America. . . . The conquest of the continent has been completed, and—all recent American historians have noted the significance of the event—the western frontier has disappeared; the pioneer is no longer needed, and, with him, the mystic dream of the West . . . has faded away. Thus came the beginning of the era of organization: the new problem was not to conquer adventurously but to produce methodically. The great man of the new generation was no longer a pioneer like Lincoln . . . but . . . Henry Ford. From this time on, America has been no more an unlimited prairie with pure and infinite horizons, in which free men may sport like wild horses, but a huge factory of prodigious efficiency. . . . In the last twenty-five or thirty years America has produced a new civilization. . . . From a moral point of view, it is obvious that Americans have come to consider their standard of living as a somewhat sacred acquisition, which they will defend at any price. This means that they would be ready to make many an intellectual or even moral concession in order to maintain that standard. From a political point of view, it seems that the notion of efficiency of production is on the way to taking [precedence over] the very notion of liberty. In the name of efficiency, one can obtain, from the American, all sorts of sacrifices in relation to his personal and even to certain of his political liberties. . . . Mass production and mass civilization, its natural consequence, are the true characteristics of the new American society. . . . Lincoln, with his Bible and classical tradition, was easier for Europe to understand than Ford, with his total absence of tradition and his proud creation of new methods and new standards, especially conceived for a world entirely different from our own. 628 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression F r o m M a j o r i t y O p i n i o n , J u s t i c e J a m e s C . M c R e y n o l d s , i n M e y e r v . N e b r a s k a ( 1 9 2 3 ) A landmark in the development of civil liberties, the Supreme Court’s decision in Meyer v. Nebraska rebuked the coercive Americanization impulse of World War I, overturning a Nebraska law that required all school instruction to take place in English. The problem for our determination is whether the statute [prohibiting instruction in a language other than English] as construed and applied unreasonably infringes the liberty guaranteed . . . by the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . The American people have always regarded education and acquisition of knowledge as matters of supreme importance which should be diligently promoted. . . . The calling always has been regarded as useful and honorable, essential, indeed, to the public welfare. Mere knowledge of the German language cannot reasonably be regarded as harmful. Heretofore it has been commonly looked upon as helpful and desirable. [Meyer] taught this language in school as part of his occupation. His right to teach and the right of parents to engage him so to instruct their children, we think, are within the liberty of the Amendment. It is said the purpose of the legislation was to promote civil development by inhibiting training and education of the immature in foreign tongues and ideals before they could learn English and acquire American ideals. . . . It is also affirmed that the foreign born population is very large, that certain communities commonly use foreign words, follow foreign leaders, move in a foreign atmosphere, and that the children are therefore hindered from becoming citizens of the most useful type and the public safety is impaired. That the State may do much, go very far, indeed, in order to improve the quality of its Q U E S T I O N S citizens, physically, mentally, and morally, is clear; but the individual has certain fundamental 1. Why does Siegfried feel that rights which must be respected. The protection of Europeans no longer find America the Constitution extends to all, to those who speak understandable? other languages as well as to those born with English on the tongue. Perhaps it would be highly 2. How does the decision in Meyer v. advantageous if all had ready understanding of Nebraska expand the definition of our ordinary speech, but this cannot be coerced by liberty protected by the Fourteenth methods which conflict with the Constitution. . . . Amendment? No emergency has arisen which rendered knowledge by a child of some language other 3. How do the two excerpts reflect the than English so clearly harmful as to justify its changes American society experienced inhibition with the consequent infringement of in the 1910s and 1920s? rights long freely enjoyed. V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 629 A black family arriving in Chicago in 1922, as part of the Great Migration from the rural South. The 1920s became famous for “slumming,” as groups of whites visited Harlem’s dance halls, jazz clubs, and speakeasies in search of exotic adventure. The Harlem of the white imagination was a place of primitive passions, free from the puritanical restraints of mainstream American culture. The real Harlem was a community of widespread poverty, its residents confined to low-wage jobs and, because housing discrimination barred them from other neighborhoods, forced to pay exorbitant rents. T h e H a r l e m R e n a i s s a n c e Vibrant culture But Harlem also was home to a vibrant black cultural community that established links with New York’s artistic mainstream. Poets and novel- ists such as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay were befriended and sponsored by white intellectuals and published by white presses. Broadway for the first time presented black actors in serious dra- matic roles, as well as shows such as Dixie to Broadway and Blackbirds that featured great entertainers such as the singers Florence Mills and Ethel Waters and the tap dancer Bill Robinson. The term “New Negro,” associated in politics with pan-Africanism and the militancy of the Garvey movement, in art meant the rejection of established stereotypes and a search for black values to put in their place. This quest led the writers of what came to be called the Harlem Renaissance to the roots of the black experience—Africa, the rural South’s 630 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the major flash points between fundamentalism and pluralism in the 1920s? folk traditions, and the life of the urban ghetto. Harlem Renaissance writ- The “New Negro” ings also contained a strong element of protest. This mood was exemplified by McKay’s poem “If We Must Die,” a response to the race riots of 1919. The poem affirmed that blacks would no longer allow themselves to be murdered defenselessly by whites: If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs, Making their mock at our accursed lot. . . . Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! Winston Churchill would invoke McKay’s words to inspire the British public during World War II. T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N T h e E l e c t i o n o f 1 9 2 8 Few men elected to the presidency have seemed destined for a more successful term in office than Herbert Hoover. Born in Iowa in 1874, Hoover accumulated a fortune as a mining engineer working for firms in Asia, Africa, and Europe. During and immediately after World War I, he gained international fame by coordinating overseas food relief. In 1922, while serving as secretary of commerce, he published American A 1928 campaign poster for the Individualism, which condemned government regulation as an interference Republican ticket of Herbert Hoover with the economic opportunities of ordinary Americans but also insisted and Charles Curtis. that self-interest should be subordinated to public service. Hoover considered himself a Progressive, although he preferred what he called “associational action,” in which private agencies directed regulatory and welfare policies, to government intervention in the economy. After “silent Cal” Coolidge in 1927 handed a piece of paper to a group of reporters that stated, “I do not choose to run for president in 1928,” Hoover quickly emerged as his successor. Accepting the Republican nomination, Hoover celebrated the decade’s prosperity and promised that poverty would “soon be banished from this earth.” His Democratic opponent was Alfred E. Smith, the first Catholic to be nominated by a major T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 631 party. Although he had no family connection with the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe (his grandparents had emigrated from Ireland), Smith emerged as their symbolic spokesman. He served three terms as governor of New York, securing passage of laws limiting the hours of working women and children and establishing widows’ pensions. Smith denounced the Red Scare and called for the repeal of Prohibition. Smith’s Catholicism became the focus of the race. Many Protestant ministers and religious publications denounced him for his faith. For the first time since Reconstruction, Republicans carried several southern states, reflecting the strength of anti-Catholicism and nativism among religious fundamentalists. On the other hand, Smith carried the nation’s twelve largest cities and won significant support in economically strug- President Herbert Hoover (at center, gling farm areas. With more than 58 percent of the vote, Hoover was next to the woman), at the opening day baseball game in Washington, elected by a landslide. But Smith’s campaign helped to lay the foundation D.C., April 17, 1929. for the triumphant Democratic coalition of the 1930s, based on urban eth- nic voters, farmers, and the South. T h e C o m i n g o f t h e D e p r e s s i o n On October 21, 1929, President Hoover traveled to Michigan to take part in the Golden Anniversary of the Festival of Light, organized by Henry Ford to commemorate the invention of the lightbulb by Thomas Edison fifty years T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L earlier. Eight days later, on Black Tuesday, E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 2 8 the stock market crashed. As panic sell- ing set in, more than $10 billion in market 7 value (equivalent to more than ten times 4 4 4 6 5 that amount in today’s money) vanished 5 4 12 5 13 45 18 in five hours. Soon, the United States and, 3 15 5 13 38 7 indeed, the entire world found itself in the 3 8 24 14 4 29 15 3 grip of the Great Depression, the greatest 13 6 8 10 18 12 8 13 economic disaster in modern history. 12 12 3 3 10 9 9 Even before 1929, signs of economic 10 12 14 trouble had become evident. Southern 20 10 California and Florida experienced fren- 6 zied real-estate speculation and then spec- tacular busts, with banks failing, land remaining undeveloped, and mortgages Electoral Vote Popular Vote Party Candidate (Share) (Share) foreclosed. The highly unequal distribution Republican Hoover 444 (83.6%) 21,391,381 (58.2%) of income and the prolonged depression in Democrat Smith 87 (16.4%) 15,016,443 (40.9%) farm regions reduced American purchasing 632 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the causes of the Great Depression, and how effective were the government’s responses by 1932? power. Sales of new autos and household consumer goods stagnated after 1926. European demand for American goods also declined, partly because industry there had recovered from wartime destruction. A fall in the bloated stock market, driven ever higher during the 1920s by speculators, was inevitable. But it came with such severity that it destroyed many of the investment companies that had been created to buy and sell stock, wiping out thousands of investors, and it greatly reduced business and consumer confidence. The global financial system was ill-equipped to deal with the down- Global crisis turn. Germany defaulted on reparations payments to France and Britain, leading these governments to stop repaying debts to American banks. Throughout the industrial world, banks failed as depositors withdrew money, fearful that they could no longer count on the promise to redeem paper money in gold. Millions of families lost their life savings. Although stocks recovered somewhat in 1930, they soon resumed A deepening recession their relentless downward slide. Between 1929 and 1932, the price of a share of U.S. Steel fell from $262 to $22, and General Motors from $73 to $8. Four-fifths of the Rockefeller family fortune disappeared. In 1932, the economy hit rock bottom. Since 1929, the gross national product (the value of all the goods and services in the country) had fallen by one-third, prices by nearly 40 percent, and more than 11 million Americans— 25 percent of the labor force—could not find work. U.S. Steel, which had Three months before the stock employed 225,000 full-time workers in 1929, had none at the end of market crash, The Magazine of Wall Street was avidly encouraging 1932. Those who retained their jobs confronted reduced hours and dra- readers to purchase stocks. matically reduced wages. Every industrial economy suffered, but the United States, which had led the way in prosperity in the 1920s, was hit hardest of all. A m e r i c a n s a n d t h e D e p r e s s i o n The Depression transformed American life. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the road in search of work. Hungry men and women lined the streets of major cities. In Detroit, 4,000 children stood in bread lines each day seeking food. Thousands of families, evicted from their homes, moved into ramshackle shanty- towns, dubbed Hoovervilles, that sprang T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 633 Unemployed men lined up outside a Chicago soup kitchen in 1931. up in parks and on abandoned land. In Chicago, where half the work- Charitable institutions like this one ing population was unemployed at the beginning of 1932, Mayor Anton were overwhelmed by the advent of the Great Depression. Cermak telephoned people individually, begging them to pay their taxes. When the Soviet Union advertised its need for skilled workers, it received more than 100,000 applications from the United States. The Depression actually reversed the long-standing movement of population from farms to cities. Many Americans left cities to try to grow A Hooverville—a shantytown created by homeless squatters—outside Seattle, Washington, in 1933. 634 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the causes of the Great Depression, and how effective were the government’s responses by 1932? food for their families. In 1935, 33 million people lived on farms—more than at any previous point in American history. But rural areas, already poor, saw families reduce the number of meals per day and children go barefoot. With the future shrouded in uncertainty, the American suicide rate rose to the highest level in the nation’s history, and the birthrate fell to the lowest. The image of big business, carefully cultivated during the 1920s, collapsed as congressional investigations revealed massive irregulari- ties committed by bankers and stockbrokers. Banks had knowingly sold worthless bonds. Prominent Wall Streeters had unloaded their own port- folios while advising small investors to maintain their holdings. Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, was convicted of stealing funds from customers, including from a fund to aid widows and orphans. He ended up in jail. R e s i g n a t i o n a n d P r o t e s t Many Americans reacted to the Depression with resignation or blamed themselves for economic misfortune. Others responded with protests that were at first spontaneous and uncoordinated, since unions, socialist organi- Communist Party headquarters in New York City, 1932. The banners zations, and other groups that might have provided disciplined leadership illustrate the variety of activities the had been decimated during the 1920s. In the spring of 1932, 20,000 unem- party organized in the early 1930s. ployed World War I veterans descended on Washington to demand early payment of a bonus due in 1945, only to be driven away by federal soldiers. That summer, led by the charismatic Milo Reno, a former Iowa Populist, the National Farmers’ Holiday Association protested low prices by tem- porarily blocking roads in the Midwest to prevent farm goods from getting to market. Only the minuscule Communist Party seemed able to give a political focus to the anger and despair. One labor leader later recalled that the Communists “brought misery out of hiding,” forming unemployed councils, sponsoring marches and demon- strations for public assistance, and protest- ing the eviction of unemployed families from their homes. T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 635 H o o v e r ’ s R e s p o n s e In the eyes of many Americans, President Hoover’s response to the Depression seemed inadequate and uncaring. Leading advisers, including Andrew Mellon Andrew Mellon, the wealthy secretary of the treasury, told Hoover that economic downturns were a normal part of capitalism, which weeded out unproductive firms and encouraged moral virtue among the less fortu- nate. Businessmen strongly opposed federal aid to the unemployed, and many publications called for individual “belt-tightening” as the road to recovery. The federal government had never faced an economic crisis as severe as the Great Depression. Few political leaders understood how important consumer spending had become in the American economy. In 1931, Hoover quoted former president Grover Cleveland from four decades earlier: “The Government should not support the people. . . . Federal aid . . . weakens the sturdiness of our national character.” Strongly opposed on principle to direct federal intervention in the Hoover and associational economy, Hoover remained committed to “associational action.” He put action his faith in voluntary steps by business to maintain investment and employment—something few found it possible to do—and efforts by local charity organizations to assist needy neighbors. He attempted to restore public confidence, making frequent public statements that “the tide had An unemployed man and woman turned.” But these made him increasingly seem out of touch with reality. selling apples on a city street during About the unemployed men who appeared on city streets offering apples the Great Depression. at five cents apiece, Hoover would later write, “Many persons left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.” T h e W o r s e n i n g E c o n o m i c O u t l o o k Some administration remedies, like the Hawley-Smoot Tariff, which Hoover signed with some reluctance in 1930, made the eco- nomic situation worse. Raising the already high taxes on imported goods, it inspired similar increases abroad, further reducing international trade. By 1932, Hoover had to admit that voluntary action had failed to stem the Depression. He signed laws creating the 636 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression What were the causes of the Great Depression, and how effective were the government’s responses by 1932? Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which loaned money to failing banks, railroads, and other businesses, and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which offered aid to home owners threatened with foreclosure. Having vetoed previous bills to create employment through public-works Government action projects like road and bridge construction, he now approved a measure appropriating nearly $2 billion for such initiatives and helping to fund local relief efforts. These were dramatic departures from previous federal economic policy. But he adamantly opposed offering direct relief to the unemployed. F r e e d o m i n t h e M o d e r n W o r l d In 1927, the New School for Social Research in New York City organized a series of lectures on the theme of freedom in the modern world. The lec- tures painted a depressing portrait of American freedom on the eve of the Great Depression. The “sacred dogmas of patriotism and Big Business,” said the educator Horace Kallen, dominated teaching, the press, and public debate. A definition of freedom reigned supreme that celebrated the unim- peded reign of economic enterprise yet tolerated the surveillance of private life and individual conscience. The prosperity of the 1920s had reinforced this definition of free- dom. With the economic crash, compounded by the ineffectiveness of the Hoover administration’s response, it would be discredited. By 1932, the seeds had already been planted for a new conception of freedom that com- A new conception of freedom bined two different elements in a sometimes uneasy synthesis. One was the Progressive belief in a socially conscious state making constructive changes in economic arrangements. The other, which arose in the 1920s, centered on respect for civil liberties and cultural pluralism and declared that realms of life like group identity, personal behavior, and the free expression of ideas lay outside legitimate state concern. These two prin- ciples would become the hallmarks of modern liberalism, which during the 1930s would redefine American freedom. T H E G R E A T D E P R E S S I O N 637 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. How did consumerism and the idea of the “American Sacco-Vanzetti case (p. 609) rise of the stock market (p. 613) way of life” affect people’s understanding of American “welfare capitalism” (p. 613) values, including the meaning of freedom, in the 1920s? Equal Rights Amendment (p. 615) 2. Which groups did not share in the prosperity of the “flapper” (p. 615) 1920s and why? Teapot Dome scandal (p. 617) Hays code (p. 620) 3. How did business practices and policies lead to a decline American Civil Liberties Union in union membership in the 1920s? (p. 620) “clear and present danger” (p. 620) 4. President Calvin Coolidge said, “The chief business of fundamentalism (p. 622) the American people is business.” How did the federal Scopes trial (p. 623) government’s policies and practices in the 1920s reflect second Ku Klux Klan (p. 624) this understanding of the importance of business immigration restriction (p. 624) interests? “illegal alien” (p. 625) “New Negro” (p. 631) 5. Who supported restricting immigration in the 1920s stock market crash (p. 632) and why? Why were they more successful in gaining bonus marchers (p. 635) federal legislation to limit immigration in these years? Reconstruction Finance Corporation (p. 637) 6. Did U.S. society in the 1920s reflect the concept of cul- tural pluralism as explained by Horace Kallen? Why or why not? 7. Identify the causes of the Great Depression. wwnorton.com 8. What principles guided President Hoover’s response to the Great Depression, and how did this restrict his abil- /studyspace ity to help the American people? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE RESOURCES AND MORE 9. What issues were of particular concern to fundamental- s ists in these years and why? s s 10. In what ways did the ideas about (and the reality of) s proper roles for women change in these years? s 638 C h a p t e r 2 0  From Business Culture to Great Depression 1931 Scottsboro case C H A P T E R 2 1 1933 FDR inaugurated Bank holiday The Hundred Days and the First New Deal Twenty-first Amendment ratified 1934 Huey Long launches the Share Our Wealth movement T H E N E W D E A L 1934– Height of the Dust Bowl 1940 1935 Second New Deal launched Social Security Act Supreme Court rules the  National Recovery Associa- tion unconstitutional John L. Lewis organizes the Congress of Industrial 1 9 3 2 – 1 9 4 0 Organizations 1936 Supreme Court rules the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional New Deal coalition leads to Democratic landslide John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money 1936– United Auto Workers sit- 1937 down strike 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act passed House Un-American Activities Committee established This panel depicting the construction of a dam was painted in 1939 by William Gropper as part of a mural for the new Department of Interior building in Washington, D.C. Like other artists who found it difficult to obtain work during the Depression, Gropper was hired by the Works Projects Administration to paint murals for government buildings. This one was inspired by the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, one of the many New Deal projects that expanded the nation’s infrastructure and provided employment to victims of the Depression. F O C U S The Columbia River winds its way on a 1,200-mile course from Canada through Washington and Oregon to the Pacific Ocean. Because of its steep descent from uplands to sea level, it pro- duces an immense amount of energy. Residents of the economically Q U E S T I O N S underdeveloped Pacific Northwest had long dreamed of tapping this unused energy for electricity and irrigation. But not until the 1930s did s the federal government launch the program of dam construction that initiatives of the New Deal transformed the region. The project created thousands of jobs for the in the Hundred Days? unemployed, and the network of dams produced abundant cheap power. When the Grand Coulee Dam went into operation in 1941, it was s the largest man-made structure in world history. It eventually pro- proponents of economic duced more than 40 percent of the nation’s hydroelectric power. The justice in the 1930s, and project also had less appealing consequences. From time immemorial, what measures did they the Columbia River had been filled with salmon. But the Grand Coulee advocate? Dam made no provision for the passage of fish, and the salmon all but vanished. This caused little concern during the Depression but became s a source of controversy later in the century as Americans became more tiatives of the Second New concerned about preserving the natural environment. Deal? The Columbia River project reflected broader changes in American life and thought during the New Deal of the 1930s. Franklin D. Roo- s sevelt believed regional economic development like that in the Northwest recast the meaning of would promote economic growth, ease the domestic and working lives of American freedom? ordinary Americans, and keep control of key natural resources in public rather than private hands. The Roosevelt administration spent far more s money on building roads, dams, airports, bridges, and housing than on efits apply to women and any other activity. minorities? Roosevelt also oversaw the transformation of the Democratic Party into a coalition of farmers, industrial workers, the reform-minded urban s middle class, liberal intellectuals, northern African-Americans, and, influence American cul- somewhat incongruously, the white supremacist South, united by the ture in the 1930s? belief that the federal government must provide Americans with protec- tion against the dislocations caused by modern capitalism. “Liberalism,” traditionally understood as limited government and free market econom- ics, took on its modern meaning. Thanks to the New Deal, it now referred to active efforts by the national government to uplift less fortunate mem- bers of society. Freedom, too, underwent a transformation during the 1930s. The New Deal elevated a public guarantee of economic security to the fore- front of American discussions of freedom. Regional economic plan- ning reflected this understanding of freedom. So did other New Deal 640 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days? measures, including the Social Security Act, which offered aid to the unemployed and aged, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, which estab- lished a national minimum wage. Yet although the New Deal significantly expanded the meaning of freedom, it did not erase freedom’s boundaries. Its benefits flowed to industrial workers but not tenant farmers, to men far more fully than women, and to white Americans more than blacks, who, in the South, still were deprived of the basic rights of citizenship. T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L F D R a n d t h e E l e c t i o n o f 1 9 3 2 FDR, as he liked to be called, was born in 1882, a fifth cousin of Theodore Franklin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt. After serving as undersecretary of the navy during World War I, he ran for vice president on the ill-fated Democratic ticket of 1920 headed by James M. Cox. In 1921, he contracted polio and lost the use of his legs, a fact carefully concealed from the public in that pre-television era. Very few Americans realized that the president who projected an image of vigorous leadership during the 1930s and World War II was T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L confined to a wheelchair. E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 3 2 In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 1932, Roos- 8 3 4 5 evelt promised a “new deal” for the Ameri- 4 4 5 11 can people. But his campaign offered only 4 4 12 47 17 3 19 4 vague hints of what this might entail. He 11 36 8 3 7 16 advocated a balanced federal budget and 4 26 29 14 3 22 6 8 11 8 criticized his opponent, President Hoover, 9 15 11 11 13 for excessive government spending. The 3 3 11 9 8 biggest difference between the parties dur- 9 11 12 ing the campaign was the Democrats’ call 23 10 7 for the repeal of Prohibition, although Roo- sevelt certainly suggested a greater aware- ness of the plight of ordinary Americans. Electoral Vote Popular Vote Battered by the economic crisis, Americans Party Candidate (Share) (Share) in 1932 were desperate for new leadership, Democrat Roosevelt 472 (88.9%) 22,821,857 (57.7%) Republican Hoover 59 (11.1%) 15,761,841 (39.8%) and Roosevelt won a resounding victory. T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L 641 He received 57 percent of the popular vote, and Democrats swept to a com- manding majority in Congress. T h e C o m i n g o f t h e N e w D e a l Roosevelt conceived of the New Deal as an alternative to socialism on the left, Nazism on the right, and the inaction of upholders of unregulated capitalism. He hoped to reconcile democracy, individual liberty, and economic recovery and development. He did not, however, enter office with a blueprint for dealing with the Depression. At first, he relied heav- FDR’s advisers ily for advice on a group of intellectuals and social workers who took up key positions in his administration. They included Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, a veteran of Hull House and the New York Consumers’ League; Harry Hopkins, who had headed emergency relief efforts dur- ing Roosevelt’s term as governor of New York; Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a veteran of Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive campaign of 1912; and Louis Brandeis, who had advised Woodrow Wilson during the 1912 campaign and now offered political advice to FDR while serving on the Supreme Court. Brandeis believed that large corporations not only wielded exces- sive power but had contributed to the Depression by keeping prices Presidents Herbert Hoover and artificially high and failing to increase workers’ purchasing power. They Franklin D. Roosevelt on their way to the latter’s inauguration on March 4, should be broken up, he insisted, not regulated. But the “brains trust”— 1933. The two men strongly disliked a group of academics that included a number of Columbia University one another. They barely spoke professors—saw bigness as inevitable in a modern economy. Large firms during the ride and never saw each needed to be managed and directed by the government, not dismantled. other again after that day. Their view prevailed during what came to be called the First New Deal. T h e B a n k i n g C r i s i s “This nation asks for action and action now,” Roosevelt announced on taking office on March 4, 1933. The new pres- ident confronted a banking system on the verge of collapse. As bank funds invested in the stock market lost their value and panicked depositors withdrew their savings, bank after bank had closed its doors. By March 1933, banking had been suspended in a majority of the states—that is, people could not gain access to money in their bank accounts. Roosevelt declared a “bank holiday,” temporarily halting all bank operations, and called Congress into special session. 642 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days? A “run” on a bank: crowds of people wait outside a New York City bank, hoping to withdraw their money. On March 9, it rushed to pass the Emergency Banking Act, which pro- vided funds to shore up threatened institutions. Further measures soon followed that transformed the American financial system. The Glass-Steagall Act barred commercial banks from The Glass-Steagall Act becoming involved in the buying and selling of stocks. Until its repeal in the 1990s, the law prevented many of the irresponsible practices that had con- tributed to the stock market crash. The same law established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a government system that insured the accounts of individual depositors. Together, these measures rescued the financial system and greatly increased the government’s power over it. T h e N R A The Emergency Banking Act was the first of an unprecedented flurry of A flurry of legislation legislation during the first three months of Roosevelt’s administration, a period known as the Hundred Days. Seizing on the sense of crisis and the momentum of his electoral victory, Roosevelt won rapid passage of laws he hoped would promote economic recovery. He persuaded Congress to cre- ate a host of new agencies, whose initials soon became part of the language of politics—NRA, AAA, CCC. The centerpiece of Roosevelt’s plan for combating the Depression, the National Industrial Recovery Act, was to a large extent modeled on the government–business partnership established by the War Industries Board of World War I. The act established the National Recovery Administration T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L 643 (NRA), which would work with groups of business leaders to establish industry codes that set standards for output, prices, and working conditions. In effect, FDR had repudiated the older idea of liberty based on the idea that the best way to encourage economic activity and ensure a fair distribution of wealth was to allow market competition to operate, unre- strained by the government. And to win support from labor, section 7a of the new law recognized the workers’ right to organize unions—a departure from the “open shop” policies of the 1920s and a step toward government Industrial freedom support for what workers called “industrial freedom.” Headed by Hugh S. Johnson, a retired general and businessman, the NRA quickly established codes that set standards for production, prices, and wages in the textile, steel, mining, and auto industries. But the NRA became mired in controversy. Large companies dominated the code- NRA codes writing process. They used the NRA to drive up prices, limit production, lay off workers, and divide markets among themselves at the expense of smaller competitors. The NRA produced neither economic recovery nor peace between employers and workers. It did, however, combat the pervasive sense that the government was doing nothing to deal with the economic crisis. G o v e r n m e n t J o b s The Hundred Days also brought the government into providing relief to those in need. Roosevelt and most of his advisers shared the wide- spread fear that direct government payments to the unemployed would A Civilian Conservation Corps undermine individual self-reliance. But with nearly a quarter of the workforce in Yosemite National Park, 1935. workforce unemployed, spending on relief was unavoidable. In May 1933, Congress created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, to make grants to local agencies that aided those impover- ished by the Depression. FDR, however, much preferred to create temporary jobs, thereby combating unemployment while improving the nation’s infrastructure of roads, bridges, public buildings, and parks. In March 1933, Congress established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), which set unemployed young men to work on projects like forest preservation, flood control, and the improvement of national parks and wildlife preserves. By the time 644 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days? the program ended in 1942, more than 3 million persons had passed through CCC camps, where they received government wages of $30 per month. P u b l i c - W o r k s P r o j e c t s One section of the National Industrial Recovery Act created the Public Works Administration (PWA), with an appropriation of $3.3 billion. Directed by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, it built roads, schools, hospitals, and other public facilities, including New York City’s Triborough A map published by the Public Bridge and the Overseas Highway between Miami and Key West, Florida. Works Administration in 1935 depicts In November, yet another agency, the Civil Works Administration (CWA), some of the numerous infrastructure projects funded by the New Deal. was launched. By January 1934, it employed more than 4 million persons Among the most famous public- in the construction of highways, tunnels, courthouses, and airports. But as works projects are the Triborough the cost spiraled upward and complaints multiplied that the New Deal was Bridge in New York City, the Key West creating a class of Americans permanently dependent on government jobs, Highway in Florida, and the Grand Roosevelt ordered the CWA dissolved. Coulee Dam in Washington. Overall, the New Deal spent $250 billion The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), another product of the (in today’s money) to construct, Hundred Days, built a series of dams to prevent floods and deforestation among other things, 40,000 public along the Tennessee River and to provide cheap electric power for homes buildings, 72,000 schools, 80,000 and factories in a seven-state region where many families still lived in bridges, and 8,000 parks. T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L 645 T H E T E N N E S S E E V A L L E Y A U T H O R I T Y Holston River KENTUCKY Ohio River K E N T U C K Y Powell River Clinch Paducah WOLF CREEK MISSOURI T River en SOUTH ne DALE HOLLOW HOLSTON sse C e um Rive r BOONE R b iver erland NORRIS iv WATAUGA e CENTER HILL r CHEROKEE Nashville Oak Ridge ississippi R T E N N E S S E E Knoxville DOUGLAS M FORT LOUDOUN N O RT H WATTS BAR FONTANA Asheville C A RO L I NA PICKWICK CHICKAMAUGA Memphis LANDING HIWASSEE French Broad HALES BAR WILSON River WHEELER Corinth Huntsville Chattanooga S O U T H Muscle Shoals C A RO L I NA GUNTERSVILLE Tupelo Tennessee River Little Tennessee River G E O R G I A M I S S I S S I P P I A L A BA M A Atlanta Birmingham 0 50 100 Miles Principal TVA dams 0 50 100 Kilometers Area served by TVA electric power A map showing the reach of the Tennessee Valley Authority, covering isolated log cabins. The TVA put the federal government, for the first time, all or parts of seven southeastern in the business of selling electricity in competition with private companies. states. Numerous reservoirs and power plants dot the landscape. T h e N e w D e a l a n d A g r i c u l t u r e Another policy initiative of the Hundred Days addressed the disastrous plight of American farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) authorized the federal government to try to raise farm prices by setting Efforts to raise farm prices production quotas for major crops and paying farmers to plant less. Many crops already in the field were destroyed. In 1933, the government ordered more than 6 million pigs slaughtered as part of the policy, a step critics found strange at a time of widespread hunger. The AAA succeeded in significantly raising farm prices and incomes. But not all farmers benefited. Benefits flowed to property-owning farm- ers, ignoring the large number who worked on land owned by others. The AAA policy of paying landowning farmers not to grow crops encouraged 646 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days? the eviction of thousands of poor tenants and sharecroppers. Many joined the rural exodus to cities or to the farms of the West Coast. The onset in 1930 of a period of unusu- ally dry weather in the nation’s heartland worsened the Depression’s impact on rural America. By mid-decade, the region suffered from the century’s most severe drought. Mechanized agriculture in this semi-arid region had pulverized the topsoil and killed native grasses that prevented erosion. Winds now blew much of the soil A giant dust storm engulfs a town in away, creating the Dust Bowl, as the affected areas of Oklahoma, Texas, western Kansas on April 14, 1935, Kansas, and Colorado were called. The drought and dust storms displaced known as Black Sunday in the more than 1 million farmers. American West. T h e N e w D e a l a n d H o u s i n g The Depression devastated the American housing industry. The construc- As it did in other sectors of the tion of new residences all but ceased, and banks and savings and loan economy, the Great Depression led associations that had financed home ownership collapsed or, to remain to a collapse in the construction afloat, foreclosed on many homes (a quarter of a million in 1932 industry. alone). Millions of Americans lived in overcrowded, unhealthy urban slums or in ramshackle rural dwellings. Private enter- FIGURE 21.1 The prise alone, it seemed clear, was unlikely to solve the nation’s Build ing Boom and Its housing crisis. Collapse, 1919–1939 Roosevelt spoke of “the security of the home” as a fundamen- tal right. In 1933 and 1934, his administration moved energeti- cally to protect home owners from foreclosure and to stimulate 250 Value of new new construction. The Home Owners Loan Corporation and building permits (1930 = 100) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured millions of 200 long-term mortgages issued by private banks. At the same 150 time, the federal government itself built thousands of units of low-rent housing. Thanks to the FHA and, later, the Veterans’ Index of value 100 Administration, home ownership came within the reach of tens of millions of families. It became cheaper for most Americans to 50 buy single-family homes than to rent apartments. Other important measures of Roosevelt’s first two years in 0 office included the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment to 1919 1921 1923 1925 1927 1929 1931 1933 1935 1937 1939 Year the Constitution, which repealed Prohibition; the establishment T H E F I R S T N E W D E A L 647 of the Federal Communications Commission to oversee the nation’s broadcast airwaves and telephone communications; and the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock and bond markets. Taken together, the First New Deal was a series of experiments, some of which succeeded and some of which did not. They transformed the role of the federal government, constructed numerous public facilities, and provided relief to millions of needy persons. But they did not end the Depression. Some 10 million Americans—more than 20 percent of the workforce—remained unemployed when 1934 came to an end. T h e C o u r t a n d t h e N e w D e a l The Illegal Act, a cartoon critical In 1935, the Supreme Court, still controlled by conservative Republican of the Supreme Court’s decision judges who held to the nineteenth-century understanding of freedom as declaring the NRA unconstitutional. liberty of contract, began to invalidate key New Deal laws. First came FDR tells a drowning Uncle Sam, the NRA, declared unconstitutional in May in a case brought by the “I’m sorry, but the Supreme Court Schechter Poultry Company of Brooklyn, which had been charged with says I must chuck you back in.” violating the code adopted by the chicken industry. In a unanimous decision, the Court declared the NRA unlawful because in its codes and other regulations it delegated legislative powers to the president and attempted to regulate local businesses that did not engage in interstate commerce. In January 1936, the AAA fell in United States v. Butler, which declared it an unconstitutional exercise of congressional power over local economic activities. Having failed to end the Depression or win judicial approval, the First End of the First New Deal New Deal ground to a halt. Meanwhile, pressures were mounting outside Washington that propelled the administration toward more radical depar- tures in policy. T H E G R A S S R O O T S R E V O L T L a b o r ’ s G r e a t U p h e a v a l The most striking development of the mid-1930s was the mobilization of millions of workers in mass-production industries that had successfully Industrial labor resisted unionization. “Labor’s great upheaval,” as this era of unprec- edented militancy was called, came as a great surprise. Unlike in the past, however, the federal government now seemed to be on the side of labor. American-born children of the new immigrants now dominated the indus- 648 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal Who were the main proponents of economic justice, and what measures did they advocate? trial labor force, and organizers no longer had to distribute materials in numerous languages as the IWW had done. And a cadre of militant labor leaders, many of them socialists and communists, had survived the repres- sion of the 1920s. They provided leadership to the labor upsurge. American factories at the outset of the New Deal were miniature Conditions in American dictatorships in which unions were rare, workers could be beaten by factories supervisors and fired at will, and management determined the length of the workday and speed of the assembly line. Workers’ demands during the 1930s went beyond better wages. They included an end to employers’ arbitrary power in the workplace, and basic civil liberties for workers, including the right to picket, distribute literature, and meet to discuss their grievances. All these goals required union recognition. Roosevelt’s inauguration unleashed a flood of poignant letters to the federal government describing what a Louisiana sugar laborer called the “terrible and inhuman condition” of many workers. Labor organizers spread the message that the “political liberty for which our forefathers fought” had been “made meaningless by economic inequality” and “indus- trial despotism.” Labor’s great upheaval exploded in 1934, a year that witnessed no fewer than 2,000 strikes. Many produced violent confrontations A year of strikes between workers and the local police. San Francisco experienced the country’s first general strike since 1919. It began with a walkout of dock- workers led by the fiery communist Harry Bridges. Workers demanded recognition of the International Longshoremen’s Association and an end to the hated “shape up” system in which they had to gather en masse each day to wait for work assignments. The year 1934 also witnessed a strike of 400,000 textile workers in states from New England to the Deep South, demanding recognition of the United Textile Workers. Many of these walkouts won at least some of the workers’ demands. But the textile strike failed. T h e R i s e o f t h e C I O The labor upheaval posed a challenge to the American Federation of Labor’s traditional policy of organizing workers by craft rather than seek- ing to mobilize all the workers in a given industry, such as steel manu- facturing. In 1934, thirty AFL leaders called for the creation of unions of industrial workers. When the AFL convention of 1935 refused, the head of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, led a walkout that produced a John L. Lewis new labor organization, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It aimed, said Lewis, at nothing less than to secure “economic freedom and industrial democracy” for American workers—a fair share in the wealth T H E G R A S S R O O T S R E V O L T 649 produced by their labor, and a voice in determining the conditions under which they worked. In December 1936, unions, most notably the United Auto Workers The UAW’s sit-down strike (UAW), a fledgling CIO union, unveiled the sit-down, a strikingly effec- tive tactic that the IWW had pioneered three decades earlier. Rather than walking out of the Fisher Body Plant in Cleveland, thus enabling manage- ment to bring in strikebreakers, workers halted production but remained inside. Sit-downs soon spread to General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, the nerve center of automobile production. Demonstrating a remarkable spirit of unity, the strikers cleaned the plant, oiled the idle machinery, and settled disputes among themselves. Workers’ wives shuttled food into the plant. On February 11, General Motors agreed to negotiate with the UAW. By the end of 1937, the UAW claimed 400,000 members. The victory in the auto industry reverberated throughout industrial America. Steelworkers had suffered memorable defeats in the struggle for unionization, notably at Homestead in 1892 and in the Great Steel Strike of 1919. But in March 1937, fearing a sit-down campaign and aware that it could no longer count on the aid of state and federal authorities, U.S. Steel, the country’s single most important business firm, agreed to recognize the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (forerunner of the United Steelworkers of America). Smaller steel firms, however, refused to follow suit. Growth in union membership Union membership nonetheless reached 9 million by 1940, more than double the number in 1930. Workers gained new grievance procedures and seniority systems governing hiring, firing, and promotions. The CIO unions helped to stabilize a chaotic employment situation and offered members a sense of dignity and freedom. Sit-down strike at a General Motors L a b o r a n d P o l i t i c s factory in Flint, Michigan, 1937. Throughout the industrial heartland, the labor upsurge altered the balance of economic power and propelled to the forefront of politics labor’s goal of a fairer, freer, more equal America. The CIO put forward an ambitious program for federal action to shield Americans from economic and social insecurity, including public hous- ing, universal health care, and unemployment and old age insurance. Building on the idea, so prominent in the 1920s, that the key to prosperity lay in an American standard of living based on mass consumption, CIO leaders explained the Depression as the result of an imbalance 650 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal Who were the main proponents of economic justice, and what measures did they advocate? of wealth and income. The pathbreaking 1937 agreement between the UAW and General Motors spoke of a “rate of pay commensurate with an American standard of living.” By mid-decade, many New Dealers accepted the “underconsumptionist” explanation of the Depression, which saw lack of sufficient consumer demand as its underlying cause. V o i c e s o f P r o t e s t Other popular movements of the mid-1930s also placed the question of economic justice on the political agenda. In California, the novelist Upton Sinclair won the Democratic nomination for governor in 1934 as the head of the End Poverty in California movement. Sinclair called for the state to use idle factories and land in cooperative ventures that would provide jobs for the unemployed. He lost the election after being subjected to one of the first modern “negative” media campaigns. Sinclair’s opponents circulated false Pennsylvania Steelworkers outside the Local Headquarters of the Steel newsreels showing armies of unemployed men marching to California to Workers Organizing Committee, a support his candidacy and a fake endorsement from the Communist Party. 1938 photograph by Arnold Rothstein. The rise to national prominence of Huey Long offered another sign of popular dissatisfaction with the slow pace of economic recovery. Driven by intense ambition and the desire to help uplift Louisiana’s “common people,” Long won election as governor in 1928 and in 1930 took a seat in the U.S. Senate. From Washington, he dominated every branch of state government. He used his dictatorial power to build roads, schools, and Huey Long, the “Kingfish” of Louisiana politics, in full rhetorical hospitals and to increase the tax burden on Louisiana’s oil companies. flight. This photo was probably In 1934, Long launched the Share Our Wealth movement, with the taken in 1934, when Long was in slogan “Every Man a King.” He called for the confiscation of most of the the Senate but still running the state wealth of the richest Americans in order to finance an immediate grant of government. $5,000 and a guaranteed job and annual income for all citizens. He was on the verge of announcing a run for president when the son of a defeated political rival assassinated him in 1935. Dr. Francis Townsend, a California physician, meanwhile won wide support for a plan by which the government would make a monthly payment of $200 to older Americans, with the requirement that they spend it imme- diately. This, he argued, would boost the economy. Along with the rise of the CIO, these signs of popular discontent helped spark the Second New Deal. R e l i g i o n o n t h e R a d i o Religious leaders of various denominations took advantage of the mass media to spread their beliefs. Ironically, many fundamentalists used the most modern techniques of communication, including the radio and T H E G R A S S R O O T S R E V O L T 651 popular entertainment, to promote their anti-modernist message. They found in the radio a way to bypass established churches and their lead- ers. Aimee Semple McPherson, a Los Angeles revivalist, had her own radio station, which broadcast sermons from the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel she had founded. By the 1940s, national religious broadcast networks emerged, with a reliable and dedicated listening audience. Also in the mid-1930s, the “radio priest,” Father Charles E. Coughlin, attracted millions of listeners with weekly broadcasts attacking Wall Street bankers and greedy capitalists, and calling for government own- ership of key industries as a way of combating the Depression. Initially a strong supporter of FDR, Coughlin became increasingly critical of the president for what he considered the failure of the New Deal to promote social justice. His crusade would later shift to anti-Semitism and support The cover of a songbook to for European fascism. accompany a radio broadcast from the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle. A radio tower dominates the image. T H E S E C O N D N E W D E A L Buoyed by Democratic gains in the midterm elections of 1934, Roosevelt in 1935 launched the Second New Deal. The First had focused on economic Economic security recovery. The emphasis of the Second was economic security—a guarantee that Americans would be protected against unemployment and poverty. The idea that lack of consumer demand caused the Depression had been popularized by Huey Long, Francis Townsend, and the CIO. By 1935, more and more New Dealers had concluded that the government should no longer try to plan business recovery but should try to redistribute the national income so as to sustain mass purchasing power in the con- sumer economy. A series of measures in 1935 attacked head-on the prob- lem of weak demand and economic inequality. Congress levied a highly publicized tax on large fortunes and corporate profits—a direct response to the popularity of Huey Long’s Share Our Wealth campaign. It created the The Rural Electrification Rural Electrification Agency (REA) to bring electric power to homes that Agency lacked it—80 percent of farms were still without electricity in 1934—in part to enable more Americans to purchase household appliances. By 1950, 90 percent of the nation’s farms had been wired for electric- ity, and almost all now possessed radios, electric stoves, refrigerators, and mechanical equipment to milk cows. In addition, the federal government under the Second New Deal tried to promote soil conservation and fam- ily farming. This effort resulted from the belief that the country would 652 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal What were the major initiatives of the Second New Deal? never achieve prosperity so long as farmers’ standard of living lagged well behind that of city dwellers, and that rural poverty resulted mainly from the poor use of natural resources. Thus, farmers received federal assistance in reducing soil loss in their fields. These measures (like those of the AAA) mainly benefited landowners, not sharecroppers, tenants, or migrant workers. In the long run, the Second New Deal failed to arrest the trend toward larger farms and fewer farmers. T h e W P A a n d t h e W a g n e r A c t In 1934, Roosevelt had severely curtailed federal employment for those in need. Now, he approved the establishment of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which hired some 3 million Americans, in virtually every walk of life, each year until it ended in 1943. It constructed thousands A poster by the artist Vera Bock for of public buildings and bridges, more than 500,000 miles of roads, and 600 the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration depicts airports. It built stadiums, swimming pools, and sewage treatment plants. farmers and laborers joining hands to Unlike previous work relief programs, the WPA employed many out-of- produce prosperity. work white-collar workers and professionals, even doctors and dentists. Perhaps the most famous WPA projects were in the arts. The WPA set hundreds of artists to work decorating public buildings with murals. It hired writers to produce local histories and guidebooks to the forty-eight states and to record the recollections of ordinary Americans, including hundreds of former slaves. Thanks to the WPA, audiences across the An art exhibit in a New York City alley in 1938. The Works Progress Administration tried to broaden the audience for art by displaying it in unusual venues. T H E S E C O N D N E W D E A L 653 country enjoyed their first glimpse of live musical and theatrical perfor- mances and their first opportunity to view exhibitions of American art. The Wagner Act Another major initiative of the Second New Deal, the Wagner Act, brought democracy into the American workplace by empowering the National Labor Relations Board to supervise elections in which employees voted on union representation. It also outlawed “unfair labor practices,” including the firing and blacklisting of union organizers. T h e A m e r i c a n W e l f a r e S t a t e : S o c i a l S e c u r i t y The centerpiece of the Second New Deal was the Social Security Act of 1935. It embodied Roosevelt’s conviction that the national government had a responsibility to ensure the material well-being of ordinary Americans. It created a system of unemployment insurance, old age pensions, and aid to the disabled, the elderly poor, and families with dependent children. Progressive legacy None of these were original ideas. The Progressive platform of 1912 had called for old age pensions. Assistance to poor families with dependent children descended from the mothers’ pensions promoted by maternalist reformers. Many European countries had already adopted national unem- ployment insurance plans. What was new, however, was that in the name of economic security, the American government would now supervise not simply temporary relief but a permanent system of social insurance. The Social Security Act launched the American version of the welfare state—a term that originated in Britain during World War II to refer to a sys- A 1935 poster promoting the new tem of income assistance, health coverage, and social services for all citizens. Social Security system. Compared with similar programs in Europe, the American welfare state has always been far more decentralized, involved lower levels of public spend- ing, and covered fewer citizens. The original Social Security bill, for example, envisioned a national system of health insurance. But Congress dropped this after ferocious opposition from the American Medical Association, which feared government regulation of doctors’ activities and incomes. And the fact that domestic and agricultural workers were not covered by unemploy- ment and old age benefits meant that Social Security at first excluded large numbers of Americans, especially unmarried women and non-whites. Nonetheless, Social Security represented a dramatic departure from the traditional functions of government. The Second New Deal trans- formed the relationship between the federal government and American citizens. Before the 1930s, national political debate often revolved around the question of whether the federal government should intervene in the economy. After the New Deal, debate rested on how it should intervene. In addition, the government assumed a responsibility, which it has never 654 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did the New Deal recast the meaning of American freedom? wholly relinquished, for guaranteeing Americans a living wage and pro- tecting them against economic and personal misfortune. A R E C K O N I N G W I T H L I B E R T Y The Depression made inevitable, in the words of one writer, a “reckoning with liberty.” For too many Americans, Roosevelt proclaimed, “life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.” Along with being a superb politician, Roosevelt was a master of politi- cal communication. At a time when his political opponents controlled most newspapers, he harnessed radio’s power to bring his message directly into American homes. By the mid-1930s, more than two-thirds of American families owned radios. They listened avidly to Roosevelt’s radio addresses, known as “fireside chats.” FDR’s “fireside chats” Roosevelt adeptly appealed to traditional values in support of new policies. He gave the term “liberalism” its modern meaning. As we have seen, in the nineteenth century, liberalism had been a shorthand for limited government and free-market economics. Roosevelt consciously chose to employ it to describe a large, active, socially conscious state. He reclaimed the word “freedom” from conservatives and made it a rallying cry for the New Deal. In his second fireside chat, Roosevelt juxtaposed his FDR delivering one of his “fireside own definition of liberty as “greater security for the average man” to the chats” in 1938. Roosevelt was the older notion of liberty of contract, which served the interests of “the privi- first president to make effective use leged few.” Henceforth, he would consistently link freedom with economic of the radio to promote his policies. security and identify entrenched economic inequality as its greatest enemy. “The liberty of a democracy,” he declared in 1938, was not safe if citizens could not “sustain an acceptable standard of living.” Even as Roosevelt invoked the word to uphold the New Deal, “liberty”—in the sense of freedom from powerful government—became the fighting slogan of his opponents. When conservative businessmen and politicians in 1934 formed an organization to mobilize opposition to Roosevelt’s policies, they called it the American Liberty League. T h e E l e c t i o n o f 1 9 3 6 By 1936, with working-class voters providing massive majorities for the Democratic Party and businesses large and small bitterly estranged from the New Deal, politics reflected class divisions more completely than at any A R E C K O N I N G W I T H L I B E R T Y 655 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m F r a n k l i n D . R o o s e v e l t , “ F i r e s i d e C h a t ” ( 1 9 3 4 ) President Roosevelt pioneered the use of the new mass medium of radio to speak directly to Americans in their homes. He used his “fireside chats” to mobilize support for New Deal programs, link them with American traditions, and outline his definition of freedom. To those who say that our expenditures for public works and other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that in the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. . . . In our efforts for recovery we have avoided, on the one hand, the theory that business should and must be taken over into an all-embracing Government. We have avoided, on the other hand, the equally untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. The course we have followed fits the American practice of Government, a practice of taking action step by step, of regulating only to meet concrete needs, a practice of courageous recognition of change. I believe with Abraham Lincoln, that “the legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.” I am not for a return to that definition of liberty under which for many years a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few. I prefer and I am sure you prefer that broader definition of liberty under which we are moving forward to greater freedom, to greater security for the average man than he has ever known before in the history of America. F r o m J o h n S t e i n b e c k , T h e H a r v e s t G y p s i e s : O n t h e R o a d t o t h e G r a p e s o f W r a t h ( 1 9 3 8 ) John Steinbeck’s popular novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), and the film version that followed shortly thereafter, focused national attention on the plight of homeless migrants displaced from their farms as a result of the Great Depression. Before that book appeared, Steinbeck had published a series of newspaper articles based on eyewitness accounts of the migrants, which became the basis for his novel. In California, we find a curious attitude toward a group that makes our agriculture successful. The migrants are needed, and they are hated. . . . The migrants are hated for the following reasons, that they are ignorant and dirty people, that they are carriers of disease, that they increase the necessity for police and the tax bill for schooling in a community, and that if they are allowed to organize they can, simply by refusing to work, wipe out the season’s crops. . . . Let us see what kind of people they are, where they come from, and the routes of their wanderings. In the past they have been of several races, encouraged to come and often imported as cheap labor. Chinese in the early period, then Filipinos, Japanese and Mexicans. These were foreigners, and as such they were ostracized and segregated and herded about. . . . But in recent years the foreign migrants have begun to organize, and at this danger they have been deported in great numbers, for there was a new reservoir from which a great quantity of cheap labor could be obtained. The drought in the middle west has driven the agricultural populations of Oklahoma, Nebraska and parts of Kansas and Texas westward. . . . Thousands of them are crossing the borders in ancient rattling automobiles, destitute and hungry and homeless, ready to accept any pay so that they may eat and feed their children. . . . The earlier foreign migrants have invariably been drawn from a peon class. This is not the case with the new migrants. They are small farmers who have lost their farms, or farm hands who have lived with the family in the old American way. . . . They have come from the little farm districts where Q U E S T I O N S democracy was not only possible but inevitable, where popular government, whether practiced 1. What does Roosevelt mean by the dif- in the Grange, in church organization or in local ference between the definition of liberty government, was the responsibility of every that has existed in the past and his own man. And they have come into the country “broader definition of liberty”? where, because of the movement necessary to 2. According to Steinbeck, how do make a living, they are not allowed any vote Depression-era migrant workers differ whatever, but are rather considered a properly unprivileged class. . . . from those in earlier periods? As one little boy in a squatter’s camp said, 3. Do the migrant workers described by “When they need us they call us migrants, and Steinbeck enjoy liberty as Roosevelt when we’ve picked their crop, we’re bums and understands it? we got to get out.” other time in American history. Conceptions of freedom divided sharply as well. A fight for the possession of “the ideal of freedom,” reported the New York Times, emerged as the central issue of the presidential campaign of 1936. In his speech accepting renomination, Roosevelt launched a blistering attack against “economic royalists” who, he charged, sought to establish a new tyranny over the “average man.” Economic rights, he went on, were the precondition of liberty—poor men “are not free men.” Throughout the cam- Economic freedom paign, FDR would insist that the threat posed to economic freedom by the “new despotism” of large corporations was the main issue of the election. As Roosevelt’s opponent, Republicans chose Kansas governor Alfred Landon, a former Theodore Roosevelt Progressive. Landon denounced Social Security and other measures as threats to individual liberty. Opposition to the New Deal planted the seeds for the later flowering of an antigovernment conservatism bent on upholding the free market and dismantling the welfare state. But in 1936 Roosevelt won a landslide reelec- The New Deal coalition tion, with more than 60 percent of the popular vote. His success stemmed from strong backing from organized labor and his ability to unite southern white and northern black voters, Protestant farmers and urban Catholic and Jewish ethnics, industrial workers and middle-class home owners. These groups made up the so-called New Deal coalition, which would dominate American politics for nearly half a century. T h e C o u r t F i g h t Fall In! , a cartoon commenting on Roosevelt’s proposal to “pack” the Roosevelt’s second inaugural address was the first to be delivered on Supreme Court, from the Richmond January 20. In order to shorten a newly elected president’s wait before Times-Dispatch, January 8, 1937. taking office, the recently ratified Twentieth Amendment had moved inauguration day from March 4. The Depression, he admitted, had not been conquered: “I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill- nourished.” Emboldened by his electoral triumph, Roosevelt now made what many considered a serious political miscalculation. On the pretext that several members of the Supreme Court were too old to perform their functions, he proposed that the president be allowed to appoint a new jus- tice for each one who remained on the Court past age seventy (an age that six of the nine had already passed). FDR’s aim, of course, was to change the balance of power on a Court that, he feared, might well invalidate Social Security, the Wagner Act, and other measures of the Second New Deal. Congress rejected the plan. But Roosevelt accomplished his underly- ing purpose. Coming soon after Roosevelt’s landslide victory of 1936, the threat of “court packing” inspired an astonishing about-face by key jus- 658 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did the New Deal recast the meaning of American freedom? tices. Beginning in March 1937, the Court suddenly revealed a new willing- ness to support economic regulation by both the federal government and The about-face for the Court the states. It turned aside challenges to Social Security and the Wagner Act. In subsequent cases, the Court affirmed federal power to regulate wages, hours, child labor, agricultural production, and numerous other aspects of economic life. The Court’s new attitude marked a permanent change in judicial policy. Having declared dozens of economic laws unconstitutional in the decades leading up to 1937, the justices have rarely done so since. T h e E n d o f t h e S e c o n d N e w D e a l Even as the Court made its peace with Roosevelt’s policies, the momentum of the Second New Deal slowed. The landmark United States Housing Act did pass in 1937, initiating the first major national effort to build homes for the poorest Americans. But the Fair Labor Standards bill failed to reach the floor for over a year. When it finally passed in 1938, it banned goods produced by child labor from interstate commerce, set forty cents as the hourly minimum wage, and required overtime pay for hours of work exceeding forty per week. This last major piece of New Deal legislation established the practice of federal regulation of wages and working condi- The New Deal did not really solve the tions, another radical departure from pre-Depression policies. problem of unemployment, which fell The year 1937 also witnessed a sharp downturn of the economy. With below 10 percent only in 1941, as economic conditions improving in 1936, Roosevelt had reduced federal the United States prepared to enter World War II. funding for farm subsidies and WPA work relief. The result was disastrous. Unemployment, still 14 percent at the beginning of 1937, rose to nearly 20 percent by year’s end. FIGURE 21.2 Unemploy- In 1936, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and ment, 1925–1945 Money, John Maynard Keynes had challenged economists’ tra- ditional belief in the sanctity of balanced budgets. Large-scale government spending, he insisted, was necessary to sustain 30 purchasing power and stimulate economic activity during down- turns. Such spending should be enacted even at the cost of a 25 budget deficit (a situation in which the government spends more ce unemployed 20 money than it takes in). By 1938, Roosevelt was ready to follow 15 this prescription, which would later be known as Keynesian eco- 10 nomics. In April, he asked Congress for billions more for work relief and farm aid. The events of 1937–1938 marked a major shift 5 in New Deal philosophy. Public spending would now be the gov- centage of civilian labor for 0 1925 1927 1930 1933 1936 1939 1942 1945 ernment’s major tool for combating unemployment and stimulat- Per Year ing economic growth. The Second New Deal had come to an end. A R E C K O N I N G W I T H L I B E R T Y 659 T H E L I M I T S O F C H A N G E Roosevelt conceived of the Second New Deal, and especially Social Security, as expanding the meaning of freedom by extending assistance to broad groups of needy Americans—the unemployed, elderly, and dependent—as a right of citizenship, not charity or special privilege. But political realities, especially the power of inherited ideas about gender and black disenfranchisement in the South, powerfully affected the drafting of legislation. Different groups of Americans experienced the New Deal in radically different ways. T h e N e w D e a l a n d A m e r i c a n W o m e n The New Deal brought more women into government than ever before in American history. A number of talented women, including Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, advised the president and shaped public policy. Eleanor Roosevelt Most prominent of all was Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR’s distant cousin, whom he had married in 1905. She transformed the role of First Lady, turning a position with no formal responsibilities into a base for political action. She traveled widely, spoke out on public issues, wrote a regular newspaper column, and worked to enlarge the scope of the New Deal in areas like civil rights, labor legislation, and work relief. But even as the New Deal increased women’s visibility in national poli- Eleanor Roosevelt transformed the tics, organized feminism, already in disarray during the 1920s, disappeared role of First Lady by taking an active and visible part in public life. Here as a political force. Indeed, the Depression inspired widespread demands she visits a West Virginia coal mine for women to remove themselves from the labor market to make room in 1933. for unemployed men. Because the Depression hit industrial employment harder than low-wage clerical and service jobs where women predominated, the proportion of the workforce made up of women rose. The government tried to reverse this trend. The Economy Act of 1933 prohibited both members of a married couple from holding federal jobs. Until its repeal in 1937, it led to the dismissal of numer- ous female civil service employees whose husbands worked for the government. Employers from banks to public school systems barred married women from jobs. Most New Deal programs did not exclude women from benefits (although the CCC restricted its camps to men). But the ideal of the male-headed household pow- erfully shaped social policy. Since paying taxes on one’s 660 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did New Deal benefits apply to women and minorities? wages made one eligible for the most generous Social Security programs— Women and Social Security old age pensions and unemployment insurance—they left most women uncovered, because they did not work outside the home. The program excluded the 3 million mostly female domestic workers altogether. T h e S o u t h e r n V e t o Roosevelt made the federal government the symbolic representative of all the people, including racial and ethnic groups generally ignored by The Solid South and the previous administrations. Yet the power of the Solid South helped to mold New Deal the New Deal welfare state into an entitlement of white Americans. After the South’s blacks lost the right to vote around the turn of the century, Democrats enjoyed a political monopoly in the region. Democratic mem- bers of Congress were elected again and again. Committee chairmanships in Congress rest on seniority—how many years a member has served in office. Thus, beginning in 1933, when Democrats took control of Congress, southerners took the key leadership positions. At their insistence, the Social Security law excluded agricultural and domestic workers, the larg- est categories of black employment. Black organizations like the Urban League and the NAACP lobbied Blacks and Social Security strenuously for a system that enabled agricultural and domestic workers to receive unemployment and old age benefits and that established national relief standards. The Social Security Act, however, complained the Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, reflected the power of “reactionary elements in the South who cannot bear the thought of Negroes getting pensions and compensations” and who feared that the inclusion of black workers would disrupt the region’s low-wage, racially divided labor system. T h e S t i g m a o f W e l f a r e Because of the “southern veto,” the majority of black workers found themselves confined to the least generous and most vulnerable wing of the new welfare state. The public assistance programs established by Public assistance Social Security, notably aid to dependent children and to the poor elderly, were open to all Americans who could demonstrate financial need. But they set benefits at extremely low levels and authorized the states to determine eligibility standards, including “moral” behavior as defined by local authorities. As a result, public assistance programs allowed for widespread discrimination in the distribution of benefits. Recipients came to bear the humiliating stigma of dependency on government handouts, which would soon come to be known as “welfare.” T H E L I M I T S O F C H A N G E 661 The situation seemed certain to stigmatize blacks as recipients of unearned government assistance, and welfare as a program for minorities, thus dooming it forever to inadequate “standards of aid.” Over time, this is precisely what happened, until the federal government abolished its responsibility for welfare in 1996, during the presidency of Bill Clinton. T h e I n d i a n N e w D e a l Overall, the Depression and New Deal had a contradictory impact on America’s racial minorities. Under Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Changes in Indian policy Collier, the administration launched an Indian New Deal. Collier ended the policy of forced assimilation and allowed Indians unprecedented cultural autonomy. He replaced boarding schools meant to eradicate the tribal heritage of Indian children with schools on reservations, and dra- matically increased spending on Indian health. He secured passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, ending the policy, dating back to the Dawes Act of 1887, of dividing Indian lands into small plots for individual families and selling off the rest. Federal authorities once again recognized Indians’ right to govern their own affairs. The New Deal marked the most radical shift in Indian policy in the nation’s history. But living conditions on the desperately poor reserva- tions did not significantly improve. T h e N e w D e a l a n d M e x i c a n - A m e r i c a n s For Mexican-Americans, the Depression was a wrenching experience. With demand for their labor plummeting, more than 400,000 (one-fifth of the population of Mexican origin) returned to Mexico, some voluntarily, Repatriation of Mexican- others at the strong urging of local authorities in the Southwest. A major- Americans ity of those “encouraged” to leave the country were recent immigrants, but they included perhaps 200,000 Mexican-American children who had been born in the United States and were therefore citizens. Those who remained mostly worked in grim conditions in California’s vegetable and fruit fields, whose corporate farms benefited enormously from New Deal dam construction that provided them with cheap electricity and water for irrigation. The Wagner and Social Security acts did not apply to agricul- tural laborers. Mexican-American leaders struggled to develop a consistent strat- egy for their people. They sought greater rights by claiming to be white Americans—in order not to suffer the same discrimination as African- Americans—but also sought the backing of the Mexican government and 662 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did New Deal benefits apply to women and minorities? promoted a mystical sense of pride and identification with Mexican heri- tage later given the name la raza. L a s t H i r e d , F i r s t F i r e d As the “last hired and first fired,” African-Americans were hit hardest by the Depression. Even those who retained their jobs now faced competition from unemployed whites who had previously considered positions like waiter and porter beneath them. With an unemployment rate double that of Unemployment for blacks whites, blacks benefited disproportionately from direct government relief and, especially in northern cities, jobs on New Deal public-works projects. Half of the families in Harlem received public assistance during the 1930s. Demonstrations in Harlem demanded jobs in the neighborhood’s white- owned stores, with the slogan “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work.” Although Roosevelt seems to have had little personal interest in race relations or civil rights, he appointed Mary McLeod Bethune, a prominent black educator, as a special adviser on minority affairs and a number of other blacks to important federal positions. Key members of his adminis- tration, including his wife, Eleanor, and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, a former president of the Chicago chapter of the NAACP, directed national attention to the injustices of segregation, disenfranchisement, and lynching. In 1939, Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the Daughters Future congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (at center with billboard) taking part in a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” demonstration in Harlem during the Depression. The campaign targeted stores that served black customers but refused to hire black employees. T H E L I M I T S O F C H A N G E 663 of the American Revolution when the organization refused to allow the A map of Philadelphia prepared black singer Marian Anderson to present a concert at Constitution Hall in by the Home Owners’ Loan Washington. The president’s wife arranged for Anderson to sing on the Corporation illustrates how federal steps of the Lincoln Memorial and for the concert to be broadcast nation- agencies engaged in “redlining” of ally on the radio. neighborhoods containing blue- collar and black residents. The The decade witnessed a historic shift in black voting patterns. In the colors correspond to the agency’s North and West, where they enjoyed the right to vote, blacks in 1934 and perception of an area’s real-estate 1936 abandoned their allegiance to the party of Lincoln and emancipa- prospects. Wealthy neighborhoods, tion in favor of Democrats and the New Deal. But despite a massive lob- colored green and given the best bying campaign, southern congressmen prevented passage of a federal credit ratings, were expected to be racially and ethnically homogenous. antilynching law. FDR offered little support. Because of the exclusion of White-collar districts, in blue, were agricultural and domestic workers, Social Security’s old age pensions and second best. Red districts, the worst, unemployment benefits and the minimum wages established by the Fair had an “undesirable population.” Labor Standards Act left uncovered 60 percent of all employed blacks and The Corporation prepared maps like 85 percent of black women. this for many cities and shared them with private lenders and the Federal Housing Administration, resulting F e d e r a l D i s c r i m i n a t i o n in massive disinvestment in “red” neighborhoods, whose residents Federal housing policy, which powerfully reinforced residential segre- found it almost impossible to obtain gation, revealed the limits of New Deal freedom. As in the case of Social housing loans. Security, local officials put national housing policy into practice in a way that reinforced existing racial bound- aries. Nearly all municipalities, North as well as South, insisted that housing built or financially aided by the federal government be racially segregated. The Federal Housing Administration, moreover, had no hesitation about insuring mortgages that contained clauses bar- ring future sales to non-white buyers, and it refused to channel money into integrated neighborhoods. Along with discriminatory practices by private banks and real estate companies, federal policy became a major factor in further entrenching housing segregation in the United States. Federal employment practices also discriminated on the basis of race. As late as 1940, of the 150,000 blacks holding federal jobs, only 2 percent occupied positions other than clerk or custodian. In the South, many New Deal construction projects refused to hire blacks at all. The New Deal began the process of mod- ernizing southern agriculture, but tenants, black and white, footed much of the bill. Tens of thousands of 664 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did New Deal benefits apply to women and minorities? sharecroppers, as noted earlier, were driven off the land as a result of the AAA policy of raising crop prices by paying landowners to reduce cotton acreage. Not until the Great Society of the 1960s would those left out of Social Security and other New Deal programs—racial minorities, many women, migrants and other less privileged workers—win inclusion in the American welfare state. A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A But if the New Deal failed to dismantle the barriers that barred non- whites from full participation in American life, the 1930s witnessed the absorption of other groups into the social mainstream. With Catholics and Jews occupying prominent posts in the Roosevelt administration and new immigrant voters forming an important part of its electoral support, the New Deal made ethnic pluralism a living reality in American politics. Ethnic pluralism Thanks to the virtual cutoff of southern and eastern European immigration in 1924; the increasing penetration of movies, chain stores, and mass advertising into ethnic communities; and the common experi- ence of economic crisis, the 1930s witnessed an acceleration of cultural assimilation. For the children of the new immigrants, labor and political activism became agents of a new kind of Americanization. “Unionism is Americanism” became a CIO rallying cry. T h e H e y d a y o f A m e r i c a n C o m m u n i s m In the mid-1930s, for the first time in American history, the left—an The left umbrella term for socialists, communists, labor radicals, and many New Deal liberals—enjoyed a shaping influence on the nation’s politics and culture. The CIO and Communist Party became focal points for a broad social and intellectual impulse that helped to redraw the boundaries of American freedom. An obscure, faction-ridden organization when the Depression began, the Communist Party experienced remarkable growth during the 1930s. The party’s membership never exceeded 100,000, but several times that number passed through its ranks. It was not so much the party’s ideology as its vitality—its involvement in a mind-boggling array of activities, including demonstrations by the unemployed, struggles for industrial unionism, and a renewed movement for black civil rights—that for a time made it the center of gravity for a A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A 665 broad democratic upsurge. At the height of the Popular Front—a period during the mid-1930s when the Communist Party sought to ally itself with socialists and New Dealers in movements for social change, urging reform of the capitalist system rather than revolution—Communists gained an Respectability for Communists unprecedented respectability. R e d e f i n i n g t h e P e o p l e In theater, film, and dance, the Popular Front vision of American society sank deep roots and survived much longer than the political moment from which it sprang. In this broad left-wing culture, social and economic radicalism, not support for the status quo, defined true Americanism. Ethnic and racial diver- sity was the glory of American society, and the “American way of life” meant unionism and social citizenship, not the unbridled pursuit of wealth. During the 1930s, artists and writers who strove to create socially meaningful works eagerly took up the task of depicting the daily lives of ordinary farmers and city dwellers. Art about the people—such as Dorothea Lange’s photographs of migrant workers and sharecroppers— and art created by the people—such as black spirituals—came to be seen as expressions of genuine Americanism. Films celebrated populist figures History of Southern Illinois, a mural who challenged and defeated corrupt businessmen and politicians, as in sponsored by the Illinois Federal Art Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Earl Project, illustrates the widespread Robinson’s song “Ballad for Americans,” a typical expression of Popular fascination during the 1930s with American traditions and the lives of Front culture that celebrated the religious, racial, and ethnic diversity of ordinary Americans. On the left, a American society, became a national hit and was performed in 1940 at the man strums a guitar, while workers Republican national convention. labor on the waterfront. 666 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did the Popular Front influence American culture in the 1930s? C h a l l e n g i n g t h e C o l o r L i n e It was fitting that “Ballad for Americans” reached the top of the charts in a version performed by the magnifi- cent black singer Paul Robeson. Popular Front culture moved well beyond New Deal liberalism in condemning racism as incompatible with true Americanism. In the 1930s, groups like the American Jewish Committee and the National Conference of Christians and Jews actively promoted ethnic and religious tolerance, defining plural- ism as “the American way.” But whether in Harlem or East Los Angeles, the Communist Party was the era’s only predominantly white organization to make fighting racism a top priority. Communist influence spread even to the South. The Communist-dominated International Labor Defense mobilized popular support for black A Dorothea Lange photograph of a defendants victimized by a racist criminal justice sys- sharecropper and his family outside tem. It helped to make the Scottsboro case an international cause célèbre. their modest home. The case revolved around nine young black men arrested for the rape of two white women in Alabama in 1931. Despite the weakness of the evidence against the “Scottsboro boys” and the fact that one of the two accusers recanted, Alabama authorities three times put them on trial and three times won convictions. Landmark Supreme Court decisions overturned the first two verdicts and established legal principles that greatly expanded the definition of civil liberties—that defendants have a constitutional right to effective legal representation and that states cannot systematically exclude The “Scottsboro boys,” flanked by blacks from juries. But the Court allowed the third set of convictions to two prison guards, with their lawyer, stand, which led to prison sentences for five of the defendants. Samuel Liebowitz. The CIO brought large numbers of black industrial workers into the labor movement for the first time and ran extensive educational campaigns to persuade white workers to recognize the interests they shared with their black counterparts. Black workers, many of them traditionally hostile to unions because of their long experience of exclusion, responded with enthusiasm to CIO organizing efforts. L a b o r a n d C i v i l L i b e r t i e s Another central element of Popular Front public culture was its mobi- lization for civil liberties, especially the right of labor to organize. The struggle to launch industrial unions encountered sweeping local A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A 667 restrictions on freedom of speech as well as repression by private and public police forces. Labor militancy Labor militancy helped to produce an important shift in the under- standing of civil liberties. Previously conceived of as individual rights that must be protected against infringement by the government, the concept now expanded to include violations of free speech and assembly by pow- erful private groups. As a result, just as the federal government emerged as a guarantor of economic security, it also became a protector of freedom of expression. By the eve of World War II, civil liberties had assumed a central place in the New Deal understanding of freedom. In 1939, Attorney General Frank Murphy established a Civil Liberties Unit in the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, the same Supreme Court that in 1937 relinquished its role as a judge of economic legislation moved to expand its authority over Free expression civil liberties. The justices insisted that constitutional guarantees of free thought and expression were essential to “nearly every other form of free- dom” and therefore deserved special protection by the courts. Since 1937, the large majority of state and national laws overturned by the courts have been those that infringe on civil liberties, not the property rights of business. The new appreciation of free expression was hardly universal. In 1938, the House of Representatives established an Un-American Activi ties Committee to investigate disloyalty. Its expansive definition of “un- American” included communists, labor radicals, and the left of the Democratic Party, and its hearings led to the dismissal of dozens of federal employees on charges of subversion. Two years later, Congress enacted the Smith Act, which made it a federal crime to “teach, advocate, or encourage” the overthrow of the government. T h e E n d o f t h e N e w D e a l By then the New Deal, as an era of far-reaching social reform, had already begun to recede. One reason was that more and more southern Democrats were finding themselves at odds with Roosevelt’s policies. In 1938, the administration released a “Report on Economic Conditions in the South,” along with a letter by the president referring to the region as “the nation’s No. 1 economic problem.” The document revealed that the South lagged far behind other parts of the country in industrialization and invest- ment in education and public health. Also in 1938, a new generation Southern leaders and the of home-grown radicals—southern New Dealers, black activists, labor New Deal leaders, communists, even a few elected officials—founded the Southern 668 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal How did the Popular Front influence American culture in the 1930s? Conference for Human Welfare to work for unionization, unemployment relief, and racial justice. Southern business and political leaders feared that continuing federal intervention in their region would encourage unionization and upset race relations. Roosevelt concluded that the enactment of future New Deal measures required a liberalization of the southern Democratic Party. In 1938, he tried to persuade the region’s voters to replace conservative con- gressmen with ones who would support his policies. The South’s small electorate dealt him a stinging rebuke. A period of political stalemate followed the congressional election of 1938. For many years, a conservative coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans dominated Congress. Further reform initia- tives became almost impossible, and Congress moved to abolish existing ones. It repealed an earlier tax on corporate profits and rejected a proposed program of national medical insurance. The administration, moreover, increasingly focused its attention on the storm gathering in Europe. Even before December 1941, when the United States entered World War II, “Dr. Win the War,” as Roosevelt put it, had replaced “Dr. New Deal.” “Dr. Win the War” T h e N e w D e a l i n A m e r i c a n H i s t o r y Given the scope of the economic calamity it tried to counter, the New Deal seems in many ways limited. Compared with later European welfare states, Social Security remained restricted in scope and modest in cost. The New Deal failed to address the problem of racial inequality, which in some ways it actually worsened. Yet even as the New Deal receded, its substantial accomplishments Failures and accomplishments remained. It greatly expanded the federal government’s role in the of the New Deal American economy and made it an independent force in relations between industry and labor. The government influenced what farmers could and could not plant, required employers to deal with unions, insured bank deposits, regulated the stock market, loaned money to home owners, and provided payments to a majority of the elderly and unemployed. It trans- formed the physical environment through hydroelectric dams, reforesta- tion projects, rural electrification, and the construction of innumerable public facilities. It restored faith in democracy and made the government an institution directly experienced in Americans’ daily lives and directly concerned with their welfare. It redrew the map of American politics. It helped to inspire, and was powerfully influenced by, a popular upsurge that recast the idea of freedom to include a public guarantee of economic A N E W C O N C E P T I O N O F A M E R I C A 669 security for ordinary citizens and that identified economic inequality as the greatest threat to American freedom. Legacy of the New Deal The New Deal certainly improved economic conditions in the United States. But it did not generate sustained prosperity. More than 15 percent of the workforce remained unemployed in 1940. Only the mobilization of the nation’s resources to fight World War II would finally end the Great Depression. 670 C h a p t e r 2 1  The New Deal C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. Discuss how regional development such as the Tennessee “bank holiday” (p. 642) Valley Authority and the Columbia River project reflected Emergency Banking Act (p. 643) broader changes in American life during the New Deal. Hundred Days (p. 643) National Recovery Administration (p. 643) 2. What actions did President Roosevelt and Congress take Civilian Conservation Corp. (p. 644) to help the banking system recover as well as to reform Public Works Administration (p. 645) how it operated in the long run? Dust Bowl (p. 647) Federal Housing Administration 3. How did the actions of the AAA benefit many farmers, (p. 647) injure others, and provoke attacks by conservatives? Congress of Industrial Organizations (p. 649) 4. Explain what labor did in the 1930s to secure “economic sit-down strike (p. 650) freedom and industrial democracy” for American workers. Share Our Wealth movement (p. 651) Works Progress Administration 5. How did the emphasis of the Second New Deal differ (p. 653) from that of the First New Deal? Social Security Act (p. 654) welfare state (p. 654) 6. How did the entrenched power of southern white conser- court-packing plan (p. 658) vatives limit African-Americans’ ability to enjoy the full minimum wage (p. 659) benefits of the New Deal and eliminate racial violence Indian New Deal (p. 662) and discrimination? Why did African-Americans still Popular Front (p. 666) “Scottsboro boys” (p. 667) support the Democratic Party? House Un-American Activities Committee (p. 668) 7. Analyze the effects of the Indian Reorganization Act of Smith Act (p. 668) 1934 on Native Americans. 8. Explain how New Deal programs contributed to the stigma of blacks as welfare dependent. wwnorton.com 9. How did the New Deal build on traditional ideas about /studyspace the importance of homeownership to Americans, and VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE how did it change Americans’ ability to own their own RESOURCES AND MORE homes? s s 10. What were the major characteristics of liberalism by s 1939? s s C h a p t e r R e v i e w a n d O n l i n e R e s o u r c e s 671 1931 Japan invades Manchuria C H A P T E R 2 2 1933 U.S. recognizes Soviet Union 1935– Congress passes 1939 Neutrality Acts 1937 Sino-Japanese War begins 1938 Munich agreement F I G H T I N G F O R T H E 1939 Germany invades Poland 1940 Draft established 1941 Four Freedoms speech F O U R F R E E D O M S : Henry Luce’s The American Century Executive Order 8802 Lend-Lease Act W O R L D W A R I I Pearl Harbor attacked 1942 Executive Order 9066 Battle of Midway Island  Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) formed 1943 Zoot suit riots 1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 5 Detroit race riot Congress lifts Chinese Exclusion Act 1944 Smith v. Allwright D-Day GI Bill of Rights Bretton Woods conference Korematsu v. United States Battle of the Bulge 1945 Yalta conference Roosevelt dies; Harry Truman becomes president V-E Day (May) Atomic bombs dropped on Japan V-J Day (August) The immensely popular Office of War Information poster reproducing Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the Four Freedoms, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s shorthand for American purposes in World War II. By far the most popular works of art produced during World War II were paintings of the Four Freedoms by the magazine F O C U S illustrator Norman Rockwell. In his State of the Union Address, delivered before Congress on January 6, 1941, President Roosevelt spoke Q U E S T I O N S eloquently of a future world order founded on the “essential human freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The Four Freedoms became Roosevelt’s favorite s statement of Allied aims. They embodied, Roosevelt declared in a 1942 can participation in World radio address, the “rights of men of every creed and every race, wherever War II? they live,” and made clear “the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face today.” s Rockwell’s paintings succeeded in linking the Four Freedoms with States mobilize economic the defense of traditional American values. Drawing on the lives of his resources and promote Vermont neighbors, Rockwell translated the Four Freedoms into images popular support for the of real people situated in small-town America. Each of the paintings war effort? focuses on an instantly recognizable situation. An ordinary citizen rises to speak at a town meeting; members of different religious groups are s seen at prayer; a family enjoys a Thanksgiving dinner; a mother and postwar role began to father stand over their sleeping children. emerge during the war? Even as Rockwell invoked images of small-town life to rally Americans to the war effort, however, the country experienced changes s as deep as at any time in its history. As during World War I, but on a minorities face threats far larger scale, wartime mobilization expanded the size and scope of to their freedom at home government and energized the economy. The gross national product and abroad during World more than doubled and unemployment disappeared as war production War II? finally conquered the Depression. The demand for labor drew millions of women into the workforce and sent a tide of migrants from rural America s to the industrial cities of the North and West, permanently altering the begin to shape the postwar nation’s social geography. world? World War II gave the country a new and lasting international role and greatly strengthened the idea that American security was global in scope and could be protected only by the worldwide triumph of core American values. Government military spending sparked the economic development of the South and West, laying the foundation for the rise of the modern Sunbelt. The war created a close link between big business and a militarized federal government—a “military-industrial complex,” as President Dwight D. Eisenhower would later call it—that long survived the end of fighting. F I G H T I N G F O R T H E F O U R F R E E D O M S : W O R L D W A R I I 673 World War II also redrew the boundaries of American nationality. In contrast to World War I, the government recognized the “new immigrants” of the early twentieth century and their children as loyal Americans. Black Americans’ second-class status assumed, for the first time since Reconstruction, a prominent place on the nation’s political agenda. But toleration had its limits. With the United States at war with Japan, the federal government removed more than 100,000 Japanese- Americans, the majority of them American citizens, from their homes and confined them to internment camps. As a means of generating support for the struggle, the Four Freedoms provided a crucial language of na tional unity. But this unity obscured underlying divi sions concerning freedom. Although some Americans looked forward to a worldwide New Deal, others en visioned “free enterprise” replacing government inter vention in the economy. The movement of women into the labor force challenged traditional gender One of the patriotic war posters relations, but most men and not a few women longed for the restoration of issued by the Office of War Information during World War II, family life with a male breadwinner and a wife responsible for the home. linking modern-day soldiers with patriots of the American Revolution as fighters for freedom, a major theme of government efforts to mobilize support for the war. F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I G o o d N e i g h b o r s During the 1930s, with Americans preoccupied by the economic cri- sis, international relations played only a minor role in public affairs. From the outset of his administration, nonetheless, FDR embarked on a number of departures in foreign policy. In 1933, hoping to stimulate American trade, he exchanged ambassadors with the Soviet Union, whose government his Republican predecessors had stubbornly refused to recognize. Roosevelt also formalized a policy initiated by Herbert Hoover by which the United States repudiated the right to intervene militarily in Latin America the internal affairs of Latin American countries. This Good Neighbor Policy, as it was called, offered a belated recognition of the sovereignty of America’s neighbors. But the United States lent its support to dictators like Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo Molina in the Dominican Republic, and Fulgencio Batista in Cuba. “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,” FDR said of Somoza. 674 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II What steps led to American participation in World War II? T h e R o a d t o W a r Ominous developments in Asia and Europe quickly overshadowed events Aggression in Europe in Latin America. By the mid-1930s, it seemed clear that the rule of law and Asia was disintegrating in international relations and that war was on the hori- zon. In 1931, seeking to expand its military and economic power in Asia, Japan invaded Manchuria, a province of northern China. Six years later, its troops moved farther into China. When the Japanese overran the city of Nanjing, they massacred an estimated 300,000 Chinese prisoners of war and civilians. An aggressive power threatened Europe as well. After brutally con- solidating his rule in Germany, Adolf Hitler embarked on a campaign Adolf Hitler to control the entire continent. In 1936, he sent troops to occupy the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone between France and Germany established after World War I. The failure of Britain, France, and the United States to oppose this action convinced Hitler that the democracies could not muster the will to halt his aggressive plans. The Italian leader Benito Mussolini, the founder of fascism, a movement similar to Hitler’s Nazism, invaded and conquered Ethiopia. As part of a campaign to unite all Europeans of In a 1940 cartoon, war clouds engulf German origin in a single empire, Hitler in 1938 annexed Austria and the Europe, while Uncle Sam observes Sudetenland, an ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia. Shortly there- that the Atlantic Ocean no longer after, he gobbled up all of that country. seems to shield the United States from involvement. As the 1930s progressed, Roosevelt became more and more alarmed at Hitler’s aggression as well as his accelerating cam- paign against Germany’s Jews, whom the Nazis stripped of citizenship and prop- erty and began to deport to concentration camps. But Roosevelt had little choice but to follow the policy of “appeasement” adopted by Britain and France, which hoped that agreeing to Hitler’s demands would pre- vent war. I s o l a t i o n i s m To most Americans, the threat arising from Japanese and German aggression seemed very distant. Moreover, Hitler had more than a few admirers in the United States. F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I 675 Obsessed with the threat of communism, some Americans approved his expansion of German power as a counterweight to the Soviet Union. Businessmen did not wish to give up profitable overseas markets. Henry Ford did business with Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s. Trade with Japan also continued, including shipments of American trucks and air- craft and considerable amounts of oil. Many Americans remained convinced that involvement in World War I had been a mistake. Ethnic allegiances reinforced Americans’ tra- ditional reluctance to enter foreign conflicts. Many Americans of German and Italian descent celebrated the expansion of national power in their countries of origin, even as they disdained their dictatorial governments. Irish-Americans remained strongly anti-British. Isolationism—the 1930s version of Americans’ long-standing desire to avoid foreign entanglements—dominated Congress. Beginning The Neutrality Acts in 1935, lawmakers passed a series of neutrality acts that banned travel on belligerents’ ships and the sale of arms to countries at war. These policies, Congress hoped, would allow the United States to avoid the conflicts over freedom of the seas that had contributed to involvement in World War I. W a r i n E u r o p e In the Munich agreement of 1938, Britain and France had caved in to Hitler’s aggression. In 1939, the Soviet Union proposed an international A newsreel theater in New York’s agreement to oppose further German demands for territory. Britain and Times Square announces Hitler’s France, who distrusted Stalin and saw Germany as a bulwark against the blitzkrieg in Europe in the spring spread of communist influence in Europe, refused. Stalin then astonished of 1940. the world by signing a nonaggression pact with Hitler, his former sworn enemy. On September 1, immediately after the signing of the Nazi–Soviet pact, Germany invaded Poland. This time, Britain and France, which had pledged to protect Poland against aggression, declared war. But Germany appeared unstoppable. Within a year, the Nazi blitzkrieg (light- ning war) had overrun Poland and much of Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. On June 14, 1940, German troops occupied Paris. Hitler now dominated nearly all of Europe, as well as North Africa. In September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan created a military alliance known as the Axis. For one critical year, Britain stood virtually alone in fighting Ger- many. In the Battle of Britain of 1940–1941, the German air force launched devastating attacks on London and other cities. The Royal Air Force even- tually turned back the air assault. 676 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II What steps led to American participation in World War II? T o w a r d I n t e r v e n t i o n Roosevelt viewed Hitler as a mad gangster whose victories posed a direct threat to the United States. But most Americans remained desperate to stay out of the conflict. After a tumultuous debate, Congress in 1940 agreed to allow the sale of arms to Britain on a “cash and carry” basis—that “Cash and carry” is, they had to be paid for in cash and transported in British ships. It also approved plans for military rearmament. But with a presidential election looming, Roosevelt was reluctant to go further. Opponents of involvement in Europe organized the America First Committee, with hundreds of thou- sands of members and a leadership that included well-known figures like Henry Ford, Father Coughlin, and Charles A. Lindbergh. In 1940, breaking with a tradition that dated back to George Washington, Roosevelt announced his candidacy for a third term as A third term president. The international situation was too dangerous and domestic recovery too fragile, he insisted, for him to leave office. Republicans chose as his opponent a political amateur, Wall Street businessman and lawyer Wendell Willkie. Willkie, who endorsed New Deal social legislation, captured more votes than Roosevelt’s previous opponents. But FDR still emerged with a decisive victory. Soon after his victory, in a fireside chat in December 1940, Roosevelt announced that the United States would become the “arsenal of democracy,” providing Britain and China with military supplies in their fight against Germany and Japan. During 1941, the United States became more and more closely allied with those fighting Germany and Japan. At Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized military aid so long as countries promised somehow to return it all after the war. Under the law’s provisions, the United States funneled billions of dollars worth of arms to Financial support Britain and China, as well as the Soviet Union, after Hitler renounced his nonaggression pact and invaded that country in June 1941. FDR also froze Japanese assets in the United States, halting virtually all trade between the countries, including the sale of oil vital to Japan. P e a r l H a r b o r Until November 1941, the administration’s attention focused on Europe. But at the end of that month, intercepted Japanese messages revealed that an assault in the Pacific was imminent. No one, however, knew where it would come. On December 7, 1941, Japanese planes, launched from aircraft carriers, bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the first attack Pearl Harbor attack by a foreign power on American soil since the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I 677 was a complete and devastating surprise. In a few hours, more than 2,000 American servicemen were killed, and 187 aircraft and 18 naval vessels, including 8 battle- ships, had been destroyed or damaged. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who saw the president after the attack, remarked that he seemed calm—“his ter- rible moral problem had been resolved.” Terming December 7 “a date which will live in infamy,” Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. The combined vote in Congress was 477 in favor and 1 against—pacifist Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who had also voted against American entry into World War I. Members of the U.S. Marine Corps, The next day, Germany declared war on the United States. America had Navy, and Coast Guard taking part finally joined the largest war in human history. in an amphibious assault during the “island hopping” campaign in the Pacific theater of World War II. T h e W a r i n t h e P a c i f i c World War II has been called a “gross national product war,” meaning that its outcome turned on which coalition of combatants could outproduce the other. In retrospect, it appears inevitable that the entry of the United States, with its superior industrial might, would ensure the defeat of the Axis powers. But the first few months of American involvement witnessed an unbroken string of military disasters. Japan in early 1942 conquered Burma (Myanmar) and Siam (Thailand). Japan also took control of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), whose extensive oil fields could replace supplies from the United States. And it occupied Guam, the Philippines, and other Pacific islands. At Bataan, in the Philippines, the Japanese forced 78,000 American and Filipino troops to lay down their arms—the largest surrender in American military history. Thousands perished on the ensu- ing “death march” to a prisoner-of-war camp. At the same time, German submarines sank hundreds of Allied merchant and naval vessels during the Battle of the Atlantic. Soon, however, the tide of battle began to turn. In May 1942, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the American navy turned back a Japanese fleet intent on attacking Australia. The following month, it inflicted devastat- Battle of Midway Island ing losses on the Japanese navy in the Battle of Midway Island. These victories allowed American forces to launch the bloody campaigns that 678 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II What steps led to American participation in World War II? W O R L D W A R I I I N T H E P A C I F I C , 1 9 4 1 – 1 9 4 5 SOVIET UNION S a k h a l i n t i a n I sl ands (U.S.) At t u Al e u t i a n I sl ands (U.S.) u I s l a n d K i s ka MANCHURIA MONGOLIA Ku r i l I s l a n d s Vladivostock Peking P Pa c i f i c O c e a n KOREA CHINA JAPAN Toky T o oky Nanking Shanghai Hiroshima Shanghai Midway August 6, 1945 Midw Chungking August 6, 1945 June 3–6, 1942 Nagasaki August 9, 1945 A Canton C H a wa i i a n BURMA Fo r m o s a I s l a n d s ( U. S . ) BURMA Hong Kong M a r i a n a Pearl Harbor Kong P I s l a n d s December 7, 1941 Dec Rangoon PHILIPPINES THAILAND FRENCH Manila Leyte Gulf Bangkok Bangk INDOCHINA M a r s h a l l October 23–26, 1944 Guam July 21, 1944 I s l a n d s July 21, 1944 Saigon MALAY MALA A Ca ro l i n e YA I s l a n d s Singapore Sumatr Singapor Sumatr B o r n e o G i l b e r t S o l o m ao n I n s l a n d s a N e w I s l a n d s J a va G u i n e a Guadalcanal DUTCH EAST INDIES Guadalc DUTCH EAST INDIES August 1942–F A ebruary 1943 ugust 1942–F Port P Moresb Mor y esb I n d i a n Coral Sea C O c e a n May 7–8, Major battle 1942 Atomic bomb 0 750 1,500 miles Coral Extent of Japanese control 0 750 1,500 kilometers AUSTRALIA Sea Allied forces Although the Japanese navy never fully recovered from its defeats one by one drove the Japanese from fortified islands like Guadalcanal and at the Coral Sea and Midway in the Solomons in the western Pacific and brought American troops ever 1942, it took three more years for closer to Japan. American forces to near the Japanese homeland. T h e W a r i n E u r o p e By the spring of 1943, the Allies also gained the upper hand in the Atlantic, as British and American destroyers and planes devastated the German submarine fleet. In July 1943, American and British forces invaded Sicily, beginning the liberation of Italy. A popular uprising in Rome overthrew the Mussolini government, whereupon Germany occupied most of the country. Fighting there raged throughout 1944. F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I 679 Ben Hurwitz, a soldier from New York City who fought in North Africa and Italy during World War II, made numerous sketches of his experiences. Here American troops pass a wrecked German tank in southern Italy in June 1944. The major involvement of American troops in Europe did not begin until June 6, 1944. On that date, known as D-Day, nearly 200,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers under the command of General German prisoners of war guarded by an American soldier shortly after Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in Normandy in northwestern France. D-Day in June 1944. By this time, the More than a million troops followed them ashore in the next few weeks, Germans were drafting very young in the most massive sea–land operation in history. After fierce fighting, men into their armies. German armies retreated eastward. By August, Paris had been liberated. The crucial fighting in Europe, however, took place on the eastern front, the scene of an epic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million German soldiers took part in the 1941 invasion. After sweeping through western Russia, German armies in August 1942 launched a siege of Stalingrad, a city located deep inside Russia on the Volga River. This proved to be a cata- strophic mistake. Bolstered by an influx of military supplies from the United States, the Russians surrounded the German troops and forced them to surrender in January 1943. Stalingrad marked the turning point of the European war. 680 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II What steps led to American participation in World War II? W O R L D W A R I I I N E U R O P E , 1 9 4 2 – 1 9 4 5 London D-DAY Major battles GREAT BRITAIN Calais Allied offensives Allied countries Neutral countries Assembly Axis countries Area Extent of Axis control English Channel Cherbourg Le Havre Vichy France (controlled by Axis) Rouen Caen SWEDEN FINLAND 1944 FRANCE NORWAY Leningrad ESTONIA 1944 Moscow LATVIA 1944 IRELAND DENMARK SOVIET UNION LITHUANIA GREAT NETHERLANDS EAST BRITAIN PRUSSIA London Kursk 1945 Berlin 1945 July 1943 Warsaw Stalingrad 1943 19 BELGIUM GERMANY 44 August 1942– D-Day February 1943 June 1944 Battle of the Bulge POLAND 1944 December 1944 194 Paris 5 1943 1945 LUXEMBOURG FRANCE CZECHOSLOVAKIA 1944 AUSTRIA SWITZERLAND HUNGARY 1 Vichy 944 19 ROMANIA 1945 194 4 4 4 PORTUGAL YUGOSLAVIA SPAIN ITALY BULGARIA Rome 1 ALBANIA 943 (It.) TURKEY 1942 GREECE 1944 SPANISH Algiers MOROCCO Oran Casablanca 1942 194 SYRIA 3 (Fr.) IRAQ MOROCCO Kasserine Pass M LEBANON February 1943 edit (Br.) erra (Fr.) ALGERIA TUNISIA nean Sea PALESTINE El Alamein 1943 (Br.) October– November 1942 1 TRANSJORDAN 942 (Br.) FRENCH NORTH AFRICA SAUDI (Vichy France) ARABIA LIBYA (Italy) 0 250 500 miles EGYPT 0 250 500 kilometers Most of the land fighting in Europe during World War II took place on the eastern front between the German and Soviet armies. F I G H T I N G W O R L D W A R I I 681 Of 13.6 million German casualties in World War II, 10 million came on the Russian front. They were only part of the war’s vast toll in human lives. Millions of Poles and at least 20 million Russians, probably many more, perished—not only soldiers but civilian victims of starvation, disease, and massacres by German soldiers. After his armies had penetrated eastern Hitler’s “final solution” Europe in 1941, moreover, Hitler embarked on the “final solution”—the mass extermination of “undesirable” peoples—Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, and, above all, Jews. By 1945, 6 million Jewish men, women, and children had died in Nazi death camps. What came to be called the Holocaust was the horrifying culmination of the Nazi belief that Germans constituted a “master race” destined to rule the world. T H E H O M E F R O N T M o b i l i z i n g f o r W a r At home, World War II transformed the role of the national government. FDR created federal agencies like the War Production Board, the War Man- A list of jobs available in Detroit power Commission, and the Office of Price Administration to regulate the in July 1941 illustrates how war- allocation of labor, control the shipping industry, establish manufacturing related production ended the Great Depression even before the United quotas, and fix wages, prices, and rents. The number of federal workers States entered the conflict. rose from 1 million to 4 million, helping to push the unemployment rate down from 14 percent in 1940 to 2 percent three years later. The government built housing for war workers and forced civilian industries to retool for war production. Michigan’s auto factories now turned out trucks, tanks, and jeeps for the army. The gross national product rose from $91 billion to $214 bil- lion during the war, and the federal gov- ernment’s expenditures amounted to twice the combined total of the previous 150 years. The government marketed billions of dollars worth of war bonds, increased taxes, and began the practice of with- holding income tax directly from weekly paychecks. 682 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the United States mobilize economic resources and promote popular support for the war effort? B u s i n e s s a n d t h e W a r Americans marveled at the achievements of wartime manufacturing. Thousands of aircraft, 100,000 armored vehicles, and 2.5 million trucks rolled off American assembly lines, and entirely new products like synthetic rubber replaced natural resources now controlled by Japan. Government-sponsored scientific research perfected inventions like radar, jet engines, and early computers that helped to win the war and would have a large impact on postwar life. These accomplishments not Wartime technology only made it possible to win a two-front war but also helped to restore the reputation of business and businessmen, which had reached a low point during the Depression. Federal funds reinvigorated established manufacturing areas and created entirely new industrial centers. World War II saw the West Coast emerge as a focus of military-industrial production. The govern- War production in the West ment invested billions of dollars in the shipyards of Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco and in the steel plants and aircraft factories of southern California. By the war’s end, California had received one-tenth of all fed- eral spending. Nearly 2 million Americans moved to California for jobs in defense-related industries, and millions more passed through for military training and embarkation to the Pacific war. M-5 tanks on the assembly line at a Detroit Cadillac plant, in a 1942 photograph. During the war, General Motors and other automakers produced vehicles for the armed forces rather than cars for consumers. T H E H O M E F R O N T 683 In the South, the combination of rural out-migra- TABLE 22.1 Labor Union tion and government investment in military-related Membership factories and shipyards hastened a shift from agricul- tural to industrial employment. The South remained very poor when the war ended. Much of its rural YEAR NUMBER OF MEMBERS population still lived in small wooden shacks with no indoor plumbing. 1933 2,857,000 1934 3,728,000 L a b o r i n W a r t i m e 1935 3,753,000 1936 4,107,000 During the war, labor entered a three-sided arrange- 1937 5,780,000 ment with government and business that allowed 1938 8,265,000 union membership to soar to unprecedented levels. 1939 8,980,000 In order to secure industrial peace and stabilize war 1940 8,944,000 production, the federal government forced reluc- 1941 10,489,000 tant employers to recognize unions. In 1944, when 1942 10,762,000 Montgomery Ward, the large mail-order company, 1943 13,642,000 defied a pro-union order, the army seized its head- 1944 14,621,000 quarters and physically evicted its president. For 1945 14,796,000 their part, union leaders agreed not to strike. By 1945, union membership stood at nearly 15 million, one-third of the non-farm labor force and the highest proportion in American history. But if labor became a partner in government, it was very much a junior part- ner. Congress continued to be dominated by a conservative alliance of Republicans and southern Democrats. Despite the “no-strike” pledge, 1943 and 1944 witnessed numerous brief walkouts in which workers protested the increasing speed of assembly-line production and the disparity between wages frozen by government order and expanding corporate profits. F i g h t i n g f o r t h e F o u r F r e e d o m s Previous conflicts, including the Mexican War and World War I, had deeply divided American society. In contrast, World War II came to The Good War be remembered as the Good War, a time of national unity in pursuit of indisputably noble goals. But all wars require the mobilization of patriotic public opinion. By 1940, “To sell goods, we must sell words” had become a motto of advertisers. Foremost among the words that helped to “sell” World War II was “freedom.” Talk of freedom pervaded wartime America. In 1941, the administra- tion celebrated with considerable fanfare the 150th anniversary of the Bill 684 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the United States mobilize economic resources and promote popular support for the war effort? of Rights (the first ten amendments to the Constitution). FDR described their protections against tyrannical government as defining characteristics of American life, central to the rights of “free men and free women.” The “most ambiguous” of the Four Freedoms, Fortune magazine remarked, was freedom from want. Yet this “great inspiring phrase,” as a Pennsylvania steelworker put it in a letter to the president, seemed to strike the deepest chord in a nation just emerging from the Depression. Roosevelt initially meant it to refer to the elimination of barriers to interna- tional trade. But he quickly came to link freedom from want to an economic goal more relevant to the average citizen—protecting the future “standard of living of the American worker and farmer” by guaranteeing that the Depression would not resume after the war. This, he declared, would bring “real freedom for the common man.” T h e F i f t h F r e e d o m Under the watchful eye of the War Advertising Council, private compa- In this recruitment poster for the Boy Scouts, a svelte Miss Liberty nies joined in the campaign to promote wartime patriotism, while position- prominently displays the Bill of ing themselves and their brand names for the postwar world. Alongside Rights, widely celebrated during advertisements urging Americans to purchase war bonds, guard against World War II as the centerpiece of revealing military secrets, and grow “victory gardens” to allow food to American freedom. be sent to the army, the war witnessed a burst of messages marketing In this advertisement by the Liberty Motors and Engineering Corporation, published in the February 1944 issue of Fortune, Uncle Sam offers the Fifth Freedom—“free enterprise”—to war-devastated Europe. To spread its message, the company offered free enlargements of its ad. T H E H O M E F R O N T 685 advertisers’ definition of freedom. Without directly criticizing Roosevelt, they repeat- edly suggested that he had overlooked a fifth freedom. The National Association of Manufacturers and individual companies bombarded Americans with press releases, radio programs, and advertisements attrib- uting the amazing feats of wartime produc- tion to “free enterprise.” With the memory of the Depression still very much alive, businessmen pre- dicted a postwar world filled with con- sumer goods, with “freedom of choice” among abundant possibilities assured if only private enterprise were liberated from government controls. A female lathe operator in a Texas plant that produced transport planes. W o m e n a t W a r During the war, the nation engaged in an unprecedented mobilization of “womanpower” to fill industrial jobs vacated by men. Hollywood films glorified the independent woman, and private advertising celebrated the achievements of Rosie the Riveter, the female industrial laborer depicted as muscular and self-reliant in Norman Rockwell’s famous magazine Unlike the lathe operator in the above illustration, the woman operating cover. With 15 million men in the armed forces, women in 1944 made up industrial machinery on the cover of more than one-third of the civilian labor force, and 350,000 served in the September 1942 issue of McCall’s auxiliary military units. magazine remains glamorous, with Even though most women workers still labored in clerical and service makeup in place and hair unruffled. jobs, new opportunities suddenly opened in industrial, professional, and government positions previously restricted to men. On the West Coast, one-third of the workers in aircraft manufacturing and shipbuilding were women. For the first time in history, married women in their thirties out- numbered the young and single among female workers. Women forced unions like the United Auto Workers to confront issues like equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, and child-care facilities for working mothers. Having enjoyed what one wartime worker called “a taste of freedom”— doing “men’s” jobs for men’s wages and, sometimes, engaging in sexual activity while unmarried—many women hoped to remain in the labor force once peace returned. “We as a nation,” proclaimed one magazine article, “must change our basic attitude toward the work of women.” But change proved difficult. 686 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the United States mobilize economic resources and promote popular support for the war effort? The government, employers, and unions depicted work as a temporary necessity, not an expansion of women’s freedom. When the war ended, most female war workers, especially those in better-paying industrial employment, did indeed lose their jobs. Despite the upsurge in the number of working women, the advertis- ers’ “world of tomorrow” rested on a vision of family-centered prosperity. Advertisements portrayed working women dreaming of their boy- friends in the army and emphasized that with the proper makeup, women could labor in a factory and remain attractive to men. Men in the army seem to have assumed that they would return home to resume traditional family life. V I S I O N S O F P O S T W A R F R E E D O M Despite the new independence enjoyed by millions of women, propaganda posters during World T o w a r d a n A m e r i c a n C e n t u r y War II emphasized the male- dominated family as an essential The prospect of an affluent future provided a point of unity between New element of American freedom. Dealers and conservatives, business and labor. And the promise of pros- perity to some extent united two of the most celebrated blueprints for the postwar world. One was The American Century, the publisher Henry Luce’s 1941 effort to mobilize the American people both for the coming war and Luce’s The American Century for an era of postwar world leadership. Americans, Luce’s book insisted, must embrace the role history had thrust on them as the “dominant power in the world.” After the war, American power and American values would underpin a previously unimaginable prosperity—“the abundant life,” Luce called it—produced by “free economic enterprise.” Luce’s essay anticipated important aspects of the postwar world. But its bombastic rhetoric and a title easily interpreted as a call for an American imperialism aroused immediate opposition among liberals and the left. Henry Wallace offered their response in “The Price of Free World Henry Wallace Victory,” an address delivered in May 1942 to the Free World Association. Wallace, secretary of agriculture during the 1930s, had replaced Vice President John Nance Garner as Roosevelt’s running mate in 1940. In contrast to Luce’s American Century, a world of business dominance no less than of American power, Wallace predicted that the war would usher in a “century of the common man.” Governments acting to “humanize” capitalism and redistribute economic resources would eliminate hunger, illiteracy, and poverty. V I S I O N S O F P O S T W A R F R E E D O M 687 Luce and Wallace had one thing in common—a new conception of America’s role in the world, tied to continued international involvement, the promise of economic abundance, and the idea that the American expe- rience should serve as a model for all other nations. “ T h e W a y o f L i f e o f F r e e M e n ” Even as Congress moved to dismantle parts of the New Deal, liberal Democrats and their left-wing allies unveiled plans for a postwar eco- nomic policy that would allow all Americans to enjoy freedom from want. In 1942 and 1943, the reports of the National Resources Planning NRPB Board (NRPB) offered a blueprint for a peacetime economy based on full employment, an expanded welfare state, and a widely shared American standard of living. The board called for a “new bill of rights” that would include all Americans in an expanded Social Security system and guar- antee access to education, health care, adequate housing, and jobs for able-bodied adults. The NRPB’s plan for a “full-employment economy” with a “fair distribution of income,” said The Nation, embodied “the way of life of free men.” Mindful that public-opinion polls showed a large majority of Americans favoring a guarantee of employment for those who could not An Economic Bill of Rights find work, the president in 1944 called for an “Economic Bill of Rights.” The original Bill of Rights restricted the power of government in the name of liberty. FDR proposed to expand its power in order to secure full employment, an adequate income, medical care, education, and a decent home for all Americans. Already ill and preoccupied with the war, Roosevelt spoke only occasionally of the Economic Bill of Rights during the 1944 presiden- tial campaign. The replacement of Vice President Henry Wallace by Harry S. Truman, then a little-known senator from Missouri, suggested that the president did not intend to do battle with Congress over social policy. Congress did not enact the Economic Bill of Rights. But in 1944, it extended to the millions of returning veterans an array of benefits, including unemployment pay, scholarships for further education, low- cost mortgage loans, pensions, and job training. The Servicemen’s GI Bill Readjustment Act, or GI Bill of Rights, was one of the farthest-reaching pieces of social legislation in American history. Aimed at reward- ing members of the armed forces for their service and preventing the widespread unemployment and economic disruption that had followed World War I, it profoundly shaped postwar society. By 1946, more than 1 million veterans were attending college under its provisions, making 688 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II What visions of America’s postwar role began to emerge during the war? up half of total college enrollment. Almost 4 million would receive home mortgages, spurring the postwar suburban housing boom. T h e R o a d t o S e r f d o m The Road to Serfdom (1944), a surprise best-seller by Friedrich A. Hayek, a previously obscure Austrian-born economist, claimed that even the best-intentioned government efforts to direct the economy posed a threat to individual liberty. Coming at a time when the miracles of war produc- tion had reinvigorated belief in the virtues of capitalism, and with the confrontation with Nazism highlighting the danger of merging economic Friedrich A. Hayek and and political power, Hayek offered a new intellectual justification for oppo- laissez-faire economics nents of active government. In a complex economy, he insisted, no single person or group of experts could possibly possess enough knowledge to direct economic activity intelligently. A free market, he wrote, mobilizes the fragmented and partial knowledge scattered throughout society far more effectively than a planned economy. By equating fascism, socialism, and the New Deal and by identifying economic planning with a loss of freedom, he helped lay the foundation for the rise of modern conservatism and a revival of laissez-faire economic thought. As the war drew to a close, the stage was set for a renewed battle over the government’s proper role in society and the economy, and the social conditions of American freedom. In this patriotic war poster the words of Abraham Lincoln are linked to the struggle against Nazi tyranny. T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A The unprecedented attention to freedom as the defining characteristic of American life had implications that went far beyond wartime mobilization. The struggle against Nazi tyranny and its theory of a master race discred- ited ethnic and racial inequality. A pluralist vision of American society now became part of official rhetoric. What set the United States apart from its wartime foes, the government insisted, was not only dedication to the ideals of the Four Freedoms but also the principle that Americans of all races, reli- gions, and national origins could enjoy those freedoms equally. Racism was the enemy’s philosophy; Americanism rested on toleration of diversity and equality for all. By the end of the war, the new immigrant groups had been fully accepted as loyal ethnic Americans, rather than members of distinct and inferior “races.” And the contradiction between the principle of equal freedom and the actual status of blacks had come to the forefront of national life. T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A 689 P a t r i o t i c A s s i m i l a t i o n Among other things, World War II created a vast melting pot, especially for European immigrants and their children. Millions of Americans moved out of urban ethnic neighborhoods and isolated rural enclaves into the army and industrial plants, where they came into contact with people of very different backgrounds. What one historian has called their “patriotic assimilation” differed sharply from the forced Americanization of World War I. Horrified by the uses to which the Nazis put the idea of inborn racial difference, biological and social scientists abandoned belief in a link among race, culture, and intelligence, an idea only recently central to their dis- ciplines. Ruth Benedict’s Races and Racism (1942) described racism as “a Arthur Poinier’s cartoon for the travesty of scientific knowledge.” By the war’s end, racism and nativism Detroit Free Press, June 19, 1941, had been stripped of intellectual respectability, at least outside the South, illustrates how, during World and were viewed as psychological disorders. War II, white ethnics (of British, Intolerance, of course, hardly disappeared from American life. Many German, Irish, French, Polish, Italian business and government circles still excluded Jews. Along with the fact and Scandinavian descent) were that early reports of the Holocaust were too terrible to be believed, anti- incorporated within the boundaries of American freedom. Semitism contributed to the government’s unwillingness to allow more than a handful of European Jews (21,000 during the course of the war) to find refuge in the United States. Roosevelt himself learned during the war The persistence of prejudice of the extent of Hitler’s “final solution” to the Jewish presence in Europe. But he failed to authorize air strikes that might have destroyed German death camps. T h e B r a c e r o P r o g r a m The war had a far more ambiguous meaning for non-white groups than for whites. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, racial barriers remained deeply entrenched in American life. Southern blacks were still trapped in a rigid system of segregation. Asians could not emigrate to the United States or become naturalized citizens. Most American Indians still lived on reserva- tions in dismal poverty. The war set in motion changes that would reverberate in the postwar years. Under the bracero program agreed to by the Mexican and American governments in 1942 (the name derives from brazo, the Spanish word for Mexican contract workers arm), tens of thousands of contract laborers crossed into the United States to take up jobs as domestic and agricultural workers. Initially designed as a temporary response to the wartime labor shortage, the program lasted until 1964. During that period, more than 4.5 million Mexicans entered the 690 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad? United States under labor contracts (while a slightly larger number were arrested for illegal entry by the Border Patrol). Although the bracero program reinforced the status of immigrants from Mexico as an unskilled labor force, wartime employment opened New opportunities for new opportunities for second-generation Mexican-Americans. Hundreds Mexican-Americans of thousands of men and women emerged from ethnic neighborhoods, or barrios, to work in defense industries and serve in the army (where, unlike blacks, they fought alongside whites). Contact with other groups led many to learn English and sparked a rise in interethnic marriages. The “zoot suit” riots of 1943, in which club-wielding sailors and police- men attacked Mexican-American youths wearing flamboyant clothing on the streets of Los Angeles, illustrated the limits of wartime tolerance. But the contrast between the war’s rhetoric of freedom and pluralism and the reality of continued discrimination inspired a heightened consciousness of civil rights. For example, Mexican-Americans brought complaints of discrimination before the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to fight the practice in the Southwest of confining them to the lowest-paid work or paying them lower wages than white workers doing the same jobs. “Our Latin American boys,” complained one activist, “are not segregated at the front line. . . . They are dying that democracy may live.” Perhaps half a million Mexican-American men and women served in the armed forces. I n d i a n s d u r i n g t h e W a r The war also brought many American Indians closer to the mainstream of American life. Some 25,000 served in the army (including the famous Navajo “code-talkers,” who transmitted messages in their complex native The Navajo “code-talkers” language, which the Japanese could not decipher). Insisting that the United States lacked the authority to draft Indian men into the army, the Iroquois issued their own declaration of war against the Axis powers. Tens of thousands of Indians left reservations for jobs in war industries. Exposed for the first time to urban life and industrial society, many chose not to return to the reservations after the war ended. (Indeed, the reserva- tions did not share in wartime prosperity.) Some Indian veterans took advantage of the GI Bill to attend college after the war, an opportunity that had been available to very few Indians previously. A s i a n - A m e r i c a n s i n W a r t i m e Asian-Americans’ war experience was paradoxical. More than 50,000—the children of immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, and the T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A 691 Philippines—fought in the army, mostly in all-Asian units. With China an ally in the Pacific war, Congress in 1943 ended decades of complete exclusion by establishing a nationality quota for Chinese immigrants. The annual limit of 105 hardly suggested a desire for a large-scale influx. But the image of the Chinese as gallant fighters defending their country against Japanese aggression called into question long-standing racial stereotypes. The experience of Japanese-Americans was far different. Both sides saw the Pacific war as a race war. Japanese propaganda depicted Americans as a self-indulgent people contaminated by ethnic and racial diversity as opposed to the racially “pure” Japanese. In the United States, long-standing prejudices and the shocking attack on Pearl Harbor com- bined to produce an unprecedented hatred of Japan. Government pro- Wartime propaganda in the United States sought to inspire hatred paganda and war films portrayed the Japanese foe as rats, dogs, gorillas, against the Pacific foe. This poster, and snakes—bestial and subhuman. They blamed Japanese aggression on issued by the U.S. Army, recalls a violent racial or national character, not, as in the case of Germany and the Bataan death march in the Italy, on tyrannical rulers. Philippines. About 70 percent of Japanese-Americans in the continental United States lived in California, where they dominated vegetable farming in the Los Angeles area. One-third were first-generation immigrants, or issei, but a substantial majority were nisei—American-born, and therefore citizens. Many of the latter spoke only English, had never been to Japan, and had tried to assimilate despite prevailing prejudice. The government bent over backward to include German-Americans and Italian-Americans in the war effort. It ordered the arrest of only a handful of the more than 800,000 German and Italian nationals in the United States when the war began. But it viewed every person of Japanese ethnicity as a potential spy. J a p a n e s e - A m e r i c a n I n t e r n m e n t Inspired by exaggerated fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast and pressured by whites who saw an opportunity to gain possession of Japanese-American property, the military persuaded FDR to issue Executive Order 9066. Promulgated in February 1942, this ordered the relocation of all persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast. That spring and summer, authorities removed more than 110,000 men, women, and children—nearly two-thirds of them American citizens—to Internment camps camps far from their homes. The order did not apply to persons of Japanese descent living in Hawaii, where they made up nearly 40 percent of the population. Despite Hawaii’s vulnerability, its economy could not function without Japanese-American labor. 692 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad? J A P A N E S E - A M E R I C A N I N T E R N M E N T , 1 9 4 2 – 1 9 4 5 Seattle WASHINGTON NORTH Portland MINNESOTA MONTANA DAKOTA Heart Mountain OREGON 10,767 WISCONSIN Cody IDAHO SOUTH Klamath Falls DAKOTA MICHIGAN Tule Lake M Twin Falls Minidoka 18,789 WYOMING I 9,397 LIT IOWA AR NEBRASKA OHIO Y INDIANA UTAH Sacramento NEVADA ILLINOIS Nephi San Francisco A Topaz R CALIFORNIA E 8,310 A COLORADO Manzanar KANSAS MISSOURI KENTUCKY Fresno 10,046 Lone Pine Lamar Amache 7,318 Bakersfield TENNESSEE Poston OKLAHOMA Los Angeles 17,814 ARKANSAS Pine Bluff ARIZONA NEW Rohwer Jerome San Diego Gila Bend MEXICO 8,475 8,497 Gila River ALABAMA Pa c i f i c 13,348 MISSISSIPPI O c e a n TEXAS LOUISIANA Internment camps Figures show highest number Gulf of Mexico interned at each camp. MEXICO Demarcates area from which 0 200 400 miles Japanese-Americans were excluded 0 200 400 kilometers More than 100,000 Japanese- The internees were subjected to a quasi-military discipline in the Americans—the majority American camps. Living in former horse stables, makeshift shacks, or barracks citizens—were forcibly moved from behind barbed-wire fences, they were awakened for roll call at 6:45 each their homes to internment camps morning and ate their meals (which rarely involved the Japanese cook- during World War II. ing to which they were accustomed) in giant mess halls. Nonetheless, the internees did their best to create an atmosphere of home, decorating their accommodations with pictures, flowers, and curtains, planting veg- etable gardens, and setting up activities like sports clubs and art classes for themselves. Internment revealed how easily war can undermine basic freedoms. There were no court hearings, no due process, and no writs of habeas cor- pus. One searches the wartime record in vain for public protests among non-Japanese against the gravest violation of civil liberties since the end of slavery. T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A 693 The courts refused to intervene. In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court denied the appeal of Fred Korematsu, a Japanese- American citizen who had been arrested for refusing to present himself for internment. Speaking for a 6-3 majority, Justice Hugo Black, usually an avid defender of civil liberties, upheld the legality of the internment policy, insisting that an order applying only to persons of Japanese descent was not based on race. The Court has never overturned the Korematsu decision. As Justice Robert H. Jackson warned in his dissent, it “lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim” of national security. The government established a loyalty oath program, expecting Japanese-Americans to swear allegiance to the government that had Fumiko Hayashida holds her thirteen- imprisoned them and to enlist in the army. Some young men refused, month-old daughter, while waiting and about 200 were sent to prison for resisting the draft. But 20,000 for relocation to an internment camp. Japanese-Americans joined the armed forces from the camps, along with Both wear baggage tags, as if they another 13,000 from Hawaii. A long campaign for acknowledgment of the were pieces of luggage. This photo, taken by a journalist for the Seattle injustice done to Japanese-Americans followed the end of the war. In 1988, Post-Intelligencer, came to symbolize Congress apologized for internment and provided $20,000 in compensa- the entire internment experience. tion to each surviving victim. Ms. Hayashida celebrated her 100th birthday in 2011. B l a c k s a n d t h e W a r Although the treatment of Japanese-Americans revealed the stubborn hold of racism in American life, the wartime message of freedom portended a major transformation in the status of blacks. Nazi Germany cited American Segregation during wartime practices as proof of its own race policies. Washington remained a rigidly segregated city, and the Red Cross refused to mix blood from blacks and whites in its blood banks (thereby, critics charged, in effect accepting Nazi race theories). Charles Drew, the black scientist who pioneered the tech- niques of storing and shipping blood plasma—a development of immense importance to the treatment of wounded soldiers—protested bitterly against this policy, pointing out that it had no scientific basis. The war spurred a movement of black population from the rural Second Great Migration South to the cities of the North and West that dwarfed the Great Migration of World War I and the 1920s. About 700,000 black migrants poured out of the South on what they called “liberty trains,” seeking jobs in the indus- trial heartland. They encountered sometimes violent hostility, nowhere more so than in Detroit, where angry white residents forced authorities to evict black tenants from a new housing project. In 1943, a fight at a Detroit city park spiraled into a race riot that left thirty-four persons dead, and a 694 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad? “hate strike” of 20,000 workers protested the upgrading of black employ- ees in a plant manufacturing aircraft engines. B l a c k s a n d M i l i t a r y S e r v i c e When World War II began, the air force and marines had no black mem- bers. The army restricted the number of black enlistees and contained only five black officers, three of them chaplains. The navy accepted blacks only as waiters and cooks. During the war, more than 1 million blacks served in the armed forces. They did so in segregated units, largely confined to construction, trans- port, and other noncombat tasks. Black soldiers sometimes had to give up their seats on railroad cars to accommodate Nazi prisoners of war. When southern black veterans returned home and sought benefits through the GI Bill, they encountered even more evidence of racial dis- Another This Is America propaganda crimination. On the surface, the GI Bill contained no racial differentiation poster emphasizes the American in offering benefits like health care, college tuition assistance, job training, dream of equal opportunity for all. and loans to start a business or purchase a farm. But local authorities who All the children in the classroom, administered its provisions allowed southern black veterans to use its however, are white. education benefits only at segregated colleges, limited their job training to unskilled work and low-wage service jobs, and limited loans for farm purchase to white veterans. B i r t h o f t h e C i v i l R i g h t s M o v e m e n t The war years witnessed the birth of the modern civil rights movement. Angered by the almost complete exclusion of African-Americans from jobs in the rapidly expanding war industries (of 100,000 aircraft work- ers in 1940, fewer than 300 were blacks), the black labor leader A. Philip Randolph’s March on Randolph in July 1941 called for a March on Washington. His demands Washington included access to defense employment, an end to segregation, and a national antilynching law. The prospect of thousands of angry blacks descending on Washington, remarked one official, “scared the government half to death.” To persuade Randolph to call off the march, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in defense jobs and established a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor compliance. The FEPC first federal agency since Reconstruction to campaign for equal opportu- nity for black Americans, the FEPC played an important role in obtaining jobs for black workers in industrial plants and shipyards. By 1944, more T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A 695 than 1 million blacks, 300,000 of them women, held manufacturing jobs. (“My sister always said that Hitler was the one that got us out of the white folks’ kitchen,” recalled one black woman.) T h e D o u b l e - V During the war, NAACP membership grew from 50,000 to nearly CORE 500,000. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded by an inter- racial group of pacifists in 1942, held sit-ins in northern cities to integrate restaurants and theaters. In February of that year, the Pittsburgh Courier coined the phrase that came to symbolize black attitudes during the war— the “double-V.” Victory over Germany and Japan, it insisted, must be accompanied by victory over segregation at home. Whereas the Roosevelt administration and the white press saw the war as an expression of American ideals, black newspapers pointed to the gap between those ide- als and reality. Surveying wartime public opinion, a political scientist concluded that “symbols of national solidarity” had very different meanings to white and black Americans. To blacks, freedom from fear meant, among other things, an end to lynching, and freedom from want included doing away with “discrimination in getting jobs.” If, in whites’ eyes, freedom was a “posses- sion to be defended,” he observed, to blacks and other racial minorities it remained a “goal to be achieved.” This is the Enemy, a 1942 poster by Victor Ancona and Karl Koehler, T h e W a r a n d R a c e suggests a connection between Nazism abroad and lynching at home. During the war, a broad political coalition centered on the left but reaching well beyond it called for an end to racial inequality in America. The NAACP and American Jewish Congress cooperated closely in advocating laws to ban discrimination in employment and housing. Despite considerable resistance from rank-and-file white workers, CIO unions, especially those with strong left-liberal and communist influence, made significant efforts to organize black workers and win them access to skilled positions. The new black militancy alarmed southern politicians. The “war emergency,” insisted Governor Frank Dixon of Alabama, “should not be used as a pretext to bring about the abolition of the color line.” Even as the war gave birth to the modern civil rights movement, it also planted the seeds for the South’s “massive resistance” to desegregation during the 1950s. Although progress was slow, it was measurable. The National War Labor Board banned racial wage differentials. In Smith v. Allwright (1944), 696 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did American minorities face threats to their freedom at home and abroad? Paul Robeson, the black actor, singer, and battler for civil rights, leading Oakland dockworkers in singing the national anthem in 1942. World War II gave a significant boost to the vision, shared by Robeson and others on the left, of an America based on genuine equality. the Supreme Court outlawed all-white primaries, one of the mechanisms Progress on race by which southern states deprived blacks of political rights. In the same year, the navy began assigning small numbers of black sailors to previ- ously all-white ships. In the final months of the war, it ended segregation altogether, and the army established a few combat units that included black and white soldiers. A n A m e r i c a n D i l e m m a No event reflected the new concern with the status of black Americans more than the publication in 1944 of An American Dilemma, a sprawling account of the country’s racial past, present, and future written by the Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal. The book offered an uncom- promising portrait of how deeply racism was entrenched in law, politics, economics, and social behavior. But Myrdal combined this sobering analysis with admiration for what he called the American Creed—belief in The American Creed equality, justice, equal opportunity, and freedom. He concluded that “there is bound to be a redefinition of the Negro’s status as a result of this War.” Myrdal’s notion of a conflict between American values and American racial policies was hardly new—Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois had said much the same thing. But in the context of a worldwide struggle against Nazism and rising black demands for equality at home, his book struck a chord. It identified a serious national problem and seemed to offer T H E A M E R I C A N D I L E M M A 697 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m H e n r y R . L u c e , T h e A m e r i c a n C e n t u r y ( 1 9 4 1 ) Even before the United States entered World War II, some Americans were thinking of a postwar world in which the United States would exert its influence throughout the globe. One influential call for Americans to accept the burden of world leadership was a short book by Henry R. Luce, the publisher of Life and Time magazines. In the field of national policy, the fundamental trouble with America has been, and is, that whereas their nation became in the 20th Century the most powerful and the most vital nation in the world, nevertheless Americans were unable to accommodate themselves spiritually and practically to that fact. Hence they have failed to play their part as a world power—a failure which has had disastrous consequences for themselves and for all mankind. And the cure is this: to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit. . . . Our world of 2,000,000,000 human beings is for the first time in history one world, fundamentally indivisible. . . . Our world, again for the first time in human history, is capable of producing all the material needs of the entire human family. . . . The world of the 20th Century, if it is to come to life in any nobility of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American Century. . . . In postulating the indivisibility of the contemporary world, one does not necessarily imagine that anything like a world state—a parliament of men—must be brought about in this century. Nor need we assume that war can be abolished. . . . Large sections of the human family may be effectively organized into opposition to one another. Tyrannies may require a large amount of living space. But Freedom requires and will require far greater living space than Tyranny. . . . Justice will come near to losing all meaning in the minds of men unless Justice can have approximately the same fundamental meanings in many lands and among many peoples. . . . As to the . . . promise of adequate production for all mankind, the “more abundant life,” be it noted that this is characteristically an American promise. . . . What we must insist on is that the abundant life is predicated on Freedom. . . . Without Freedom, there will be no abundant life. With Freedom, there can be. And finally there is the belief—shared let us remember by most men living—that the 20th Century must be to a significant degree an American Century. . . . As America enters dynamically upon the world scene, we need most of all to seek and to bring forth a vision of America as a world power and to bring forth a vision . . . which will guide us to the authentic creation of the 20th Century—our Century. F r o m C h a r l e s H . W e s l e y , “ T h e N e g r o H a s a l w a y s W a n t e d t h e F o u r F r e e d o m s , ” i n W h a t t h e N e g r o W a n t s ( 1 9 4 4 ) In 1944, the University of North Carolina Press published What the Negro Wants, a book of essays by fourteen prominent black leaders. Virtually every contributor called for the right to vote in the South, the dismantling of segregation, and access to the “American standard of living.” Several essays also linked the black struggle for racial justice with movements against European imperialism in Africa and Asia. When he read the manuscript, W. T. Couch, the director of the press, was stunned. “If this is what the Negro wants,” he told the book’s editor, “nothing could be clearer than what he needs, and needs most urgently, is to revise his wants.” In this excerpt, the historian Charles H. Wesley explains that blacks are denied each of the Four Freedoms and also illustrates how the war strengthened black internationalism. [Negroes] have wanted what other citizens of the United States have wanted. They have wanted freedom and opportunity. They have wanted the pursuit of the life vouchsafed to all citizens of the United States by our own liberty documents. They have wanted freedom of speech, [but] they were supposed to be silently acquiescent in all aspects of their life. . . . They have wanted freedom of religion, for they had been compelled to “steal away to Jesus” . . . in order to worship God as they desired. . . . They have wanted freedom from want. . . . However, the Negro has remained a marginal worker and the competition with white workers has left him in want in many localities of an economically sufficient nation. They have wanted freedom from fear. They have been cowed, browbeaten or beaten, as they have marched through the years of American life. . . . The Negro wants democracy to begin at home. . . . The future of our democratic life is insecure so long as the hatred, disdain and disparagement of Americans of African ancestry exist. . . . The Negro wants not only to win the war but also to win the peace. . . . He wants the Q U E S T I O N S peace to be free of race and color restrictions, of imperialism and exploitation, and inclusive of the 1. What values does Luce wish America participation of minorities all over the world in to spread to the rest of the world? their own governments. When it is said that we are fighting for freedom, the Negro asks, “Whose 2. Why does Wesley believe that black freedom?” Is it the freedom of a peace to exploit, Americans are denied the Four suppress, exclude, debase and restrict colored Freedoms? peoples in India, China, Africa, Malaya in the usual ways? . . . Will Great Britain and the United 3. Do Luce and Wesley envision different States specifically omit from the Four Freedoms roles for the United States in the post- their minorities and subject peoples? The Negro war world? does not want such a peace. an almost painless path to peaceful change, in which the federal govern- ment would take the lead in outlawing discrimination. B l a c k I n t e r n a t i o n a l i s m In the nineteenth century, black radicals like David Walker and Martin Delany had sought to link the fate of African-Americans with that of Black international peoples of African descent in other parts of the world, especially the consciousness Caribbean and Africa. In the first decades of the twentieth century, this kind of international consciousness was reinvigorated. In a sense, the global imposition of white supremacy brought forth a feeling of racial solidarity across national and geographic lines. At the home of George Padmore, a West Indian labor organizer and editor living in London, black American leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson came into contact with future leaders of African independence movements such as Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Nnamdi Azikiwe (Nigeria). Through these gatherings, Du Bois, Robeson, and others developed A global cause an outlook that linked the plight of black Americans with that of people of color worldwide. Freeing Africa from colonial rule, they came to believe, would encourage greater equality at home. World War II stimulated among African-Americans an even greater awareness of the links between racism in the United States and colonialism abroad. T H E E N D O F T H E W A R As 1945 opened, Allied victory was assured. In December 1944, in a des- perate gamble, Hitler launched a surprise counterattack in France that pushed Allied forces back fifty miles, creating a large bulge in their lines. The largest single battle ever fought by the U.S. Army, the Battle of the Bulge produced more than 70,000 American casualties. But by early 1945 the assault had failed. In March, American troops crossed the Rhine River and entered the industrial heartland of Germany. Hitler took his own life, and shortly V-E Day afterward Soviet forces occupied Berlin. On May 8, known as V-E Day (for victory in Europe), came the formal end to the war against Germany. In the Pacific, American forces moved ever closer to Japan. 700 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the end of the war begin to shape the postwar world? “ T h e M o s t T e r r i b l e W e a p o n ” Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, the governor of New York, to win an unprecedented fourth term in 1944. But FDR did not live to see the Allied victory. He succumbed to a stroke on April 12, 1945. To his successor, Harry S. Truman, fell one of the Truman and the atomic bomb most momentous decisions ever confronted by an American president— whether to use the atomic bomb against Japan. Truman did not know about the bomb until after he became president. Then, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson informed him that the United States had secretly devel- oped “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.” The bomb was a practical realization of the theory of relativity, a rethinking of the laws of physics developed early in the twentieth century by the German scientist Albert Einstein. Energy and matter, Einstein Albert Einstein showed, were two forms of the same phenomenon. By using certain forms of uranium, or the man-made element plutonium, scientists could create an atomic reaction that transformed part of the mass into energy. This energy could be harnessed to provide a form of controlled power—or it could be unleashed in a tremendous explosion. In 1940, FDR authorized what came to be known as the Manhattan Project, a top-secret program in which American scientists developed an atomic bomb during World War II. The weapon was tested successfully in New Mexico in July 1945. T h e D a w n o f t h e A t o m i c A g e On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb that detonated over Hiroshima, Japan—a target chosen because almost alone Hiroshima and Nagasaki among major Japanese cities, it had not yet suffered damage. In an instant, nearly every building in the city was destroyed. Of the city’s population of 280,000 civilians and 40,000 soldiers, approximately 70,000 died immediately. Because atomic bombs release deadly radiation, the death toll kept rising in the months that followed. By the end of the year, it reached at least 140,000. On August 9, the United States exploded a sec- ond bomb over Nagasaki, killing 70,000 persons. On the same day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria. Within a week, Japan surrendered. Because of the enormous cost in civilian lives—more than twice America’s military fatalities in the entire Pacific war—the use of the bomb remains controversial. An American invasion of Japan, some advisers T H E E N D O F T H E W A R 701 warned Truman, might cost as many as 250,000 American lives. No such invasion was planned to begin, however, until 1946, and consider- able evidence had accumulated that Japan was nearing surrender. Japan’s economy had been crippled and its fleet destroyed, and it would now have to fight the Soviet Union as well as the United States. Some of the scientists who had worked on the bomb urged Truman to demonstrate its power to international observers. But Truman did not hesitate. The bomb was a weapon, and weapons are created to be used. T h e N a t u r e o f t h e W a r The dropping of the atomic bombs was the logical culmination of the way World War II had been fought. All wars inflict suffering on non- combatants. But never before had civilian populations been so ruthlessly targeted. Of the estimated 50 million persons who perished during World War II (including 400,000 American soldiers), perhaps 20 million were civilians. Germany had killed millions of members of “inferior races.” The The war and civilian Allies carried out deadly air assaults on civilian populations. Early in 1945, populations the firebombing of Dresden killed some 100,000 people, mostly women, children, and elderly men. On March 9, nearly the same number died in an inferno caused by the bombing of Tokyo. After the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, the federal government restricted the circulation of images of destruction. But soon after the end of the war, it dispatched photographers to compile a Strategic Bombing Survey to assess the bomb’s impact. This photograph, which long remained classified, shows the remains of an elementary school. 702 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the end of the war begin to shape the postwar world? Four years of war propaganda had dehumanized the Japanese in American eyes, and few persons criticized Truman’s decision in 1945. But pub- lic doubts began to surface, especially after John Hersey published Hiroshima Hersey’s Hiroshima (1946), a graphic account of the horrors suffered by the civilian population. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who thought the use of the bomb unneces- sary, later wrote, “I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.” P l a n n i n g t h e P o s t w a r W o r l d Even as the war raged, a series of meetings between Allied leaders formu- lated plans for the postwar world. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Soviet chief Josef Stalin met at Tehran, Iran, in 1943, and at Yalta, in the southern Soviet Union, early in 1945, to hammer out agreements. The final “Big Three” con- The “Big Three” conferences ference took place at Potsdam, near Berlin, in July 1945. It involved Stalin, Truman, and Churchill (replaced midway in the talks by Clement Attlee, who became prime minister when his Labour Party swept the British elec- tions). At Potsdam, the Allied leaders established a military administration for Germany and agreed to place top Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes. Relations among the three Allies were often uneasy, as each maneu- vered to maximize its postwar power. Neither Britain nor the United States trusted Stalin. But since Stalin’s troops had won the war on the eastern front, it was difficult to resist his demand that eastern Europe become a Soviet sphere of influence (a region whose governments can be counted on to do a great power’s bidding). The Big Three—Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill—at their first meeting, Y a l t a a n d B r e t t o n W o o d s in Tehran, Iran, in 1943, where they discussed the opening of a second At Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill entered only a mild protest against front against Germany in western Soviet plans to retain control of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Europe. Lithuania) and a large part of eastern Poland, in effect restoring Russia’s pre– World War I western borders. Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan later in 1945 and to allow “free and unfettered elections” in Poland, but he was intent on establishing communism in eastern Europe. Yalta saw the high-water mark of wartime American–Soviet cooperation. But it planted seeds of conflict, since the participants soon disagreed over the fate of eastern Europe. T H E E N D O F T H E W A R 703 Tension also existed between Britain and the United States. Churchill rejected American pressure to place India and other British colonies on the road to independence. He concluded private deals with Stalin to divide southern and eastern Europe into British and Soviet spheres of influence. Britain also resisted, unsuccessfully, American efforts to reshape Shaping the postwar and dominate the postwar economic order. A meeting of representatives economic order of forty-five nations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944 replaced the British pound with the dollar as the main currency for interna- tional transactions. The conference also created two American-dominated financial institutions. The World Bank would provide money to developing countries and to help rebuild Europe. The International Monetary Fund would work to prevent governments from devaluing their currencies to gain an advantage in international trade, as many had done during the Depression. Both of these institutions, American leaders believed, would encourage free trade and the growth of the world economy, an emphasis that remains central to American foreign policy to this day. T h e U n i t e d N a t i o n s Early in the war, the Allies also agreed to establish a successor to the League of Nations. In a 1944 conference at Dumbarton Oaks, near Washington, D.C., they developed the structure of the United Nations (UN). There would be a General Assembly—essentially a forum Structure of the UN for discussion where each member enjoyed an equal voice—and a Security Council responsible for maintaining world peace. Along with six rotating members, the Council would have five permanent ones—Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—each with the power to veto resolutions. In June 1945, representatives of fifty-one countries met in San Francisco to adopt the UN Charter, which outlawed force or the threat of force as a means of settling international disputes. In July, the U.S. Senate endorsed the charter. In contrast to the bitter dispute over member- ship in the League of Nations after World War I, only two members of the U.S. Senate voted against joining the UN. P e a c e , b u t N o t H a r m o n y World power redistributed World War II produced a radical redistribution of world power. Japan and Germany, the two dominant military powers in their regions before the war, were utterly defeated. Britain and France, though victorious, were substantially weakened. Only the United States and the Soviet Union were able to project significant influence beyond their national borders. 704 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II How did the end of the war begin to shape the postwar world? This 1943 cartoon from the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, questions whether non-white peoples will be accorded the right to choose their own government, as promised in the Atlantic Charter agreed to two years earlier by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Churchill insisted the principle only applied to Europeans. Overall, however, the United States was clearly the dominant world power. But peace did not usher in an era of international harmony. The Soviet The dominant world power occupation of eastern Europe created a division soon to be solidified in the Cold War. The dropping of the atomic bombs left a worldwide legacy of fear. The Four Freedoms speech had been intended primarily to highlight the differences between Anglo-American ideals and Nazism. Nonetheless, it had unanticipated consequences. As one of Roosevelt’s speechwriters remarked, “when you state a moral principle, you are stuck with it, no mat- ter how many fingers you have kept crossed at the moment.” The language with which World War II was fought helped to lay the foundation for Human rights postwar ideals of human rights that extend to all mankind. During the war, Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian nationalist leader, wrote to Roosevelt that the idea “that the Allies are fighting to make the world safe for freedom of the individual and for democracy seems hollow, so long as India, and for that matter, Africa, are exploited by Great Britain, Unresolved disputes and America has the Negro problem in her own home.” Allied victory saved mankind from a living nightmare—a worldwide system of dictato- rial rule and slave labor in which peoples deemed inferior suffered the fate of European Jews and of the victims of Japanese outrages in Asia. But disputes over the freedom of colonial peoples overseas and non-whites in the United States foretold more wars and social upheavals to come. T H E E N D O F T H E W A R 705 C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. Why did most Americans support isolationism in the Four Freedoms (p. 673) Good Neighbor Policy (p. 674) 1930s? isolationism (p. 676) 2. What factors after 1939 led to U.S. involvement in Lend-Lease Act (p. 677) D-Day (p. 680) World War II? Holocaust (p. 682) Rosie the Riveter (p. 686) 3. How did government, business, and labor work together GI Bill of Rights (p. 688) to promote wartime production? How did the war affect “patriotic assimilation” (p. 690) each group? bracero program (p. 690) “zoot suit” riots (p. 691) 4. How did different groups understand or experience the Executive Order 9066 (p. 692) Four Freedoms differently? Second Great Migration (p. 694) Executive Order 8802 (p. 695) 5. Explain how conservatives in Congress and business “double-V” (p. 696) used the war effort to attack the goals and legacy of the Manhattan Project (p. 701) New Deal. Bretton Woods Conference (p. 704) United Nations (p. 704) 6. How did the war alter the lives of women on the home front, and what did different groups think would happen after the war? 7. How did a war fought to bring “essential human freedoms” to the world fail to protect the home front liberties of blacks, Indians, Japanese-Americans, and Mexican-Americans? 8. Explain how World War II promoted an awareness of wwnorton.com the links between racism in the United States and colo- /studyspace nialism around the world. VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE 9. What was the impact of the GI Bill of Rights on RESOURCES AND MORE American society, including minorities? s s 10. Describe how the decisions made at the Bretton Woods s conference in 1944 created the framework for postwar s U.S. economic and foreign policy. s 706 C h a p t e r 2 2  Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War II C H A P T E R 2 3 1947 Truman Doctrine Federal Employee Loyalty program Jackie Robinson integrates major league baseball Marshall Plan Taft-Hartley Act T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S Freedom Train exhibition House Un-American Activi- ties Committee investigates A N D T H E C O L D W A R Hollywood 1948 UN adopts Universal Dec- laration of Human Rights Truman desegregates military 1948– Berlin blockade and airlift  1949 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization established 1 9 4 5 – 1 9 5 3 Soviet Union tests atomic bomb People’s Republic of China established 1950 McCarthy’s Wheeling, WV, speech NSC-68 issued McCarran Internal Security Act 1950– Korean War 1953 1953 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed for spying 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings 1955 Warsaw Pact organized The Cold War led to widespread fears of a communist takeover in the United States (a task far beyond the capacity of the minuscule American Communist Party). This image is the cover of a comic book warning of the danger that communists might overthrow the government and detailing the horrors of life in a communist America. It was published in 1947 by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society of St. Paul, Minnesota, a religious organization. Church groups distributed some 4 million copies. F O C U S On September 16, 1947, the 160th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, the Freedom Train opened to the public in Philadelphia. A traveling exhibition of 133 historical documents, the train, bedecked in red, white, and blue, soon embarked on a sixteen- Q U E S T I O N S month tour that took it to more than 300 American cities. Never before or since have so many cherished pieces of Americana—among them s the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the and ideological conflicts Gettysburg Address—been assembled in one place. prompted the Cold War? The idea for the Freedom Train originated in 1946 with the Department of Justice. President Harry S. Truman endorsed it as a s way of contrasting American freedom with “the destruction of liberty reshape ideas of American by the Hitler tyranny.” Since direct government funding raised fears of freedom? propaganda, however, the administration turned the project over to a nonprofit group, the American Heritage Foundation. s By any measure, the Freedom Train was an enormous success. initiatives of Truman’s Behind the scenes, however, the Freedom Train demonstrated that the domestic policies? meaning of freedom remained as controversial as ever. The liberal staff members at the National Archives who proposed s the initial list of documents had included the Wagner Act of 1935, which anticommunism of the Cold guaranteed workers the right to form unions, as well as President Roosevelt’s War have on American Four Freedoms speech of 1941, with its promise to fight “freedom from politics and culture? want.” The more conservative American Heritage Foundation removed these documents. They also deleted from the original list the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which had established the principle of equal civil and political rights regardless of race after the Civil War. In the end, nothing on the train referred to organized labor or any twentieth-century social legislation. The only documents relating to African-Americans were the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, and a 1776 letter by South Carolina patriot Henry Laurens criticizing slavery. On the eve of the train’s unveiling, the poet Langston Hughes wondered whether there would be “Jim Crow on the Freedom Train.” “When it stops in Mississippi,” Hughes asked, “will it be made plain/Everybody’s got a right to board the Freedom Train?” In fact, with the Truman administration about to make civil rights a major priority, the train’s organizers announced that they would not permit segregated viewing. In an unprecedented move, the American Heritage Foundation canceled visits to Memphis, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, when local authorities insisted on separating visitors by race. The Freedom Train visited forty-seven other southern cities without incident. Even as the Freedom Train reflected a new sense of national unease about expressions of racial inequality, its journey also revealed the growing 708 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What series of events and ideological conflicts prompted the Cold War? impact of the Cold War. In the spring of 1947, a few months before the train was dedicated, President Truman committed the United States to the worldwide containment of Soviet power and inaugurated a program to root out “disloyal” persons from government employment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation began compiling reports on those who found the train objectionable. The Freedom Train revealed how the Cold War helped to reshape freedom’s meaning, identifying it ever more closely with anticommunism, “free enterprise,” and the defense of the social and economic status quo. O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R T h e T w o P o w e r s The cover of a comic book The United States emerged from World War II as by far the world’s promoting the Freedom Train in greatest power. The United States accounted for half the world’s man- 1948. The image links the train to Paul Revere’s ride and, more ufacturing capacity. It alone possessed the atomic bomb. American broadly, the Revolutionary era. leaders believed that the nation’s security depended on the security of Europe and Asia, and that American prosperity required global eco- nomic reconstruction. The only power that in any way could rival the United States was the Soviet Union, whose armies now occupied most of eastern Europe, includ- Soviet power ing the eastern part of Germany. Its crucial role in defeating Hitler and its claim that communism had wrested a vast backward nation into moder- nity gave the Soviet Union considerable prestige in Europe and among colonial peoples struggling for independence. Having lost more than 20 million dead and suffered immense devastation during the war, how- ever, Stalin’s government was in no position to embark on new military adventures. But the Soviet government remained determined to establish a sphere of influence in eastern Europe, through which Germany had twice invaded Russia in the past thirty years. T h e R o o t s o f C o n t a i n m e n t In retrospect, it seems all but inevitable that the two major powers to emerge from the war would come into conflict. Born of a common foe rather than common long-term interests, values, or history, the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union began to unravel almost from the day that peace was declared. O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R 709 The Cold War in the The first confrontation of the Cold War took place in the Middle East. Middle East At the end of World War II, Soviet troops had occupied parts of northern Iran, hoping to pressure that country to grant it access to its rich oil fields. Under British and American pressure, however, Stalin quickly withdrew Soviet forces. At the same time, however, the Soviets installed procommu- nist governments in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, a step they claimed was no different from American domination of Latin America or Britain’s determination to maintain its own empire. Early in 1946, in his famous Long Telegram from Moscow, American George Kennan diplomat George Kennan advised the Truman administration that the Soviets could not be dealt with as a normal government. Communist ide- ology drove them to try to expand their power throughout the world, he claimed, and only the United States had the ability to stop them. His tele- gram laid the foundation for what became known as the policy of “contain- ment,” according to which the United States committed itself to preventing any further expansion of Soviet power. Shortly afterward, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, Britain’s for- mer wartime prime minister Winston Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” had descended across Europe, partitioning the free West from the communist East. But not until March 1947, in a speech announcing what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, did the president officially embrace the Cold War as the foundation of American foreign policy and describe it as a worldwide struggle over the future of freedom. President Harry S Truman delivering his Truman Doctrine speech before T h e T r u m a n D o c t r i n e Congress on March 12, 1947. Harry S Truman never expected to become pres- ident. When he assumed the presidency after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Truman found himself forced to decide foreign policy debates in which he had previously played virtually no role. Convinced that Stalin could not be trusted and that the United States had a responsibility to provide leadership to a world that he tended to view in stark, black-and-white terms, Truman soon determined to put the policy of contain- ment into effect. The immediate occasion for this epochal decision came early in 1947 when Britain informed the United States that because its economy had been shattered by the war, it had 710 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What series of events and ideological conflicts prompted the Cold War? no choice but to end military and financial aid to two crucial governments— Greece, a monarchy threatened by a communist-led rebellion, and Turkey, Aid to Greece and Turkey from which the Soviets were demanding joint control of the straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Britain asked the United States to fill the vacuum. The Soviet Union had little to do with the internal problems of Greece and Turkey, where opposition to corrupt, undemocratic regimes was largely homegrown. But the two countries occupied strategically impor- tant sites at the gateway to southeastern Europe and the oil-rich Middle East. Truman had been told by Senate leader Arthur Vandenberg that the only way a reluctant public and Congress would support aid to these governments was for the president to “scare hell” out of the American people. Truman rolled out the heaviest weapon in his rhetorical arsenal— the defense of freedom. As the leader of the “free world,” the United States Freedom and containment must now shoulder the responsibility of supporting “freedom-loving peoples” wherever communism threatened them. Twenty-four times in the eighteen-minute speech, Truman used the words “free” or “freedom.” Truman succeeded in persuading both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to support his policy, beginning a long period of bipartisan sup- port for the containment of communism. As Truman’s speech to Congress suggested, the Cold War was, in part, an ideological conflict. Both sides claimed to be promoting freedom and social justice while defending their own security, and each offered its social system as a model the rest of the world should follow. Consequences of the Truman Truman’s rhetoric suggested that the United States had assumed a Doctrine permanent global responsibility. The speech set a precedent for American assistance to anticommunist regimes throughout the world, no matter how undemocratic, and for the creation of a set of global military alliances directed against the Soviet Union. There soon followed the creation of new national security bodies immune from democratic oversight, such as the Atomic Energy Commission, National Security Council, and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the last established in 1947 to gather intelli- gence and conduct secret military operations abroad. T h e M a r s h a l l P l a n The threat of American military action overseas formed only one pillar of containment. Secretary of State George C. Marshall spelled out the other in a speech at Harvard University in June 1947. Marshall pledged the United States to contribute billions of dollars to finance the economic recovery of Postwar foreign aid to Europe Europe. Two years after the end of the war, much of the continent still lay O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R 711 in ruins with widespread food shortages and rampant inflation. The economic chaos had strengthened the communist parties of France and Italy. American policymakers feared that these coun- tries might fall into the Soviet orbit. The Marshall Plan offered a posi- tive vision to go along with contain- ment. Avoiding Truman’s language of a world divided between free and unfree blocs, Marshall insisted, “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.” The Marshall Plan proved to be one of the most successful foreign aid programs in history. By 1950, western Bales of American cotton in a warehouse at the French port of Le European production exceeded prewar levels and the region was poised Havre, 1949. Part of the Marshall Plan to follow the United States down the road to a mass-consumption society. aid program, the shipment helped to Because the Soviet Union refused to participate, fearing American control revive the French cotton industry. over the economies of eastern Europe, the Marshall Plan further solidified the division of the continent. At the same time, the United States worked out with twenty-three other Western nations the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which proposed to stimulate freer trade among the participants, creating an enormous market for American goods and investment. T h e R e c o n s t r u c t i o n o f J a p a n Under the guidance of General Douglas MacArthur, the “supreme com- A democratic constitution mander” in Japan until 1948, that country adopted a new, democratic con- stitution. Thanks to American insistence, and against the wishes of most Japanese leaders, the new constitution gave women the right to vote for the first time in Japan’s history. Furthermore, Article 9 of the new constitution stated that Japan would renounce forever the policy of war and armed aggression, and would maintain only a modest self-defense force. The United States also oversaw the economic reconstruction of Japan. Initially, the United States proposed to dissolve Japan’s giant industrial cor- porations, which had contributed so much to the nation’s war effort. But this Japan’s recovery plan was abandoned in 1948 in favor of an effort to rebuild Japan’s industrial 712 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What series of events and ideological conflicts prompted the Cold War? base as a bastion of anticommunist strength in Asia. By the 1950s, thanks to American economic assistance, the adoption of new technologies, and low spending on the military, Japan’s economic recovery was in full swing. T h e B e r l i n B l o c k a d e a n d N A T O Meanwhile, the Cold War intensified and, despite the Marshall Plan, increasingly took a militaristic turn. At the end of World War II, each of the four victorious powers assumed control of a section of occupied Occupation of Germany Germany, and of Berlin, located deep in the Soviet zone. In June 1948, the United States, Britain, and France introduced a separate currency in their zones, a prelude to the creation of a new West German government that would be aligned with them in the Cold War. In response, the Soviets cut off road and rail traffic from the American, British, and French zones of occupied Germany to Berlin. An eleven-month airlift followed, with Western planes supplying fuel The Berlin airlift and food to their zones of the city. When Stalin lifted the blockade in May 1949, the Truman administration had won a major victory. Soon, two new nations emerged, East and West Germany, each allied with a side in the Cold War. Berlin itself remained divided. Not until 1991 would Germany be reunified. Also in 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, ending the American monopoly of that weapon. In the same year, the United States, Canada, and ten western European nations established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), pledging mutual defense against any future Soviet attack. Soon, West Germany became a crucial part of NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty was the first long-term military alliance between the United States and Europe since the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France during the American Revolution. The Soviets formalized their own eastern European alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955. T h e G r o w i n g C o m m u n i s t C h a l l e n g e In 1949, communists led by Mao Zedong emerged victorious in the long Chinese civil war—a serious setback for the policy of containment. Assailed by Republicans for having “lost” China (which, of course, the “Losing” China United States never “had” in the first place), the Truman administra- tion refused to recognize the new government—the People’s Republic of China—and blocked it from occupying China’s seat at the United Nations. Until the 1970s, the United States insisted that the ousted regime, which O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R 713 C O L D W A R E U R O P E , 1 9 5 6 ICELAND Berlin Wal, 1 West 96 Berlin 1 East FINLAND Berlin SWEDEN NORWAY Occupation Zones American French North British Soviet IRELAND Sea DENMARK GREAT Baltic Sea BRITAIN SOVIET UNION London NETHERLANDS Berlin Atlantic EAST POLAND Bonn Warsaw Ocean BELGIUM GERMANY WEST Paris Prague LUXEMBOURGGERMANY CZECHOSLOVAKIA FRANCE AUSTRIA Budapest SWITZERLAND HUNGARY ROMANIA Bucharest YUGOSLAVIA PORTUGAL SPAIN ITALY Black Sea Sofia Lisbon Corsica Tirane BULGARIA ALBANIA Ankara Sardinia GREECE TURKEY Athens Sicily SYRIA MOROCCO IRAQ M CYPRUS LEBANON TUNISIA Crete editerranean Se (Great Britain) a ISRAEL JORDAN ALGERIA (France) SAUDI ARABIA NATO countries LIBYA EGYPT Red Sea Warsaw Pact countries 0 250 500 miles 0 250 500 kilometers The division of Europe between communist and noncommunist nations, solidified by the early 1950s, would last for nearly forty years. 714 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What series of events and ideological conflicts prompted the Cold War? had been forced into exile on the island of Taiwan, remained the legitimate government of China. In the wake of Soviet-American confrontations in Europe, the com- munist victory in China, and Soviet success in developing an atomic bomb, the National Security Council approved a call for a permanent military build-up to enable the United States to pursue a global crusade against A global crusade against communism communism. Known as NSC-68, this 1950 manifesto described the Cold War as an epic struggle between “the idea of freedom” and the “idea of slavery under the grim oligarchy of the Kremlin.” T h e K o r e a n W a r Initially, American postwar policy focused on Europe. But it was in Asia that the Cold War suddenly turned hot. Occupied by Japan during World War II, Korea had been divided in 1945 into Soviet and American zones. These zones soon evolved into two governments: communist North Korea A divided Korea and anticommunist South Korea, undemocratic but aligned with the United States. In June 1950, the North Korean army invaded the south, hoping to reunify the country under communist control. North Korean soldiers soon occupied most of the peninsula. The Truman administration persuaded the United Nations Security Council to authorize the use of force to repel the invasion. (The Soviets, who could have vetoed the resolu- tion, were boycotting Security Council meetings to protest the refusal to seat communist China.) American troops did the bulk of the fighting on this first battlefield of the Cold War. In September 1950, General Douglas MacArthur launched McArthur in Korea a daring counterattack at Inchon, behind North Korean lines. MacArthur’s army soon occupied most of North Korea. Truman now hoped to unite Korea under a pro-American government. But in October 1950, when UN forces neared the Chinese border, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops intervened, driving them back in bloody fighting. MacArthur demanded the right to push north again and possibly even invade China The Chinese in Korea and use nuclear weapons against it. But Truman, fearing an all-out war on the Asian mainland, refused. MacArthur did not fully accept the principle of civilian control of the military. When he went public with criticism of the president, Truman removed him from command. The war then settled into a stalemate around the thirty-eighth parallel, the original boundary between the two Koreas. Not until 1953 was an armistice agreed to, essen- tially restoring the prewar status quo. There has never been a formal peace treaty ending the Korean War. O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R 715 T H E K O R E A N W A R , 1 9 5 0 – 1 9 5 3 U.S.S.R. North Korean offensive, June–September 1950 UN offensive, September–November 1950 Communist Chinese counteroffensive, November 1950–January 1951 Farthest UN advance CHINA Chongjin November 1950 NORTH KOREA Hungnam S e a o f Ja p a n Wonsan Pyongyang Armistice Line June 27, 1953 Chorwon Kumhwa Kaesong 38th Parallel Panmunjom Chunchon Seoul Inchon Wonju Inchon Landing Osan September 15, 1950 Ye l l o w Taejon S e a SOUTH Farthest North Korean advance KOREA September 1950 Pusan orea Strait JAPAN K 0 50 100 miles 0 50 100 kilometers As this map indicates, when General Douglas MacArthur launched his surprise landing at Inchon, North Korean forces controlled nearly the entire Korean peninsula. 716 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What series of events and ideological conflicts prompted the Cold War? More than 33,000 Americans died in Korea. The Asian death toll reached an estimated 1 million Korean soldiers and 2 million civilians, along with hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops. Korea made it clear that the Cold War, which began in Europe, had become a global conflict. C o l d W a r C r i t i c s In the Soviet Union, Stalin had consolidated a brutal dictatorship that jailed or mur- dered millions of Soviet citizens. With its one-party rule, stringent state control of the A photograph of a street battle in arts and intellectual life, and government-controlled economy, the Soviet Seoul, South Korea, during the Korean War illustrates the ferocity of Union presented a stark opposite of democracy and “free enterprise.” As a the fighting. number of contemporary critics, few of them sympathetic to Soviet com- munism, pointed out, however, casting the Cold War in terms of a world- wide battle between freedom and slavery had unfortunate consequences. In a penetrating critique of Truman’s policies, Walter Lippmann, one Walter Lippmann of the nation’s most prominent journalists, objected to turning foreign policy into an “ideological crusade.” To view every challenge to the status quo as part of a contest with the Soviet Union, Lippmann correctly predicted, would require the United States to recruit and subsidize an “array of satellites, clients, dependents and puppets.” It would have to intervene continuously in the affairs of nations whose political problems did not arise from Moscow and could not be easily understood in terms of the battle between freedom and slavery. World War II, he went on, had shaken the foundations of European empires. In the tide of revolutionary nationalism now sweeping the world, communists were certain to play an important role. I m p e r i a l i s m a n d D e c o l o n i z a t i o n World War II had increased American awareness of the problem of imperi- alism. Many movements for colonial independence borrowed the language of the American Declaration of Independence in demanding the right to self-government. Liberal Democrats and black leaders urged the Truman administration to take the lead in promoting worldwide decolonization, The Free World insisting that a Free World worthy of the name should not include colonies O R I G I N S O F T H E C O L D W A R 717 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m W i l l H e r b e r g , P r o t e s t a n t , C a t h o l i c , J e w ( 1 9 5 5 ) The Jewish philosopher Will Herberg was one of the more influential writers of the 1950s. In this excerpt, he analyzes the concept of the American way of life, a key slogan of the Cold War. What is this American Way of Life that we have said constitutes the “common religion” of American society? . . . The American Way of Life is the symbol by which Americans define themselves and establish their unity. . . . On its political side it means the Constitution; on its economic side, “free enterprise”; on its social side, an equalitarianism which is not only compatible with but indeed actually implies vigorous economic competition and high mobility. . . . The American Way of Life is humanitarian, “forward looking,” optimistic. Americans are easily the most generous and philanthropic people in the world, in terms of their ready and unstinting response to suffering anywhere on the globe. The American believes in progress, in self-improvement, and quite fanatically in education. But above all, the American is idealistic. . . . And because they are so idealistic, Americans tend to be moralistic: they are inclined to see all issues as plain and simple, black and white, issues of morality. Every struggle in which they are seriously engaged becomes a “crusade.” To Mr. Eisenhower, who in many ways exemplifies American religion in a particularly representative way, the second world war was a “crusade” (as was the first to Woodrow Wilson); . . . and so is his administration—a “battle for the republic” against “godless Communism” abroad and against “corruption and materialism” at home. . . . It is the secret of what outsiders must take to be the incredible self-righteousness of the American people, who tend to see the world divided into an innocent, virtuous America confronted with a corrupt, devious, and guileful Europe and Asia. 718 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War F r o m H e n r y S t e e l e C o m m a g e r , “ W h o I s L o y a l t o A m e r i c a ? ” H a r p e r ’ s ( S e p t e m b e r 1 9 4 7 ) In a sharply worded essay written in 1947, the prominent historian Henry Steele Commager commented on how the anticommunist crusade was stifling the expression of dissent and promoting an idea of patriotism that equated loyalty to the nation with the uncritical acceptance of American society and institutions. Increasingly, Congress is concerned with the eradication of disloyalty and the defense of Americanism, and scarcely a day passes . . . that the outlines of the new loyalty and the new Americanism are not etched more sharply in public policy. . . . In the making is a revival of the red hysteria of the early 1920s, one of the shabbiest chapters in the history of American democracy, and more than a revival, for the new crusade is designed not merely to frustrate Communism but to formulate a positive definition of Americanism, and a positive concept of loyalty. What is this new loyalty? It is, above all, conformity. It is the uncritical and unquestioning acceptance of America as it is—the political institutions, the social relationships, the economic practices. It rejects inquiry into the race question or socialized medicine, or public housing, or into the wisdom or validity of our foreign policy. It regards as particularly heinous any challenge to what is called “the system of private enterprise,” identifying that system with Americanism. It abandons . . . the once popular concept of progress, and regards America as a finished product, perfect and complete. It is, it must be added, easily satisfied. For it wants not intellectual conviction nor spiritual conquest, but mere outward conformity. In matters of loyalty, it takes the word for the deed, the gesture for the principle. It is content with the flag salute. . . . It is satisfied with membership in respectable organizations and, as it assumes that every Q U E S T I O N S member of a liberal organization is a Communist, 1. What does Herberg think are the concludes that every member of a conservative one is a true American. It has not yet learned that strengths and weaknesses of the not everyone who saith Lord, Lord, shall enter into American outlook? the kingdom of Heaven. It is designed neither to 2. Why does Commager feel that the new discover real disloyalty nor to foster true loyalty. patriotism makes “a mockery” of the The concept of loyalty as conformity is a false Bill of Rights? one. It is narrow and restrictive, denies freedom of thought and of conscience. . . . What do men know 3. How does Herberg’s analysis help to of loyalty who make a mockery of the Declaration explain the violations of civil liberties of Independence and the Bill of Rights? deplored by Commager? V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 719 and empires. But as the Cold War developed, the United States backed away from pressuring its European allies to grant self-government to colo- nies like French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and British possessions like the Gold Coast and Nigeria in Africa and Malaya in Asia. No matter how repressive to its own people, if a nation joined the worldwide anticommunist alliance led by the United States, it was counted as a member of the Free World. The Republic of South Africa, for example, was considered a part of the Free World even though its white minority had deprived the black population of nearly all their rights. T H E C O L D W A R A N D T H E I D E A O F F R E E D O M Among other things, the Cold War was an ideological struggle, a battle, in a popular phrase of the 1950s, for the “hearts and minds” of people throughout the world. During the 1950s, freedom became an inescapable theme of academic research, popular journalism, mass culture, and official pronouncements. One of the more unusual Cold War battlefields involved American history and culture. National security agencies encouraged Hollywood The Cold War in the movies to produce anticommunist movies, such as The Red Menace (1949) and I Married a Communist (1950), and urged that film scripts be changed to remove references to less-than-praiseworthy aspects of American history, such as Indian removal and racial discrimination. To counteract the widespread European view of the United States as a cultural backwater, the CIA secretly funded an array of overseas publica- tions, conferences, publishing houses, concerts, and art exhibits. And to try to improve the international image of American race relations, the gov- ernment sent jazz musicians and other black performers abroad, especially to Africa and Asia. F r e e d o m a n d T o t a l i t a r i a n i s m Along with freedom, the Cold War’s other great mobilizing concept was “totalitarianism.” The term originated in Europe between the world wars to describe fascist Italy and Nazi Germany—aggressive, ideologically 720 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War How did the Cold War reshape ideas of American freedom? driven states that sought to subdue all of civil society, including churches, unions, and other voluntary associations, to their control. By the 1950s, the term had become shorthand for describing those on the Soviet side in the Cold War. As the eventual collapse of communist governments in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union would demonstrate, the idea of totalitarian- ism greatly exaggerated the totality of government control of private life and thought in these countries. Just as the conflict over slavery redefined American freedom in the nineteenth century and the confrontation with the Nazis shaped under- standings of freedom during World War II, the Cold War reshaped them once again. Whatever Moscow stood for was by definition the opposite of freedom, including anything to which the word “socialized” could be attached. In the largest public relations campaign in American history, the American Medical Association raised the specter of “socialized medicine” to defeat Truman’s proposal for national health insurance. T h e R i s e o f H u m a n R i g h t s The Cold War also affected the emerging concept of human rights. The idea that there are rights that are applicable to all of humanity originated during the eighteenth century in the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. The atrocities committed during World War II, as well as the global language of the Four Freedoms, forcefully raised the issue of human rights in the postwar world. After the war, the victorious Allies put numerous German officials on trial before special courts at A poster for The Red Menace, one of numerous anticommunist films Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. For the first time, individuals produced by Hollywood during the were held directly accountable to the international community for viola- 1950s. tions of human rights. The trials resulted in prison terms for many Nazi officials and the execution of ten leaders. In 1948, the UN General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee chaired by Eleanor The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Roosevelt. It identified a broad range of rights to be enjoyed by people everywhere, including freedom of speech, religious toleration, and pro- tection against arbitrary government, as well as social and economic entitlements like the right to an adequate standard of living and access to housing, education, and medical care. The document had no enforcement mechanism. Some considered it an exercise in empty rhetoric. But the core principle—that a nation’s treatment of its own citizens should be subject to outside evaluation—slowly became part of the language in which free- dom was discussed. T H E C O L D W A R A N D T H E I D E A O F F R E E D O M 721 A m b i g u i t i e s o f H u m a n R i g h t s One reason for the lack of an enforcement mechanism in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was that both the United States and the Soviet Union refused to accept outside interference in their internal affairs or restraints on their ability to conduct foreign policy as they desired. In 1947, the NAACP did file a petition with the United Nations asking it to Human rights in world investigate racism in the United States as a violation of human rights. But affairs the UN decided that it lacked jurisdiction. Nonetheless, since the end of World War II, the enjoyment of human rights has increasingly taken its place in definitions of freedom across the globe, especially, perhaps, where such rights are flagrantly violated. After the Cold War ended, the idea of human rights would play an increasingly prominent role in world affairs. But during the 1950s, Cold War imperatives shaped the concept. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could resist emphasizing certain provisions of the Universal Declaration while ignoring others. The Soviets claimed to provide all citi- zens with social and economic rights, but violated democratic rights and civil liberties. Many Americans condemned these nonpolitical rights as a path to socialism. T H E T R U M A N P R E S I D E N C Y T h e F a i r D e a l With the end of World War II, President Truman’s first domestic task Economic transition was to preside over the transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy. More than 12 million men remained in uniform in August 1945. They wanted nothing more than to return home to their families. Some return- ing soldiers found the adjustment to civilian life difficult. The divorce rate in 1945 rose to double its prewar level. Others took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights (discussed in the previous chapter) to obtain home mortgages, set up small businesses, and embark on college educations. The major- ity of returning soldiers entered the labor force—one reason why more than 2 million women workers lost their jobs. The government abolished wartime agencies that regulated industrial production and labor relations, and it dismantled wartime price controls, leading to a sharp rise in prices. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, President Truman, backed by party liberals and organized labor, moved to revive the stalled 722 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What were the major initiatives of Truman’s domestic policies? momentum of the New Deal. Truman’s pro- gram, which he announced in September 1945 and would later call the Fair Deal, focused on improving the social safety net and raising the standard of living of ordinary Americans. He called on Congress to increase the mini- mum wage, enact a program of national health insurance, and expand public housing, Social Security, and aid to education. T h e P o s t w a r S t r i k e W a v e In 1946, a new wave of labor militancy swept the country. The AFL and CIO launched Operation A few of the numerous World War II Dixie, a campaign to bring unionization to the South and, by so doing, shat- veterans who attended college after ter the hold of anti-labor conservatives on the region’s politics. More than the war, thanks to the GI Bill. 200 labor organizers entered the region, seeking support especially in the southern textile industry, the steel industry in the Birmingham region, and agriculture. As inflation soared following the removal of price controls, the resulting drop in workers’ real income sparked the largest strike wave in American history. Nearly 5 million workers—including those in the steel, auto, coal, and other key industries—walked off their jobs, demanding wage increases. The strike of 750,000 steelworkers represented the larg- est single walkout in American history to that date. T h e R e p u b l i c a n R e s u r g e n c e In the congressional elections of 1946, large numbers of middle-class voters, alarmed by the labor turmoil, voted Republican. For the first time since the 1920s, Republicans swept to control of both houses of Congress. Meanwhile, in the face of vigorous opposition from southern employ- ers and public officials and the reluctance of many white workers to join interracial labor unions, Operation Dixie had failed to unionize the South or dent the political control of conservative Democrats in the region. The election of 1946 ensured that a conservative coalition of Republicans and A conservative coalition southern Democrats would continue to dominate Congress. Congress turned aside Truman’s Fair Deal program. It enacted tax cuts for wealthy Americans and, over the president’s veto, in 1947 passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which sought to reverse some of the gains made by orga- nized labor in the past decade. The measure authorized the president to sus- pend strikes by ordering an eighty-day “cooling-off period,” and it banned T H E T R U M A N P R E S I D E N C Y 723 sympathy strikes and secondary boycotts (labor actions directed not at an employer but at those who did business with him). It outlawed the closed shop, which required a worker to be a union member when taking up a job, and authorized states to pass “right-to-work” laws, prohibiting other forms of compulsory union membership. It also forced union officials to swear that they were not communists. Over time, as population and capital investment shifted to states with “right-to-work” laws like Texas, Florida, Decline of organized labor and North Carolina, Taft-Hartley contributed to the decline of organized labor’s share of the nation’s workforce. P o s t w a r C i v i l R i g h t s During his first term, Truman reached out in unprecedented ways to the nation’s black community. In the years immediately following World The status of black Americans War II, the status of black Americans enjoyed a prominence in national affairs unmatched since Reconstruction. Between 1945 and 1951, eleven states from New York to New Mexico established fair employment practices commissions, and numerous cit- ies passed laws against discrimination in access to jobs and public accom- modations. A broad civil rights coalition involving labor, religious groups, and black organizations supported these measures. By 1952, 20 percent An NAACP youth march against of black southerners were registered to vote, nearly a seven-fold increase racial segregation in Houston, Texas, since 1940. (Most of the gains took place in the Upper South—in Alabama in 1947 illustrates the civil rights and Mississippi, the heartland of white supremacy, the numbers barely upsurge of the years immediately following the end of World War II. budged.) Also in 1952, for the first time since record keeping began seventy years earlier, no lynchings took place in the United States. In another indication that race rela- tions were in flux, the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 challenged the long-standing exclu- sion of black players from major league baseball by adding Jackie Robinson to their team. Robinson, who possessed both remarkable athletic ability and a passion for equality, had been tried and acquit- ted for insubordination in 1944 when he refused to move to the back of a bus at Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the army. But he promised Dodger owner Branch Rickey that he would not retaliate when subjected to racist taunts by opposing fans and play- 724 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What were the major initiatives of Truman’s domestic policies? ers. His dignity in the face of constant verbal abuse won Robinson nationwide respect, and his baseball prowess earned him the Rookie of the Year award. His success opened the door to the integration of baseball and led to the demise of the Negro Leagues, to which black players had previously been confined. T o S e c u r e T h e s e R i g h t s In October 1947, a Commission on Civil Rights appointed by the president issued To Secure These Rights, one of the most devastating indictments ever published of racial inequality in America. It called on the federal government to assume the responsibility for abolishing segregation and Jackie Robinson sliding into third ensuring equal treatment in housing, employ- base, 1949. ment, education, and the criminal justice system. In February 1948, Truman presented an ambitious civil rights program to Congress, calling for a permanent federal civil rights commission, national laws against lynching and the poll tax, and action to ensure equal access to jobs and education. Congress, as Truman anticipated, approved none of his proposals. But in July 1948, just as the presidential campaign was getting Desegregating the armed under way, Truman issued an executive order desegregating the armed forces forces. The armed services became the first large institution in American life to promote racial integration actively and to attempt to root out long- standing racist practices. The Korean War would be the first American con- flict fought by an integrated army since the War of Independence. The Democratic platform of 1948 was the most progressive in the party’s history. Led by Hubert Humphrey, the young mayor of Minne- apolis, party liberals overcame southern resistance and added a strong civil rights plank to the platform. T h e D i x i e c r a t a n d W a l l a c e R e v o l t s “I say the time has come,” Humphrey told the Democratic national con- vention, “to walk out of the shadow of states’ rights and into the sunlight of human rights.” Whereupon numerous southern delegates—dubbed Dixiecrats by the press—walked out of the gathering. They soon formed the States’ Rights Democratic Party and nominated for president Governor T H E T R U M A N P R E S I D E N C Y 725 Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. His platform called for the “complete segregation of the races” and his cam- paign drew most of its support from those alarmed by Truman’s civil rights initiatives. Also in 1948, a group of left- wing critics of Truman’s foreign policy formed the Progressive Party and nominated former vice presi- dent Henry A. Wallace for president. Wallace advocated an expansion of social welfare programs at home and denounced racial segregation even more vigorously than Truman. When he campaigned in the South, angry white crowds attacked him. But his Blacks, led by A. Philip Randolph real difference with the president con- (left), picketing at the 1948 cerned the Cold War. Wallace called for international control of nuclear Democratic national convention. The weapons and a renewed effort to develop a relationship with the Soviet delegates’ adoption of a strong civil Union based on economic co-operation rather than military confrontation. rights plank led representatives of The influence of the now much-reduced Communist Party in Wallace’s cam- several southern states to withdraw and nominate their own candidate for paign led to an exodus of New Deal liberals and severe attacks on his candi- president, Strom Thurmond. dacy. A vote for Wallace, Truman declared, was in effect a vote for Stalin. Wallace threatened to draw votes from Truman on the left, and Thurmond to undermine the president’s support in the South, where whites had voted solidly for the Democrats throughout the twentieth century. But Truman’s main opponent, fortunately for the president, was the colorless Republican Thomas A. Dewey. Certain of victory and an ineffective speaker and campaigner, Dewey seemed unwilling to commit himself on controversial issues. Truman, by contrast, ran an aggressive campaign. He crisscrossed the country by train, delivering fiery attacks on the Republican-controlled “do-nothing Congress.” Virtually every public-opinion poll and newspaper report predicted Truman’s victory a Dewey victory. Truman’s success—by 303 to 189 electoral votes— represented one of the greatest upsets in American political history. For the first time since 1868, blacks (in the North, where they enjoyed the right to vote) played a decisive role in the outcome. Thurmond carried four Deep South states, demonstrating that the race issue, couched in terms of individ- ual freedom, had the potential to lead traditionally Democratic white voters to desert their party. In retrospect, the States’ Rights campaign offered a 726 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What were the major initiatives of Truman’s domestic policies? preview of the political transformation that by the end T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L of the twentieth century would leave every southern E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 4 8 state in the Republican column. As for Wallace, he suffered the humiliation of polling fewer popular 8 votes than Thurmond. 4 3 4 5 4 6 4 11 4 12 47 16 3 19 4 35 3 6 10 8 25 16 4 13 28 3 25 6 8 15 11 8 T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T 8 11 1 14 4 11 4 10 9 8 9 11 12 C R U S A D E 23 10 8 For nearly half a century, the Cold War profoundly Electoral Vote Popular Vote affected American life. There would be no return to “nor- Party Candidate (Share) (Share) Democrat Truman 303 (57%) 24,105,695 (49.7%) malcy” as after World War I. The military-industrial Republican Dewey 189 (36%) 21,969,170 (45.3%) establishment created during World War II would States ’ Rights Thurmond 39 (7%) 1,169,021 (2.4%) Progressive Wallace 1,157,172 (2.4%) become permanent, not temporary. National security Other candidates (Socialist, Prohibition, 272,713 Socialist Labor, Socialist Workers) became the stated reason for a host of government projects, including aid to higher education and the building of a new national highway system (justified by the need to speed the evacuation of major cities in the event of nuclear war). The Cold War encouraged a culture of secrecy and dishonesty. American nuclear tests, conducted on Pacific islands and in Nevada, exposed thousands of civilians to radiation that caused cancer and birth defects. A postcard promoting tourism to Las Vegas highlights as one attraction the city’s proximity to a nuclear test site. Witnessing nearby atomic explosions became a popular pastime in the city. The government failed to issue warnings of the dangers of nuclear fallout and only years later did it admit that many onlookers had contracted diseases from radiation. T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E 727 Economic growth Cold War military spending helped to fuel economic growth and support scientific research that not only perfected weaponry but also led to improved aircraft, computers, medicines, and other products with a large impact on civilian life. The Cold War reshaped immigration policy, with refugees from communism being allowed to enter the United States regardless of national-origin quotas. The international embarrassment caused by American racial policies contributed to the dismantling of segregation. And like other wars, the Cold War encouraged the drawing of a sharp line between patriotic Americans and those accused of being disloyal. At precisely the moment when the United States celebrated freedom as the foundation of American life, the right to dissent came under attack. L o y a l t y a n d D i s l o y a l t y Dividing the world between liberty and slavery automatically made those who could be linked to communism enemies of freedom. Although the assault on civil liberties came to be known as McCarthyism, it began before Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin burst onto the national scene in 1950. In 1947, less than two weeks after announcing the Truman Doctrine, the president established a loyalty review system in which government employees were required to demonstrate their patriotism without being allowed to confront accusers or, in some cases, knowing the charges against them. Along with persons suspected of disloyalty, the new Gays and the loyalty review national security system also targeted homosexuals who worked for the system government. They were deemed particularly susceptible to blackmail by Soviet agents as well as supposedly lacking the manly qualities needed to maintain the country’s resolve in the fight against communism. Ironically, the government conducted an anti-gay campaign at the very time that gay men enjoyed a powerful presence in realms of culture and commercial life being promoted as expressions of American freedom—modern art and ballet, fashion, and advertising. The loyalty program failed to uncover any cases of espionage. But the federal government dismissed several hundred persons from their jobs. The HUAC hearings on Also in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Hollywood launched a series of hearings about communist influence in Hollywood. Calling well-known screenwriters, directors, and actors to appear before the committee ensured it a wave of national publicity, which its members relished. Celebrities like producer Walt Disney and actors Gary Cooper and Ronald Reagan testified that the movie industry harbored numer- ous communists. But ten “unfriendly witnesses” refused to answer the 728 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What effects did the anticommunism of the Cold War have on American politics and culture? committee’s questions about their political beliefs or to “name names” (identify indi- vidual communists) on the grounds that the hearings violated the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and politi- cal association. The committee charged the Hollywood Ten, who included the promi- nent screenwriters Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, with contempt of Congress, and they served jail terms of six months to a year. Hollywood studios blacklisted them (denied them employment), along with more than 200 others who were accused of communist sympathies or who refused to name names. Movie stars, led by actors Humphrey T h e S p y T r i a l s Bogart and Lauren Bacall, on their way to attend the 1947 hearings of A series of highly publicized legal cases followed, which fueled the grow- the House Un-American Activities ing anticommunist hysteria. Whittaker Chambers, an editor at Time Committee, in a demonstration of magazine, testified before HUAC that during the 1930s, Alger Hiss, a support for those called to testify high-ranking State Department official, had given him secret government about alleged communist influence in documents to pass to agents of the Soviet Union. Hiss vehemently denied Hollywood. the charge, but a jury convicted him of perjury and he served five years in prison. A young congressman from California and a member of HUAC, Richard Nixon achieved national prominence because of his dogged pur- suit of Hiss. The most sensational trial involved Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg working-class Jewish communist couple from New York City (quite dif- ferent from Hiss, a member of the eastern Protestant “establishment”). In 1951, a jury convicted the Rosenbergs of conspiracy to pass secrets con- cerning the atomic bomb to Soviet agents during World War II (when the Soviets were American allies). Their chief accuser was David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, who had worked at the Los Alamos nuclear research center. The case against Julius Rosenberg rested on highly secret documents that could not be revealed in court. (When they were released many years later, the scientific information they contained seemed too crude to justify the government’s charge that Julius had passed along the “secret of the atomic bomb,” although he may have helped the Soviets speed up their atomic program.) The government had almost no evidence against Ethel T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E 729 Rosenberg, and Greenglass later admitted that he had lied in some of his testimony about her. Indeed, prosecutors seem to have indicted her in the hope of pressuring Julius to confess and implicate others. But in the atmo- Anticommunist hysteria sphere of hysteria, their conviction was certain. Even though they had been convicted of conspiracy, a far weaker charge than spying or treason, Judge Irving Kaufman called their crime “worse than murder.” They had helped, he declared, to “cause” the Korean War. Despite an international outcry, their death sentences were carried out in 1953. M c C a r t h y a n d M c C a r t h y i s m In this atmosphere, a little-known senator from Wisconsin suddenly emerged as the chief national pursuer of subversives and gave a new Joseph McCarthy name to the anticommunist crusade. Joseph R. McCarthy had won elec- tion to the Senate in 1946, partly on the basis of a fictional war record (he falsely claimed to have flown combat missions in the Pacific). In a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, McCarthy announced that he had a list of 205 communists working for the State Department. The charge was preposterous, the numbers constantly changed, and McCarthy never identified a single person guilty of genuine disloyalty. But with a genius for self-promotion, McCarthy used the Senate subcommittee he Senator Joseph R. McCarthy at the chaired to hold hearings and level wild charges against numerous indi- Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954. viduals as well as the Defense Department, the Voice of America, and other McCarthy points to a map detailing government agencies. charges about the alleged extent of the communist menace, while the McCarthy’s downfall came in 1954, when a Senate committee army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, listens investigated his charges that the army had harbored and “coddled” com- in disgust. munists. The nationally televised Army-McCarthy hearings revealed McCarthy as a bully who brow- beat witnesses and made sweeping accusations with no basis in fact. The dramatic high point came when McCarthy attacked the loyalty of a young lawyer in the firm of Joseph Welch, the army’s chief lawyer. “Let us not assassinate this lad fur- ther,” Welch pleaded. “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir?” After the hearings ended, the Republican-controlled 730 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What effects did the anticommunism of the Cold War have on American politics and culture? Senate voted to “condemn” McCarthy for his behavior. But the word “McCarthyism” had entered the political vocabulary, a shorthand for char- acter assassination, guilt by asso ciation, and abuse of power in the name of anticommunism. A n A t m o s p h e r e o f F e a r States created their own committees, modeled on HUAC, that investigated suspected communists and other dissenters. States and localities required loyalty oaths of teachers, pharmacists, and members of other professions, and they banned communists from fishing, holding a driver’s license, and, in Indiana, working as professional wrestlers. Throughout the country in the late 1940s and 1950s, those who failed to testify about their past and present political beliefs and to inform on possible communists frequently “Fire!” The cartoonist Herbert Block, lost their jobs. known as “Herblock,” offered this Local anticommunist groups forced public libraries to remove from comment in 1949 on the danger to their shelves “un-American” books like the tales of Robin Hood, who took American freedom posed by the from the rich to give to the poor. Universities refused to allow left-wing anticommunist crusade. speakers to appear on campus and fired teachers who refused to sign loy- alty oaths or to testify against others. T h e U s e s o f A n t i c o m m u n i s m There undoubtedly were Soviet spies in the United States. Yet the tiny U.S. Communist Party hardly posed a threat to American security. And the vast majority of those jailed or deprived of their livelihoods during the McCarthy era were guilty of nothing more than holding unpopular beliefs and engaging in lawful political activities. Anticommunism had many faces and purposes. A popular mass move- ment, it grew especially strong among ethnic groups like Polish-Americans, Anticommunist groups with roots in eastern European countries now dominated by the Soviet and goals Union, and among American Catholics in general, who resented and feared communists’ hostility to religion. Government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used anticommunism to expand their power. Under director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI developed files on thousands of American citizens, including political dissenters, homosexuals, and others, most of whom had no connection to communism. For business, anticom- munism became part of a campaign to identify labor unions and government intervention in the economy with socialism. White supremacists employed anticommunism as a weapon against black civil rights. Upholders of sexual T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E 731 morality and traditional gender roles raised the cry of subversion against feminism and homosexuality, both supposedly responsible for eroding the country’s fighting spirit. (Those barred from government service now included homosexuals and members of nudist colonies.) A n t i c o m m u n i s t P o l i t i c s At its height, from the late 1940s to around 1960, the anticommunist cru- sade powerfully structured American politics and culture. After launch- ing the government’s loyalty program in 1947, Truman had become increasingly alarmed at the excesses of the anticommunist crusade. He vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Bill of 1950, which required “sub- versive” groups to register with the government, allowed the denial of passports to their members, and authorized their deportation or detention on presidential order. But Congress quickly gave the measure the two- thirds majority necessary for it to become law. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, the first major piece of immigra- tion legislation since 1924, also passed over the president’s veto. Truman had called for replacing the quotas based on national origins with a more flexible system taking into account family reunion, labor needs, and politi- Immigration quotas retained cal asylum. But the McCarran-Walter Act kept the quotas in place. It also authorized the deportation of immigrants identified as communists, even if they had become citizens. But the renewed fear of aliens sparked by the anticommunist crusade went far beyond communists. In 1954, the federal government launched Operation Wetback, which employed the military to invade Mexican-American neighborhoods and round up and deport illegal aliens. Within a year, some 1 million Mexicans had been deported. Truman did secure passage of a 1950 law that added previously excluded self-employed and domestic workers to Social Security. Other- The privatization of social wise, however, the idea of expanding the New Deal welfare state faded. benefits In its place, private welfare arrangements proliferated. The labor con- tracts of unionized workers established health insurance plans, automatic cost-of-living wage increases, paid vacations, and pension plans that supplemented Social Security. Western European governments provided these benefits to all citizens. In the United States, union members in major industries enjoyed them, but not the nonunionized majority of the population, a situation that created increasing inequality among laboring Americans. Organized labor emerged as a major supporter of the foreign policy of the Cold War. Internal battles over the role of communists and their allies 732 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War What effects did the anticommunism of the Cold War have on American politics and culture? led to the purging of some of the most militant union leaders, often the ones most committed to advancing equal rights to women and racial minori- ties in the workplace. This left organized labor less able to respond to the economy’s shift to an emphasis on service rather than manufacturing, and to the rise of the civil rights movement. C o l d W a r C i v i l R i g h t s The civil rights movement also underwent a transformation. Although a few prominent black leaders, notably the singer and actor Paul Robeson Black organizations and the Cold War and the veteran crusader for equality W. E. B. Du Bois, became outspoken critics of the Cold War, most felt they had no choice but to go along. The NAACP purged communists from local branches. When the government deprived Robeson of his passport and indicted Du Bois for failing to reg- ister as an agent of the Soviet Union, few prominent Americans, white or black, protested. (The charge against Du Bois was so absurd that even at the height of McCarthyism, the judge dismissed it.) Black organizations embraced the language of the Cold War and used it for their own purposes. They insisted that by damaging the American image abroad, racial inequality played into the Russians’ hands. Thus, they helped to cement Cold War ideology as the foundation of the political culture, while complicating the idea of American freedom. President Truman, as noted above, had called for greater attention to civil rights in part to improve the American image abroad. All in all, how- ever, the height of the Cold War was an unfavorable time to raise questions about the imperfections of American society. In 1947, two months after the Truman Doctrine speech, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson delivered a major address defending the president’s pledge to aid “free peoples” seeking to preserve their “democratic institutions.” Acheson chose as his audience the Delta Council, an organization of Mississippi planters, bank- ers, and merchants. He seemed unaware that to make the case for the Cold War, he had ventured into what one historian has called the “American Siberia,” a place of grinding poverty whose black population (70 percent of the total) enjoyed neither genuine freedom nor democracy. Most of the Delta’s citizens were denied the very liberties supposedly endangered by communism. By 1948, the Truman administration’s civil rights flurry had sub- The waning civil rights impulse sided. State and local laws banning discrimination in employment and housing remained largely unenforced. In 1952, the Democrats showed how quickly the issue had faded by nominating for president Adlai T H E A N T I C O M M U N I S T C R U S A D E 733 Stevenson of Illinois, a candidate with little interest in civil rights, with southern segregationist John Sparkman as his running mate. Time would reveal that the waning of the civil rights impulse was only temporary. Yet it came at a crucial moment—the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the United States experienced the greatest economic boom Rising affluence in its history. The rise of an “affluent society” transformed American life, opening new opportunities for tens of millions of white Americans in rap- idly expanding suburbs. But it left blacks trapped in the declining rural areas of the South and urban ghettos of the North. The contrast between new opportunities and widespread prosperity for whites and continued discrimination for blacks would soon inspire a civil rights revolution and, with it, yet another redefinition of American freedom. 734 C h a p t e r 2 3 ★ The United States and the Cold War C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. What major ideological conflicts, security interests, and Long Telegram (p. 710) “containment” (p. 710) events brought about the Cold War? “iron curtain” speech (p. 710) Truman Doctrine (p. 710) 2. President Truman referred to the Truman Doctrine and National Security Council the Marshall Plan as “two halves of the same walnut.” (p. 711) Explain the similarities and differences between these Marshall Plan (p. 712) two aspects of containment. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (p. 712) 3. How did the tendency of both the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (p. 713) Soviet Union to see all international events through the NSC-68 (p. 715) lens of the Cold War lessen each country’s ability to decolonization (p. 717) understand what was happening in various countries “totalitarianism” (p. 720) around the world? Fair Deal (p. 723) Taft-Hartley Act (p. 723) 4. Why did the United States not support movements for Dixiecrats (p. 725) colonial independence around the world? loyalty review system (p. 728) Hollywood Ten (p. 729) 5. How did the government attempt to shape public opinion Army-McCarthy hearings (p. 730) during the Cold War? McCarran-Walter Act (p. 732) 6. Explain the differences between the United States’ and the Soviet Union’s application of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 7. How did the anticommunist crusade affect organized labor in the postwar period? wwnorton.com 8. What accounts for the Republican resurgence in these /studyspace years? VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE 9. What were the major components of Truman’s Fair RESOURCES AND MORE Deal? Which ones were implemented, and which ones s were not? s s 10. How did the Cold War affect civil liberties in the United s States? s C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S 735 1946 Mendez v. Westminster C H A P T E R 2 4 1947 Levittown development starts 1950 David Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd 1952 United States detonates first hydrogen bomb 1953 Soviet Union detonates A N A F F L U E N T hydrogen bomb CIA-led coups in Iran and Guatemala 1954 Brown v. Board of S O C I E T Y Education CIA-led Guatemalan coup Geneva Accords for Vietnam 1955 AFL and CIO merge  Allen Ginsberg’s Howl 1 9 5 3 – 1 9 6 0 1955– Montgomery bus boycott 1956 1956 “Southern Manifesto” Federal-Aid Highway Act Suez crisis 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine Southern Christian Leader- ship Conference organized Integration of Little Rock’s Central High School Sputnik launched 1958 National Defense Education Act 1959 Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” 1960 John F. Kennedy elected president A portrait of affluence: In this photograph by Alex Henderson, Steve Czekalinski, an employee of the DuPont Corporation, poses with his family and the food they consumed in a single year, 1951. The family spent $1,300 (around $11,000 in today’s money) on food, including 699 bottles of milk, 578 pounds of meat, and 131 dozen eggs. Nowhere else in the world in 1951 was food so available and inexpensive. In 1958, during a “thaw” in the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to exchange national exhibitions in order to F O C U S allow citizens of each “superpower” to become acquainted with life in the other. The Soviet Exhibition, unveiled in New York City in June 1959, Q U E S T I O N S featured factory machinery, scientific advances, and other illustrations of how communism had modernized a backward country. The following month, the American National Exhibition opened in Moscow. A showcase s of consumer goods and leisure equipment, complete with stereo sets, acteristics of the affluent a movie theater, home appliances, and twenty-two different cars, the society of the 1950s? exhibit, Newsweek observed, hoped to demonstrate the superiority of “modern capitalism with its ideology of political and economic freedom.” s Yet the exhibit’s real message was not freedom but consumption—or, to period of consensus in be more precise, the equating of the two. Vice President Richard Nixon both domestic policies and opened the exhibit with an address entitled “What Freedom Means to foreign affairs? Us.” He spoke of the “extraordinarily high standard of living” in the United States, with its 56 million cars and 50 million television sets. s The Moscow exhibition became the site of a classic Cold War thrusts of the civil rights confrontation over the meaning of freedom—the “kitchen debate” between movement in this period? Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Nixon and Khrushchev engaged in unscripted debate, first in the kitchen of a model suburban s ranch house, then in a futuristic “miracle kitchen” complete with a of the presidential election mobile robot that swept the floors. Supposedly the home of an average of 1960? steelworker, the ranch house represented, Nixon declared, the mass enjoyment of American freedom within a suburban setting—freedom Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the “kitchen debate,” a discussion, among other things, of the meaning of freedom, which took place in 1959 at the American National Exposition in Moscow. Khru shchev makes a point while a woman demonstrates a washing machine. A N A F F L U E N T S O C I E T Y 737 of choice among products, colors, styles, and prices. It also implied a particular role for women. Throughout his exchanges with Khrushchev, Nixon used the words “women” and “housewives” interchangeably. His stance reflected the triumph during the 1950s of a conception of freedom centered on economic abundance and consumer choice within the context of traditional family life—a vision that seemed to offer far more opportunities for the “pursuit of happiness” to men than women. T H E G O L D E N A G E The end of World War II was followed by what one scholar has called the “golden age” of capitalism, a period of economic expansion, stable prices, low unemployment, and rising standards of living that continued Economic growth until 1973. Between 1946 and 1960, the American gross national product more than doubled. Much of the benefit flowed to ordinary citizens in ris- ing wages. In every measurable way—diet, housing, income, education, recreation—most Americans lived better than their parents and grand- parents had. The official poverty rate, 30 percent of all families in 1950, had declined to 22 percent a decade later (still, to be sure, representing more than one in five Americans). Numerous innovations came into widespread use in these years, transforming Americans’ daily lives. They included television, home air-conditioning, automatic dishwashers, inexpensive long-distance tele phone calls, FIGURE 24.1 Real Gross Domestic and jet air travel. Product per Capita, 1790–2000 A C h a n g i n g E c o n o m y 30 Like other wars, the Cold War fueled U.S. industrial production and promoted a redistribution of the nation’s population 20 and economic resources. The West, espe- cially the Seattle area, southern California, and the Rocky Mountain states, benefited 10 Thousand 1996 dollars enormously from government contracts for aircraft, guided missiles, and radar 0 systems. The South became the home of 1800 1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 numerous military bases and government- Year funded shipyards. 738 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the main characteristics of the affluent society of the 1950s? In retrospect, the 1950s appear as the last decade of the industrial age Industrial strength in the United States. Since then, the American economy has shifted rapidly toward services, education, information, finance, and entertainment, while employment in manufacturing has declined. Unions’ very success in rais- ing wages inspired employers to mechanize more and more elements of manufacturing in order to reduce labor costs. In 1956, for the first time in American history, white-collar workers outnumbered blue-collar factory and manual laborers. The decade witnessed an acceleration of the transformation of south- ern life that had begun during World War II. New tractors and harvesting machinery and a continuing shift from cotton production to less labor- intensive soybean and poultry raising reduced the need for farm work- Regional changes ers. More than 3 million black and white hired hands and sharecroppers migrated out of the region. The large corporate farms of California, worked by Latino and Filipino migrant laborers, poured forth an endless supply of fruits and vegetables for the domestic and world markets. Items like oranges and orange juice, once luxuries, became an essential part of the American diet. A S u b u r b a n N a t i o n The main engines of economic growth during the 1950s, however, were residential construction and spending on consumer goods. The postwar baby boom (discussed later) and the shift of population from cities to suburbs created an enormous demand for housing, television sets, home Consumer demand appliances, and cars. During the 1950s, the number of houses in the United States doubled, nearly all of them built in the suburbs that sprang up across the landscape. William and Alfred Levitt, who shortly after the war built the first Levittown on 1,200 acres of potato fields on Long Island near New York City, became the most famous suburban developers. Levittown’s more than 10,000 houses were assembled quickly from prefabricated parts and priced well within the reach of most Americans. Levittown was soon home to 40,000 people. At the same time, suburbs required a new form of shopping center—the mall—to which people drove in their cars. The automobile, the pivot on which suburban life turned, transformed Suburbs and the automobile the nation’s daily life, just as the interstate highway system (discussed later) transformed Americans’ travel habits, making possible long-distance vacationing by car and commuting to work from ever-increasing distances. The result was an altered American landscape, leading to the construction T H E G O L D E N A G E 739 T H E I N T E R S T A T E H I G H W A Y S Y S T E M Seattle WA 90 Portland 82 15 MT ME 29 ND Butte 95 5 94 MN OR 90 Billings 89 93 84 ID 90 94 VT 75 NH 15 Minneapolis WI 81 87 SD 91 Boston 86 WY MA 90 Sioux 35 43 MI Falls 69 90 88 NY 84 25 96 CT 80 Detroit 84 RI 80 94 PA 29 IA Chicago 80 78 New York Cheyenne NE 80 88 Salt Lake City Omaha NV IL IN 69 75 71 77 NJ San Francisco 15 76 95 76 80 74 57 35 Columbus Washington, DC DE 70 Indianapolis MO OH 79 81 UT CO Cincinnati MD 5 70 Kansas City 70 Louisville 64 WV 64 St. Louis CA 15 KS VA 35 55 KY75 44 24 81 77 95 40 AZ Los Angeles Nashville NC Charlotte Oklahoma City AR TN 40 40 10 17 75 Albuquerque 40 65 San Diego 85 26 Little Rock NM OK 8 25 44 27 Atlanta SC 30 20 Birmingham Tucson Charleston 10 Fort Worth 16 19 MS AL GA El Paso 20 Dallas 20 Montgomery Savannah 65 95 TX 49 55 59 10 35 45 Mobile 10 Jacksonville LA AK Houston 10 New Orleans 75 San Antonio no interstate 4 highways 37 Tampa 95 FL H1 H2 HI Honolulu Miami H3 0 500 miles 0 150 miles 0 250 500 miles 0 500 kilometers 0 150 kilometers 0 250 500 kilometers Begun in 1956 and completed in 1993, the interstate highway system of motels, drive-in movie theaters, and roadside eating establishments. dramatically altered the American landscape and Americans’ daily lives. The first McDonald’s fast food restaurant opened in Illinois in 1954. It made possible more rapid travel Within ten years, having been franchised by the California business- by car and stimulated the growth of man Ray Kroc, approximately 700 McDonald’s stands had been built, suburbs along its many routes. which had sold over 400 million hamburgers. The car symbolized the identification of freedom with individual mobility and private choice. Americans could imagine themselves as modern versions of western pioneers, able to leave behind urban crowds and workplace pressures for the “open road.” T h e G r o w t h o f t h e W e s t Indeed, it was California that became the most prominent symbol of the postwar suburban boom. Between World War II and 1975, more than 30 million Americans moved west of the Mississippi River. In 1963, Cal- ifornia surpassed New York to become the nation’s most populous state. 740 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the main characteristics of the affluent society of the 1950s? “Centerless” western cities like Houston, Phoenix, and Los Angeles dif- fered greatly from traditional urban cen- ters in the East. Rather than consisting of downtown business districts linked to residential neighborhoods by public transportation, western cities were decen- tralized clusters of single-family homes and businesses united by a web of high- way. Life centered around the car; people drove to and from work and did their shopping at malls reachable only by driv- ing. In other sections of the country as well, shopping shifted to suburban cen- Ernst Haas’s 1969 photograph of ters, and old downtown business districts stagnated. The spread of Albuquerque, New Mexico, could suburban homes created millions of new lawns. Today, more land is have been taken in any one of scores of American communities. As cities cultivated in grass than any agricultural crop in the United States. spread out, “strips,” consisting of motels, gas stations, and nationally franchised businesses, became T h e T V W o r l d common. Meanwhile, older downtown business sections stagnated. Thanks to television, images of middle-class life and advertisements for consumer goods blanketed the country. By the end of the 1950s, nearly nine of ten American families owned a TV set. Television replaced news- papers as the most common source of information about public events, and TV watching became the nation’s leading leisure activity. Television changed Americans’ eating habits (the frozen TV dinner, heated and eaten while diners watched a program, went on sale in 1954), and it pro- vided Americans of all regions and backgrounds with a common cultural experience. With a few exceptions, like the Army-McCarthy hearings mentioned in the previous chapter, TV avoided controversy and projected a bland image of middle-class life. The dominant programs were quiz shows, westerns, and comedies set in suburban homes, like Leave It to Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Television also became the most effective FIGURE 24.2 advertising medium ever invented. Average Daily Television Viewing W o m e n a t W o r k a n d a t H o m e The emergence of suburbia placed pressure on the family—and especially on women—to live up to freedom’s promise. After a sharp postwar drop in 1950 1960 1970 4 hrs. 36 mins. 5 hrs. 6 mins. 5 hrs. 54 mins. female employment, the number of women at work soon began to rise. By T H E G O L D E N A G E 741 1955, it exceeded the level during World War II. But the nature and aims of FIGURE 24.3 women’s work had changed. The modern woman worked part-time to help support the family’s middle-class lifestyle, not to help pull it out of pov- The Baby Boom erty or to pursue personal fulfillment or an independent career. Working and Its Decline women in 1960 earned, on average, only 60 percent of the income of men. 27 Despite the increasing numbers of wage-earning women, the subur- 26 ban family’s breadwinner was assumed to be male, while the wife remained 25 at home. Films, TV shows, and advertisements portrayed marriage as the 24 most important goal of American women. And during the 1950s, men 23 and women married younger (at an average age of twenty-two for men and 22 twenty for women), divorced less frequently than in the past, and had more 21 children (3.2 per family). A “baby boom” that lasted into the mid-1960s 20 followed the end of the war. At a time of low immigration, the American Number of births (per thousand) 19 Birthrate, 1940–1970* population rose by nearly 30 million (almost 20 percent) during the 1950s. 18 Like other forms of dissent, feminism seemed to have disappeared 17 1940 1945 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 from American life or was widely dismissed as evidence of mental disor- Year *Based on estimated total live births per 1,000 population. der. Prominent psychologists insisted that the unhappiness of individual women or even the desire to work for wages stemmed from a failure to accept the “maternal instinct.” A S e g r e g a t e d L a n d s c a p e For millions of city dwellers, the suburban utopia fulfilled the dream, postponed by depression and war, of home ownership and middle-class incomes. The move to the suburbs also promoted Americanization, cut- ting residents off from urban ethnic communities and bringing them fully into the world of mass consumption. But if the suburbs offered a new site for the enjoyment of American freedom, they retained at least one familiar characteristic—rigid racial boundaries. Suburbia has never been as uniform as either its celebrants or its critics claimed. There are upper-class suburbs, working-class suburbs, industrial suburbs, and “suburban” neighborhoods within city limits. But Racial uniformity suburbia’s racial uniformity was all too real. As late as the 1990s, nearly 90 percent of suburban whites lived in communities with non-white populations of less than 1 percent—the legacy of decisions by government, real-estate developers, banks, and residents. During the postwar suburban boom, federal agencies continued to insure mortgages that barred resale of houses to non-whites, thereby financing housing segregation. Even after the Supreme Court in 1948 declared such provisions legally unenforceable, banks and private devel- opers barred non-whites from the suburbs. The government refused to 742 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the main characteristics of the affluent society of the 1950s? subsidize their mortgages, except in segregated enclaves. The vast new communities built by William Levitt refused to allow blacks, including army veterans, to rent or purchase homes. A lawsuit forced Levitt to begin selling to non-whites in the 1960s, but by 1990, his Long Island commu- nity, with a population of 53,000, included only 127 black residents. At the same time, under programs of “urban renewal,” cities de - mol ished poor neighborhoods in city centers that occupied potentially valuable real estate. In their place, developers constructed retail centers and all-white middle-income housing complexes, and states built urban public universities like Wayne State in Detroit and the University of Illinois at Chicago. White residents displaced by urban renewal often moved to the suburbs. Non-whites, unable to do so, found housing in run- down city neighborhoods. Students at an East Harlem elementary school in 1947. Most have recently T h e D i v i d e d S o c i e t y migrated from Puerto Rico to the mainland with their families, although Suburbanization hardened the racial lines of division in American life. some are probably children of the area’s Between 1950 and 1970, about 7 million white Americans left cities for the older Italian-American community. suburbs. Meanwhile, nearly 3 million blacks moved from the South to the North, greatly increasing the size of existing urban ghettos and creating entirely new ones. And half a million Puerto Ricans, mostly small coffee Advertisers during the 1950s sought and tobacco farmers and agricultural laborers forced off the land when to convey the idea that women American sugar companies expanded their landholdings on the island, would enjoy their roles as suburban moved to the mainland. homemakers, as in this ad for a The process of racial exclusion became self-reinforcing. Non-whites vacuum cleaner, which equates remained concentrated in manual and unskilled jobs, the result of employ- housework with a game of golf. ment discrimination and their virtual exclusion from educational opportunities at public and private uni- versities, including those outside the South. As the white population and industrial jobs fled the old city centers for the suburbs, poorer blacks and Latinos remained trapped in urban ghettos, seen by many whites as places of crime, poverty, and welfare. R e l i g i o n a n d A n t i c o m m u n i s m Both Protestant and Roman Catholic religious leaders played crucial roles in the spread of anticommunism and Cold War culture. Official American values cel- ebrated the nation’s religiosity as opposed to “god- less” communism. During the 1950s, a majority of T H E G O L D E N A G E 743 Americans—the highest percentage in the nation’s history—were affiliated with a church or synagogue. In 1954, to “strengthen our national resistance to communism,” Congress added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. In 1957, “In God We Trust” was included on paper money. Big- budget Hollywood films like The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur celebrated early Judaism and Christianity. Leading clerics like Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of the Catholic church and Protestant evangelist Billy Graham used radio and television to spread to millions a religious message heav- ily imbued with anticommunism. Communism, Graham declared, was not only an economic and political outlook but a religion—one “inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself.” S e l l i n g F r e e E n t e r p r i s e The economic content of Cold War freedom increasingly came to focus on An image from a booklet issued by the American Economic consumer capitalism, or, as it was now universally known, “free enter- Foundation illustrates the linkage prise.” More than political democracy or freedom of speech, which many of anticommunism and religious allies of the United States outside western Europe lacked, an economic faith during the Cold War. The system resting on private ownership united the nations of the Free World. hairy hand in the bottom half of the Free enterprise seemed an odd way of describing an economy in which drawing represents the communist threat, which endangers religious a few large corporations dominated key sectors. Until well into the twentieth freedom in the United States. Most century, most ordinary Americans had been deeply suspicious of big busi- of the booklet, however, dealt with ness, associating it with images of robber barons who manipulated politics, the superiority of free enterprise to suppressed economic competition, and treated their workers unfairly. communism. In 1953, 4.5 million Americans—only slightly more than in 1928— owned shares of stock. By the mid-1960s, the number had grown to 25 million. In the face of widespread abundance, who could deny that the capitalist marketplace embodied individual freedom or that poverty would soon be a thing of the past? “It was American Freedom,” proclaimed Life magazine, “by which and through which this amazing achievement of wealth and power was fashioned.” T h e L i b e r t a r i a n C o n s e r v a t i v e s a n d t h e N e w C o n s e r v a t i v e s During the 1950s, a group of thinkers began the task of reviving conser- vatism and reclaiming the idea of freedom from liberals. Although largely ignored outside their own immediate circle, they developed ideas that would define conservative thought for the next half-century. One was Opposition to strong opposition to a strong national government, an outlook that had been national government given new political life in conservatives’ bitter reaction against the New 744 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society How were the 1950s a period of consensus in both domestic policies and foreign affairs? Deal. To these “libertarian” conservatives, freedom meant individual autonomy, limited government, and unregulated capitalism. These ideas had great appeal to conservative entrepreneurs, especially in the rapidly growing South and West, who desired to pursue their economic fortunes free of government regulation, high taxes, and labor unions. A second strand of thought became increasingly prominent in the 1950s. Convinced that the Free World needed to arm itself morally and intellectually, not just militarily, for the battle against communism, “new conservatives” insisted that toleration of difference—a central belief of modern liberalism—offered no substitute for the search for absolute truth. The West, they warned, was suffering from moral decay, and they called for a return to a civilization based on values grounded in the Christian tradition and in timeless notions of good and evil. The “new conservatives” understood freedom as first and foremost a moral condition. It required a Freedom and morality decision by independent men and women to lead virtuous lives or govern- mental action to force them to do so. Here lay the origins of a division in conservative ranks that would per- sist into the twenty-first century. Unrestrained individual choice and moral virtue are radically different starting points from which to discuss freedom. Was the purpose of conservatism, one writer wondered, to create the “free man” or the “good man”? Libertarian conservatives spoke the language of progress and personal autonomy; the “new conservatives” emphasized tradition, community, and moral commitment. The former believed that too many barriers existed to the pursuit of individual liberty. The latter condemned an excess of individualism and a breakdown of common values. Fortunately for conservatives, political unity often depends less on intel- lectual coherence than on the existence of a common foe. And two powerful enemies became focal points for the conservative revival—the Soviet Union abroad and the federal government at home. Republican control of the presi- dency did not lessen conservatives’ hostility to the federal government, partly because they did not consider President Eisenhower one of their own. T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A I k e a n d N i x o n Dwight D. Eisenhower, or “Ike,” as he was affectionately called, emerged Dwight D. Eisenhower from World War II as the military leader with the greatest political appeal, partly because his public image of fatherly warmth set him apart T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A 745 from other successful generals like the arrogant Douglas MacArthur. Eisenhower became convinced that Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio, a leading contender for the Republican nomination, would lead the United States back toward isolationism. Eisenhower entered the contest and won the Republican nomination. Richard Nixon For his running mate, Eisenhower chose Richard Nixon of California, a World War II veteran who had made a name for himself with his vig- orous anticommunism. Nixon won election to the U.S. Senate in 1950 in a campaign in which he suggested that the Democratic candidate, Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, had communist sympathies. These tactics gave Nixon a lifelong reputation for opportunism and dis- honesty. But Nixon was also a shrewd politician who pioneered efforts to transform the Republican Party’s image from defender of business to The Republican message champion of the “forgotten man”—the hardworking citizen burdened by heavy taxation and unresponsive government bureaucracies. In using populist language to promote free market economics, Nixon helped to lay the foundation for the triumph of conservatism a generation later. T h e 1 9 5 2 C a m p a i g n Television was beginning to transform politics by allowing candidates to bring carefully crafted images directly into Americans’ living rooms. The Dwight D. Eisenhower’s popularity 1952 campaign became the first to make extensive use of TV ads. Parties, was evident at this appearance in one observer complained, were “selling the president like toothpaste.” Baltimore during the 1952 presidential campaign. More important to the election’s out- come, however, was Eisenhower’s popularity (invoked in the Republican campaign slogan “I Like Ike”) and the public’s weariness with the Korean War. Ike’s pledge to “go to Korea” in search of peace signaled his intention to bring the conflict to an end. He won a resounding victory over the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson. Four years later, Eisenhower again defeated Stevenson by an even wider margin. His popularity, however, did not extend to his party. Republicans won a razor-thin majority in Congress in 1952, but Democrats regained control in 1954 and retained it for the rest of the decade. In 1956, Eisenhower became the first president to be elected without his party controlling either house of Congress. 746 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society How were the 1950s a period of consensus in both domestic policies and foreign affairs? During the 1950s, voters at home and T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N abroad seemed to find reassurance in select- O F 1 9 5 2 ing familiar, elderly leaders to govern them. At age sixty-two, Eisenhower was one of the oldest men ever elected president. But 9 4 4 3 4 5 he seemed positively youthful compared 6 11 4 with Winston Churchill, who returned to 4 12 45 16 3 20 4 office as prime minister of Great Britain 32 3 6 10 8 16 at age seventy-seven; Charles De Gaulle, 27 13 25 3 32 4 6 8 8 13 12 9 who assumed the presidency of France at 10 11 14 sixty-eight; and Konrad Adenauer, who 4 4 8 8 8 served as chancellor of West Germany 8 11 12 24 from age seventy-three until well into 10 10 his eighties. In retrospect, Eisenhower’s presidency seems almost unevent- ful, at least in domestic affairs—an Electoral Vote Popular Vote interlude between the bitter party battles of Party Candidate (Share) (Share) Republican Eisenhower 442 (83%) 33,778,963 (55.1%) the Truman administration and the social Democrat Stevenson 89 (17%) 27,314,992 (44.4%) upheavals of the 1960s. M o d e r n R e p u b l i c a n i s m With a Republican serving as president for the first time in twenty years, the tone in Washington changed. Wealthy businessmen dominated Eisenhower’s cabinet. Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, the former presi- dent of General Motors, made the widely publicized statement: “What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” A cham- pion of the business community and a fiscal conservative, Ike worked to scale back government spending, including the military budget. But although right-wing Republicans saw his victory as an invitation to roll back the New Deal, Eisenhower realized that such a course would be disas- trous. “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unem- ployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,” he declared, “you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” Eisenhower called his domestic agenda Modern Republicanism. It aimed to sever his party’s identification in the minds of many Americans with the Great Depression. The core New Deal programs not only remained Accepting the New Deal in place but expanded. Eisenhower presided over the largest public-works enterprise in American history, the building of the 41,000-mile interstate highway system. As noted in the previous chapter, Cold War arguments— especially T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A 747 the need to provide rapid exit routes from cities in the event of nuclear war—justified this multibillion-dollar project. But automobile manufac- turers, oil companies, suburban builders, and construction unions had very practical reasons for supporting highway construction regardless of any Soviet threat. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite, in 1957, the administration responded with the National Defense Education Act, which for the first time offered direct federal fund- ing to higher education. All in all, rather than dismantling the New Deal, Eisenhower’s modern Republicanism consolidated and legitimized it. By accepting its basic premises, he ensured that its continuation no longer depended on Democratic control of the presidency. T h e S o c i a l C o n t r a c t The 1950s also witnessed an easing of the labor conflict of the two previ- ous decades. The passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 (discussed in the previous chapter) had reduced labor militancy. In 1955, the AFL and CIO merged to form a single organization representing 35 percent of all Labor and management nonagricultural workers. In leading industries, labor and management cooperation hammered out what has been called a new “social contract.” Unions signed long-term agreements that left decisions regarding capital investment, plant location, and output in management’s hands. Employers stopped trying to eliminate existing unions and granted wage increases and fringe benefits such as private pension plans, health insurance, and automatic cost-of-living adjustments to pay. Unionized workers shared fully in 1950s prosperity. Although the social contract did not apply to the majority of workers, who did not belong to unions, it did bring benefits to those who labored in nonunion Nonunion workers jobs. For example, trade unions in the 1950s and 1960s were able to use their political power to win a steady increase in the minimum wage, which was earned mostly by nonunion workers at the bottom of the employment pyramid. But the majority of workers did not enjoy anything close to the wages, benefits, and job security of unionized workers in such industries as automobiles and steel. By the end of the 1950s, the social contract was weakening. In 1959, the steel industry sought to tighten work rules and limit wage increases in an attempt to boost profits battered by a recession that hit two years earlier. The plan sparked a strike of 500,000 steelworkers, which successfully beat back the proposed changes. 748 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society How were the 1950s a period of consensus in both domestic policies and foreign affairs? M a s s i v e R e t a l i a t i o n Soon after he entered office, Eisenhower approved an armistice that ended fighting in Korea. But this failed to ease international tensions. Ike took office at a time when the Cold War had entered an extremely dangerous phase. In 1952, the United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb—a The hydrogen bomb weapon far more powerful than those that had devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The following year, the Soviets matched this achievement. Both sides feverishly developed long-range bombers capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction around the world. A professional soldier, Ike hated war, which he viewed as a tragic waste. “Every gun that is made,” he said in 1953, “every warship launched . . . signi- fies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” But his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, was a grim Cold Warrior. In 1954, Dulles announced an John Foster Dulles updated version of the doctrine of containment. “Massive retaliation,” as it was called, declared that any Soviet attack on an American ally would be countered by a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union itself. Massive retaliation ran the risk that any small conflict, or even a miscal- culation, could escalate into a war that would destroy both the United States A man helps his daughter into a and the Soviet Union. The reality that all-out war would result in “mutual backyard bomb shelter in Garden City, Long Island, New York, in a assured destruction” (or MAD, in military shorthand) did succeed in making photograph from 1955. Manufacturers both great powers cautious in their direct dealings with one another. But it of such shelters assured purchasers also inspired widespread fear of impending nuclear war. Government pro- that occupants could survive for five grams encouraging Americans to build bomb shelters in their backyards and days after a nuclear attack. school drills that trained children to hide under their desks in the event of an atomic attack aimed to convince Americans that nuclear war was survivable. I k e a n d t h e R u s s i a n s The end of the Korean War and the death of Stalin, both of which oc curred in 1953, convinced Eisenhower that rather than being blind zealots, the Soviets were reasonable and could be dealt with in conventional diplomatic terms. In 1955, Ike met in Geneva, Switzerland, with Nikita Khrushchev, the new Soviet leader, at the first “summit” conference since Potsdam a decade earlier. The following year, Khrushchev delivered a speech to the Communist Party Congress in Moscow that detailed Stalin’s crimes, including purges of political opponents numbering in the millions. Khrushchev’s call in the same 1956 speech for “peaceful coexistence” with the United States raised the possibility of an easing of the Cold War. The “thaw” was abruptly shaken that fall, however, when Soviet troops T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A 749 put down an anticommunist uprising in Hungary. Eisenhower refused to U.S.–Soviet relations extend aid to the Hungarian rebels, an indication that he believed it impos- sible to “roll back” Soviet domination of eastern Europe. In 1958, the two superpowers agreed to a voluntary halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. The pause lasted until 1961. It had been demanded by the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, which publicized the danger to public health posed by radioactive fallout from nuclear tests. But the spirit of cooperation ended abruptly in 1960, when the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane over their territory. Eisenhower first denied that the plane had been involved in espionage and refused to apologize even after the Russians produced the captured pilot. The inci- dent torpedoed another planned summit meeting. T h e E m e r g e n c e o f t h e T h i r d W o r l d Even as Europe, where the Cold War began, settled into what appeared to be a permanent division between a communist East and a capitalist West, an intense rivalry, which sometimes took a military form, persisted in what came to be called the Third World. The term was invented to describe Non-aligned developing developing countries aligned with neither of the two Cold War powers and countries desirous of finding their own model of development between Soviet cen- tralized economic planning and free market capitalism. But none of these countries could avoid being strongly affected by the political, military, and economic contest of the Cold War. The post–World War II era witnessed the crumbling of European Decolonization begins empires. Decolonization began when India and Pakistan (the latter carved out of India to give Muslims their own nation) achieved inde- pendence in 1947. Ten years later, Britain’s Gold Coast colony in West Africa emerged as the independent nation of Ghana. Other new nations— including Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania—soon followed. The Soviet Union strongly supported the dissolution of Europe’s overseas empires, and communists participated in movements for colonial independence. Most of the new Third World nations resisted alignment with either major power bloc, hoping to remain neutral in the Cold War. By the end of the 1950s, much of the focus of the Cold War shifted to the Containment Third World. The policy of containment easily slid over into opposition to any government, whether communist or not, that seemed to threaten American strategic or economic interests. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala and Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran were elected, homegrown nationalists, not agents of Moscow. But they were de termined to reduce foreign corporations’ 750 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society How were the 1950s a period of consensus in both domestic policies and foreign affairs? control over their countries’ economies. Arbenz embarked on a sweeping land- reform policy that threatened the dom- ination of Guatemala’s economy by the American-owned United Fruit Company. Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company, whose refinery in Iran was Britain’s largest remaining over- seas asset. In 1953 and 1954, the Central Intelligence Agency organized the ouster of both governments—a clear violation of the UN Charter, which barred a member state from taking military action against another except in self-defense. In 1956, Israel, France, and Britain— without prior consultation with the The military junta installed in United States—invaded Egypt after the country’s nationalist leader, Gamal Guatemala by the CIA in 1954 enters Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal, jointly owned by Britain and Guatemala City in a Jeep driven by France. A furious Eisenhower forced them to abandon the invasion. After CIA agent Carlos Castillo Armas. the Suez fiasco, the United States moved to replace Britain as the dominant Although hailed by the Eisenhower administration as a triumph for Western power in the Middle East. freedom, the new government suppressed democracy in Guatemala O r i g i n s o f t h e V i e t n a m W a r and embarked on a murderous campaign to stamp out opposition. In Vietnam, the expulsion of the Japanese in 1945 led not to indepen- dence but to a French military effort to preserve France’s Asian empire against Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist forces. Anticommunism led the United States into deeper and deeper involvement. Following a policy initiated by Truman, the Eisenhower administration funneled billions of dollars The U.S. and French forces in aid to bolster French efforts. By the early 1950s, the United States was paying four-fifths of the cost of the war. Wary of becoming bogged down in another land war in Asia immediately after Korea, however, Ike declined to send in American troops when France requested them to avert defeat in 1954, leaving France no alternative but to agree to Vietnamese independence. A peace conference in Geneva divided Vietnam temporarily into Geneva agreements northern and southern districts, with elections scheduled for 1956 to unify the country. But the staunchly anticommunist southern leader Ngo Dinh Diem, urged on by the United States, refused to hold elections, which would almost certainly have resulted in a victory for Ho Chi Minh’s com- munists. American aid poured into South Vietnam in order to bolster the T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A 751 Diem regime. By the time Eisenhower left office, Diem nevertheless faced a full-scale guerrilla revolt by the communist-led National Liberation Front. U.S. interventions Little by little, the United States was becoming accustomed to interven- tion, both open and secret, in far-flung corners of the world. Despite the Cold War rhetoric of freedom, American leaders seemed more comfortable dealing with reliable military regimes than democratic governments. A series of military governments succeeded Arbenz in Guatemala. The shah of Iran replaced Mossadegh and remained in office until 1979 as one of the world’s most tyrannical rulers, until his overthrow in a revolution led by the fiercely anti-American radical Islamist Ayatollah Khomeini. In Vietnam, the American decision to prop up Diem’s regime laid the groundwork for what would soon become the most disastrous military involvement in American history. M a s s S o c i e t y a n d I t s C r i t i c s The fatherly Eisenhower seemed the perfect leader for the placid soci- ety of the 1950s. Consensus was the dominant ideal in an era in which Commuters returning from work McCarthyism had defined criticism of the social and economic order as in downtown Chicago, leaving the disloyalty and most Americans located the enjoyment of freedom in private railroad station at suburban Park pleasures rather than the public sphere. Even Life magazine commented Forest, Illinois, in 1953. Social critics that American freedom might be in greater danger from “disuse” than from of the 1950s claimed that Americans had become “organization men,” too communist subversion. conformist to lead independent lives. Dissenting voices could be heard. The sociologist C. Wright Mills challenged the self-satisfied vision of democratic pluralism that domi- nated mainstream social science in the 1950s. Mills wrote of a “power elite”—an interlocking directorate of corporate leaders, politicians, and military men whose domination of government and society had made political democracy obsolete. Freedom, Mills insisted, rested on the abil- ity “to formulate the available choices,” and this most Americans were effectively denied. Other writers worried that modern mass society inevitably produced loneliness and anxiety, causing mankind to yearn for stability and author- ity, not freedom. In The Lonely Crowd (1950), the decade’s most influential work of social analysis, the sociologist David Riesman described Americans as “other-directed” conformists who lacked the inner resources to lead truly independent lives. Other social critics charged that corporate bureau- cracies had transformed employees into “organization men” incapable of independent thought. 752 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society How were the 1950s a period of consensus in both domestic policies and foreign affairs? Rebels without a cause. Teenage members of a youth gang, photographed at Coney Island, Brooklyn, in the late 1950s. William Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956) and Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders (1957), which criticized the monotony of modern work, the emptiness of suburban life, and the pervasive influence of advertising, created the vocabulary for an assault on the nation’s social values that lay just over the horizon. R e b e l s w i t h o u t a C a u s e The social critics did not offer a political alternative or have any real impact on the parties or government. Nor did other stirrings of dissent. Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips appealed to teenagers but alarmed many adults With teenagers a growing part of the population thanks to the baby during the 1950s. boom, the rise of a popular culture geared to the emerging youth market suggested that significant generational tensions lay beneath the bland surface of 1950s life. The 1955 films Blackboard Jungle and Rebel without a Cause (the latter starring James Dean as an aimlessly rebellious youth) highlighted the alienation of at least some young people from the world of adult respectability. These works helped to spur a mid-1950s panic about juvenile delinquency. Cultural life during the 1950s seemed far more daring than politics. Teenagers wore leather jackets and danced to rock-and-roll music that brought the hard-driving rhythms and sexually provocative movements of black musicians and dancers to enthusiastic young white audiences. They made Elvis Presley, a rock-and-roll singer with an openly sexual performance style, an immensely popular entertainment celebrity. T H E E I S E N H O W E R E R A 753 A Beat coffeehouse in San Francisco, photographed in 1958, where poets, artists, and others who rejected 1950s mainstream culture gathered. In New York City and San Francisco, as well as college towns like Madison, Wisconsin, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Beats, a small group of poets and writers, railed against mainstream culture. “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” Allen Ginsberg wrote the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl (1955), a brilliant protest against materialism and conformism written while the author was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. Ginsberg became nationally known when San Francisco police in 1956 confiscated his book and arrested book- store owners for selling an obscene work. (A judge later overturned the ban on the grounds that Howl possessed redeeming social value.) Rejecting the work ethic, the “desperate materialism” of the suburban middle class, and the militarization of American life by the Cold War, the Beats cel- ebrated impulsive action, immediate pleasure (often enhanced by drugs), and sexual experimentation. Despite Cold War slogans, they insisted, personal and political repression, not freedom, were the hallmarks of American society. T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T Not until the 1960s would young white rebels find their cause, as the seeds of dissent planted by the social critics and Beats flowered in an outpouring of political activism, new attitudes toward sexuality, and a full-fledged 754 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the major thrusts of the civil rights movement in this period? generational rebellion. A more immediate challenge to the complacency of the 1950s arose from the twentieth century’s greatest citizens’ movement— the black struggle for equality. O r i g i n s o f t h e M o v e m e n t Today, with the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday and the struggles of Montgomery, Little Rock, Birmingham, and Selma celebrated as heroic episodes in the history of freedom, it is easy to forget that at the time, the civil rights revolution came as a great surprise. Few predicted the emergence of the southern mass movement for civil rights. With blacks’ traditional allies on the left decimated by McCarthyism, most union leaders unwilling to challenge racial inequalities within their own ranks, and the NAACP concentrating on court battles, new constitu- encies and new tactics were sorely needed. The movement found in the southern black church the organizing power for a militant, nonviolent The southern black church assault on segregation. The United States in the 1950s was still a segregated, unequal society. Half of the nation’s black families lived in poverty. In the South, evidence of Jim Crow abounded—in separate public institutions and the signs “white” and “colored” at entrances to buildings, train carriages, drinking fountains, restrooms, and the like. In the North and West, the law did not require seg- regation, but custom barred blacks from many colleges, hotels, and restau- rants, and from most suburban housing. Las Vegas, Nevada, for example, The persistence of Jim Crow was as strictly segregated as any southern city. Hotels and casinos did not admit blacks except in the most menial jobs. Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, and other black entertainers played the hotel-casinos on the “strip” but could not stay as guests where they performed. In 1950, seventeen southern and border states and Washington, D.C., had laws requiring the racial segregation of public schools, and several others permitted local districts to impose it. In northern communities housing patterns and school district lines created de facto segregation— separation in fact if not in law. Few white Americans felt any urgency about confronting racial inequality. T h e L e g a l A s s a u l t o n S e g r e g a t i o n With the Eisenhower administration reluctant to address the issue, it fell to the courts to confront the problem of racial segregation. In the Southwest, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T 755 A segregated school in West Memphis, Arkansas, photographed for Life magazine in 1949. Education in the South was separate but hardly equal. equivalent of the NAACP, challenged restrictive housing, employment discrimination, and the segregation of Latino students. They won an important victory in 1946 in the case of Mendez v. Westminster, when the Desegregation in California California Supreme Court ordered the schools of Orange County desegre- gated. In response, the state legislature repealed all school laws requiring racial segregation. The governor who signed the measure, Earl Warren, had presided over the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as the state’s attorney general. After the war, he became con- vinced that racial inequality had no place in American life. When Chief Justice Fred Vinson died in 1953, Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren to replace him on the U.S. Supreme Court. For years, the NAACP, under the leadership of attorneys Charles Thurgood Marshall and Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, had pressed legal challenges the NAACP to the “separate but equal” doctrine laid down by the Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson (see Chapter 17). At first, the NAACP sought to gain admis- sion to white institutions of higher learning for which no black equivalent existed. In 1938, the Supreme Court ordered the University of Missouri Law School to admit Lloyd Gaines, a black student, because the state had no such school for blacks. Missouri responded by setting up a segregated law school, satisfying the courts. But in 1950, the Supreme Court unanimously ordered Heman Sweatt admitted to the University of Texas Law School even though the state had established a “school” for him in a basement containing three classrooms and no library. 756 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the major thrusts of the civil rights movement in this period? T h e B r o w n C a s e Marshall now launched a frontal assault on segregation itself. He brought the NAACP’s support to local cases that had arisen when black parents challenged unfair school policies. To do so required remarkable courage. In Clarendon County, South Carolina, Levi Pearson, a black farmer who brought a lawsuit on behalf of his children, saw his house burned to the ground. The Clarendon case attacked not segregation itself but the unequal funding of schools. Black children attended class in buildings with no running water or indoor toilets and were not provided with buses to transport them to classes. Five such cases from four states and the District of Columbia were combined in a single appeal that reached the Supreme Court late in 1952. When cases are united, they are listed alphabetically and the first case gives the entire decision its name. In this instance, the first case arose from a state outside the old Confederacy. Oliver Brown went to court because his daughter, a third grader, was forced to walk across dangerous railroad Linda Brown’s parents sued the school board of Topeka, Kansas, tracks each morning rather than being allowed to attend a nearby school demanding that it admit their restricted to whites. His lawsuit became Brown v. Board of Education of daughter to a school near her Topeka, Kansas. home restricted to whites, rather Thurgood Marshall decided that the time had come to attack the “sep- than requiring her to walk across arate but equal” doctrine itself. Even with the same funding and facilities, dangerous railroad tracks each day, as in this photograph, to he insisted, segregation was inherently unequal because it stigmatized attend a black school. The result one group of citizens as unfit to associate with others. In its legal brief, the was the Supreme Court’s landmark Eisenhower administration did not directly support Marshall’s position, Brown decision outlawing school but it urged the justices to consider “the problem of racial discrimina- segregation. tion . . . in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny.” Other peoples, it noted, “cannot understand how such a practice can exist in a country which professes to be a staunch supporter of free- dom, justice, and democracy.” The new chief justice, Earl Warren, managed to create unanimity on The Warren Court a divided Court, some of whose members disliked segregation but feared that a decision to outlaw it would spark widespread violence. On May 17, 1954, Warren himself read aloud the decision, only eleven pages long. Segregation in public education, he concluded, violated the equal protec- tion of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. “In the field of education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The decision did not order immediate implementation but instead called for hearings as to how segregated schooling should be dismantled. But Brown marked the emergence of the Warren Court as an active agent T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T 757 of social change. And it inspired a wave of optimism that discrimination would soon disappear. T h e M o n t g o m e r y B u s B o y c o t t Brown did not cause the modern civil rights movement, which, as noted in the previous two chapters, began during World War II and continued in cities like New York after the war. But the decision did ensure that when the move- ment resumed after waning in the early 1950s, it would have the backing of the federal courts. Mass action against Jim Crow soon reappeared. On Decem- ber 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black tailor’s assistant who had just completed her day’s work in a Montgomery, Alabama, department store, refused to sur- render her seat on a city bus to a white rider, as required by local law. Parks’s arrest sparked a yearlong bus boycott, the beginning of the mass phase of The mug shot of Rosa Parks, taken the civil rights movement in the South. In 2000, Time magazine named Rosa in December 1955 at a Montgomery, Parks one of the 100 most significant persons of the twentieth century. Alabama, police station after she was Parks is widely remembered today as a “seamstress with tired feet,” a arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. symbol of ordinary blacks’ determination to resist the daily injustices and indignities of the Jim Crow South. In fact, her life makes clear that the civil rights revolution built on earlier struggles. Parks was a veteran of black poli- Rosa Parks tics. During the 1930s, she took part in meetings protesting the conviction of the Scottsboro Boys. She served for many years as secretary to E. D. Nixon, the local leader of the NAACP. In 1943, she tried to register to vote, only to be turned away because she supposedly failed a literacy test. After two more attempts, Parks succeeded in becoming one of the few blacks in Montgomery able to cast a ballot. When news of Parks’s arrest spread, hundreds of blacks gathered in a local church and vowed to refuse to ride the buses until accorded equal treatment. For 381 days, despite legal harassment and occasional violence, black maids, janitors, teachers, and students walked to their destinations Successful boycott or rode an informal network of taxis. Finally, in November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public transportation unconstitu- tional. The boycott ended in triumph. T h e D a y b r e a k o f F r e e d o m The Montgomery bus boycott marked a turning point in postwar American history. It launched the movement for racial justice as a nonviolent crusade based in the black churches of the South. It gained the support of northern liberals and focused unprecedented and unwelcome international atten- tion on the country’s racial policies. And it marked the emergence of the 758 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the major thrusts of the civil rights movement in this period? The rise of Martin Luther twenty-six-year-old Martin Luther King Jr., who had recently arrived King Jr. in Montgomery to become pastor of a Baptist church, as the movement’s national symbol. On the night of the first protest meeting, King’s call to action electrified the audience: “We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And now we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.” From the beginning, the language of freedom pervaded the black movement. It resonated in the speeches of civil rights leaders and in the hand-lettered placards of the struggle’s foot soldiers. During the summer of 1964, when civil rights activists established “freedom schools” for black children across Mississippi, lessons began with students being asked to define the word. Some gave specific answers (“going to public libraries”), some more abstract (“standing up for your rights”). Some insisted that freedom meant legal equality, others saw it as liberation from years of deference to and fear of whites. “Freedom of the mind,” wrote one, was the greatest freedom of all. For adults as well, freedom had many meanings. It meant enjoy- The movement and freedom ing the political rights and economic opportunities taken for granted by whites. It required eradicating historic wrongs such as segregation, disenfranchisement, confinement to low-wage jobs, and the ever-present threat of violence. It meant the right to be served at lunch counters and downtown department stores, central locations in the consumer culture, and to be addressed as “Mr.,” “Miss,” and “Mrs.,” rather than “boy” and “auntie.” T h e L e a d e r s h i p o f K i n g In King’s soaring oratory, the protesters’ understandings of freedom fused into a coherent whole. His most celebrated oration, the “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963, began by invoking the unfulfilled promise of emancipation (“one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free”) and closed with a cry borrowed from a black spiritual: “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” King presented the case for black rights in a vocabulary that merged the black experience with that of the nation. Having studied the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi on peaceful civil disobedi- Peaceful civil disobedience ence, King outlined a philosophy of struggle in which evil must be met with good, hate with Christian love, and violence with peaceful demands for change. T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T 759 Echoing Christian themes de rived from his training in the black church, King’s speeches resonated deeply in both black communities and the broader culture. He repeatedly in voked the Bible to preach justice and forgiveness, even toward those “who desire to deprive you of freedom.” Like Frederick Douglass before him, King appealed to white America by stressing the protesters’ love of country and devotion to national values. If Africa was gaining its freedom, he asked, why must black America lag behind? M a s s i v e R e s i s t a n c e Buoyed by success in Montgomery, King in 1956 took the lead in forming Southern Christian the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a coalition of black min- Leadership Conference isters and civil rights activists, to press for desegregation. But despite the movement’s success in popular mobilization, the fact that Montgomery’s city fathers agreed to the boycott’s demands only after a Supreme Court ruling indicated that without national backing, local action might not be enough to overturn Jim Crow. The white South’s refusal to accept the Brown decision reinforced the conviction that black citizens could not gain their constitutional rights without Washington’s intervention. This was not immediately forthcoming. When the Supreme Court finally issued its implementation ruling in 1955, the justices declared that desegregation should proceed “with all deliberate speed.” This vague formulation unin- tentionally encouraged a campaign of “massive resistance” that paralyzed civil rights progress in much of the South. Opponents of racial integration raised In 1956, 82 of 106 southern congressmen—and every southern senator all sorts of lurid fears about the except Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and Albert Gore and Estes Kefauver of consequences if blacks and whites attended school together. Tennessee—signed a Southern Manifesto, denouncing the Brown decision as a “clear abuse of judicial power,” and calling for resistance to “forced integration” by “any lawful means.” State after state passed laws to block desegregation. Virginia pioneered the strategy of closing any public schools ordered to desegregate and offering funds to enable white pupils, but not black, to attend private institutions. Prince Edward County, Virginia, shut its schools entirely in 1959; not until 1964 did the Supreme Court order them reopened. E i s e n h o w e r a n d C i v i l R i g h t s The federal government tried to remain aloof from the black struggle. Thanks to the efforts of Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, who hoped to win liberal support for a run for president in 1960, Congress 760 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What were the major thrusts of the civil rights movement in this period? in 1957 passed the first national civil rights law since Reconstruction. It tar- geted the denial of black voting rights in the South, but with weak enforce- ment provisions it added few voters to the rolls. President Eisenhower failed to provide moral leadership. He called for Americans to abide by the law, but he made it clear that he found the whole civil rights issue distasteful. In 1957, however, after Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas used the National Guard to prevent the court-ordered integration of Little Rock’s Little Rock Central High School, Eisenhower dispatched federal troops to the city. In the face of a howling mob, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black children into the school. Events in Little Rock showed that in the last instance, the federal government would not allow the flagrant violation of court orders. But because of massive resistance, the pace of the movement slowed in the final years of the 1950s. When Eisenhower left office, fewer than 2 percent of black students attended desegregated schools in the states of the old Confederacy. Ever since the beginning of the Cold War, American leaders had wor- Segregation and America’s ried about the impact of segregation on the country’s international reputa- reputation abroad tion. Foreign nations and colonies paid close attention to the unfolding of the American civil rights movement. The global reaction to the Brown decision was overwhelmingly positive. But the slow pace of change led to criticism that embarrassed American diplomats seeking to win the loyalty Federal troops escort black children to Little Rock Central High School, enforcing a court order for integration in 1957. T H E F R E E D O M M O V E M E N T 761 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m R i c h a r d W r i g h t , “ I C h o o s e E x i l e ” ( 1 9 5 0 ) One of the country’s most prominent black novelists, Richard Wright decided to move to Paris in 1946, hoping to escape the racial inequality that existed in the United States. In this unpublished essay, he explained his decision. Wright died in Paris in 1960. “I am a Negro and I was born in America. . . . But as of this writing, I live in voluntary exile in France. . . . I live in exile because I love freedom, and I’ve found more freedom in one square block of Paris than there is in the entire United States! . . . I need freedom. Some people need more freedom than others, and I’m one of them. . . . The French, amongst whom I’ve lived in exile for six years, do not argue about personal freedom; they just live it. One is not prone to speak about what one already has. It’s in America, where so much freedom is lacking, that one hears loud and passionate argument about it. One feels that one is listening to a starving man tell of his need for bread. . . . At home I had spent half my life advocating the rights of the Negro, and I knew that if my fight was not right, then nothing was right. Yet I always felt a sneaking sense of futility because I knew that there was something basically wrong in a nation that could so cynically violate its own Constitution and democratic pretensions by meting out physical and psychological cruelties upon a defenseless minority. From the distance of a freer culture, my feelings somewhat changed. Anger turned into a sort of amazed pity, for I felt that America’s barbaric treatment of the Negro was not one-half so bad as the destructive war she has waged, in striking at the Negro, against the concept of the free person, against freedom of conscience, against the Rights of Man, and against herself! I was disconcerted when I realized the vast dislocation of human values which the mere presence of the Negro in America had brought about. . . . What a psychological handicap America takes into the struggle against a Communism whose basic slogan is for the liberation of Asia and Africa! 762 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society Focus Question F r o m T h e S o u t h e r n M a n i f e s t o ( 1 9 5 6 ) Drawn up early in 1956 and signed by 101 southern members of the Senate and House of Representatives, the Southern Manifesto repudiated the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and offered support to the campaign of resistance in the South. The unwarranted decision of the Supreme Court in the public school cases is now bearing the fruit always produced when men substitute naked power for established law. . . . We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power. It climaxes a trend in the Federal Judiciary undertaking to legislate, in derogation [violation] of the authority of Congress, and to encroach upon the reserved rights of the States and the people. The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th Amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the system of education maintained by the States. In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 the Supreme Court expressly declared that under the 14th Amendment no person was denied any of his rights if the States provided separate but equal facilities. This decision . . . restated time and again, became a part of the life of the people of many of the States and confirmed their habits, traditions, and way of life. It is founded on elemental humanity and commonsense, for parents should not be deprived by Government of the right to direct the lives and education of their own children. Though there has been no constitutional amendment or act of Congress changing this established legal principle almost a century old, the Supreme Court of the United States, with no legal basis for such action, undertook to exercise their naked judicial power and substituted their personal political and social ideas for the established law of the land. This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating Q U E S T I O N S chaos and confusion in the States principally 1. Why does Wright believe that the affected. It is destroying the amicable relations condition of black Americans has between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the produced a “dislocation of values” for good people of both races. It has planted hatred all Americans? and suspicion where there has been heretofore 2. Why does the Southern Manifesto friendship and understanding. claim that the Supreme Court With the gravest concern for the explosive and decision is a threat to constitutional dangerous condition created by this decision and government? inflamed by outside meddlers: . . . we commend the motives of those States which have declared the 3. How do these documents illustrate con- intention to resist forced integration by any lawful trasting understandings of freedom at means. . . . the dawn of the civil rights movement? V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M 763 of people in the non-white world. Of course, the Soviet Union played up American race relations as part of the global “battle for hearts and minds of men” that was a key part of the Cold War. T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 6 0 K e n n e d y a n d N i x o n The presidential campaign of 1960 turned out to be one of the closest in American history. Republicans chose Vice President Richard Nixon as their candidate to succeed Eisenhower. Democrats nominated John F. JFK Kennedy, a senator from Massachusetts and a Roman Catholic, whose father, a millionaire Irish-American businessman, had served as ambas- sador to Great Britain during the 1930s. Kennedy’s chief rivals for the nomination were Hubert Humphrey, leader of the party’s liberal wing, and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the Senate majority leader, who accepted Kennedy’s offer to run for vice president. Kennedy’s Catholicism The atmosphere of tolerance promoted by World War II had weak- ened traditional anti-Catholicism. But many Protestants remained reluc- tant to vote for a Catholic, fearing that Kennedy would be required to support church doctrine on controversial public issues or, in a more extreme version, take orders from the pope. Kennedy addressed the ques- tion directly. “I do not speak for my church on public matters,” he insisted, The 1960 presidential campaign produced a flood of anti-Catholic propaganda. Kennedy’s victory, the first for an American Catholic, was a major step in the decline of this long- standing prejudice. 764 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society What was the significance of the presidential election of 1960? and “the church does not speak for me.” At T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N age forty-three, Kennedy became the young- O F 1 9 6 0 est major-party nominee for president in the nation’s history. Both Kennedy and Nixon were ardent 9 4 4 3 4 5 Cold Warriors. But Kennedy pointed to 6 11 4 Soviet success in putting Sputnik, the first 4 12 45 16 3 20 4 earth satellite, into orbit and subsequently 10 32 3 6 8 25 16 testing the first intercontinental ballistic 4 27 13 32 3 6 8 8 13 12 9 missile (ICBM) as evidence that the United 10 14 11 States had lost the sense of national purpose 4 7 4 1 8 8 necessary to fight the Cold War. He warned 8 6 5 12 24 that Republicans had allowed a “missile 3 10 3 10 gap” to develop in which the Soviets had achieved technological and military superi- ority over the United States. In fact, as both Electoral Vote Popular Vote Party Candidate (Share) (Share) Kennedy and Nixon well knew, American Democrat Kennedy 303 (56%) 34,227,096 (49.7%) economic and military capacity far exceeded Republican Nixon 219 (41%) 34,107,646 (49.6%) that of the Soviets. But the charge persuaded Independent Byrd 15 (3%) 501,643 (0.7%) many Americans that the time had come for new leadership. The stylishness of Kennedy’s wife, Jacqueline, reinforced the impression that Kennedy would conduct a more youthful, vigorous presidency. In the first televised debate between presidential candidates, judg- ing by viewer response, the handsome Kennedy bested Nixon, who was suffering from a cold and appeared tired and nervous. Those who heard A photograph of John F. Kennedy the encounter on the radio thought Nixon had won, but, on TV, image and his wife, Jacqueline, strolling counted for more than substance. In November, Kennedy eked out a nar- along the pier at Hyannisport, Massachusetts, illustrates their row victory, winning the popular vote by only 120,000 out of 69 million youthful appeal. votes cast (and, Republicans charged, benefiting from a fraudulent vote count by the notoriously corrupt Chicago Democratic machine). T h e E n d o f t h e 1 9 5 0 s In January 1961, shortly before leaving office, Eisenhower delivered a tele- vised Farewell Address, modeled to some extent on George Washington’s address of 1796. Knowing that the missile gap was a myth, Ike warned against the drumbeat of calls for a new military buildup. He urged Americans to think about the dangerous power of what he called the “military-industrial complex”—the conjunction of “an immense military establishment” with a “permanent arms industry”—with an T H E E L E C T I O N O F 1 9 6 0 765 influence felt in “every office” in the land. “We must never let the weight of this combination,” he advised his countrymen, “endanger our liber- ties or democratic processes.” Few Americans shared Ike’s concern—far more saw the alliance of the Defense Department and private industry as a source of jobs and national security rather than a threat to democracy. A few years later, however, with the United States locked in an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam, Eisenhower’s warning would come to seem prophetic. By then, other underpinnings of 1950s life were also in disarray. The tens of millions of cars that made suburban life possible were spewing toxic lead, an additive to make gasoline more efficient, into the atmosphere. Penned in to the east by mountains that kept automobile emissions from being dispersed by the wind, Los Angeles had become synonymous with smog, a type of air pollution produced by cars. The chemical insecticides that enabled agricultural conglomerates to pro- duce the country’s remarkable abundance of food were poisoning farm workers, consumers, and the water supply. Housewives were rebelling against a life centered in suburban dream houses. Blacks were increas- ingly impatient with the slow progress of racial change. The United States, in other words, had entered that most turbulent of decades, the 1960s. 766 C h a p t e r 2 4  An Affluent Society C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S K E Y T E R M S 1. Explain the meaning of the “American standard of liv- Levittown (p. 739) ing” during the 1950s. “baby boom” (p. 742) housing segregation (p. 742) 2. Describe how the automobile transformed American “urban renewal” (p. 743) “In God We Trust” (p. 744) communities and culture in the 1950s. Interstate highway system (p. 747) Sputnik (p. 748) 3. Identify the prescribed roles and aspirations for women National Defense Education Act during the social conformity of the 1950s. (p. 748) massive retaliation (p. 749) 4. How did governmental policies, business practices, and Iranian coup (p. 751) individual choices contribute to racially segregated Geneva Accords (p. 752) suburbs? juvenile delinquency (p. 753) rock-and-roll music (p. 753) 5. Explain the ideological rifts among conservatives in the the Beats (p. 754) 1950s. Why did many view President Eisenhower as League of United Latin American Citizens (p. 755) “not one of them”? Brown v. Board of Education (p. 757) 6. What was the new “social contract” between labor and Montgomery bus boycott (p. 758) management, and how did it benefit both sides as well as “Southern Manifesto” (p. 760) the nation as a whole? “missile gap” (p. 765) “military-industrial complex” 7. How did the United States and Soviet Union shift the (p. 765) focus of the Cold War to the Third World? 8. What were the most significant factors that contributed to the growing momentum of the civil rights movement in the 1950s? wwnorton.com /studyspace 9. How did many southern whites, led by their elected VISIT STUDYSPACE FOR THESE officials, resist desegregation and civil rights in the name RESOURCES AND MORE RESOURCES AND MORE of “freedom”? s s s 10. How and why did the federal government’s concern with s s U.S. relations overseas shape its involvement with the s s Brown v. Board of Education case? s Multimedia documents s C H A P T E R R E V I E W A N D O N L I N E R E S O U R C E S 767 1960 Greensboro, NC, sit-in C H A P T E R 2 5 Young Americans for Freedom founded 1961 Bay of Pigs Freedom Rides Berlin Wall constructed 1962 Port Huron Statement University of Mississippi desegregated Rachel Carson’s Silent T H E S I X T I E S Spring Cuban missile crisis 1963 Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” March on Washington  Kennedy assassinated 1964 Freedom Summer Civil Rights Act passed 1 9 6 0 – 1 9 6 8 Gulf of Tonkin resolution 1965– Great Society 1967 1965 Voting Rights Act Watts riots Hart-Celler Act 1966 National Organization for Women organized 1968 Tet offensive Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated American Indian Movement founded Richard Nixon elected 1969 Police raid on Stonewall Inn Woodstock festival 1973 Roe v. Wade An antiwar demonstrator offers a flower to Military Police stationed outside the Pentagon at a 1967 rally against the Vietnam War. Some 100,000 protesters took part in this demonstration. On the afternoon of February 1, 1960, four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a black F O C U S college in Greensboro, North Carolina, entered the local Wool- worth’s department store. After making a few purchases, they sat down Q U E S T I O N S at the lunch counter, an area reserved for whites. Told that they could not be served, they remained in their seats until the store closed. They returned the next morning and the next. After resisting for five months, s Woolworth’s in July agreed to serve black customers at its lunch counters. events in the civil rights More than any other event, the Greensboro sit-in launched the movement of the early 1960s: a decade of political activism and social change. Similar demon- 1960s? strations soon took place throughout the South as activists demanded the integration not only of lunch counters but of parks, pools, restaurants, s bowling alleys, libraries, and other facilities as well. By the end of 1960, ses and policy initiatives of some 70,000 demonstrators had taken part in sit-ins. Angry whites the Kennedy presidency? often assaulted them. But having been trained in nonviolent resistance, the protesters did not strike back. s Even more than elevating blacks to full citizenship, declared the and strategies of Johnson’s writer James Baldwin, the civil rights movement challenged the United Great Society programs? States to rethink “what it really means by freedom”—including whether freedom applied to all Americans or only to part of the population. With s movement change in the mid-1960s? s transform American poli- tics and culture? s significance of the rights revolution of the late 1960s? s a climactic year for the Sixties? Participants in a sit-in in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1960. The protesters, probably students from a local college, brought books and newspapers to emphasize the seriousness of their intentions and their commitment to nonviolence. T H E S I X T I E S 769 their freedom rides, freedom schools, freedom marches, and the insis- tent cry “freedom now,” black Americans and their white allies risked physical and economic retribution to lay claim to freedom. Their courage inspired a host of other challenges to the status quo, including a student movement known as the New Left, the “second wave” of feminism, and activism among other minorities. By the time the decade ended, these movements had challenged the 1950s’ understanding of freedom linked to the Cold War abroad and con- sumer choice at home. They made American society confront the fact that certain groups, including students, women, members of racial minori- ties, and homosexuals, felt themselves excluded from full enjoyment of American freedom. Reflecting back years later on the struggles of the 1960s, one black Civil rights demonstrators in organizer in Memphis remarked, “All I wanted to do was to live in a free Orangeburg, South Carolina, in 1960. country.” Of the movement’s accomplishments, he added, “You had to fight for every inch of it. Nobody gave you anything. Nothing.” T H E C I V I L R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N T h e R i s i n g T i d e o f P r o t e s t With the sit-ins, college students for the first time stepped onto the stage of Ella Baker and SNCC American history as the leading force for social change. In April 1960, Ella Baker, a longtime civil rights organizer, called a meeting of young activists in Raleigh, North Carolina. Out of the gathering came the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), dedicated to replacing the culture of seg- regation with a “beloved community” of racial justice and to empowering ordinary blacks to take control of the decisions that affected their lives. In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides. Integrated groups traveled by bus into the Deep South to test compliance with court orders banning segregation on interstate buses and trains and in terminal facilities. Violent mobs assaulted them. Near Anniston, Alabama, a firebomb was thrown into the vehicle and the pas- sengers beaten as they escaped. In Birmingham, Klansmen attacked riders with bats and chains while police refused to intervene. But the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered buses and terminals desegregated. As protests escalated, so did the resistance of local authorities. In September 1962, a court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith James Meredith, a black student. The state police stood aside as a mob, 770 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the major events in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s? A police officer takes picket signs from young demonstrators in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights campaign of 1963. One sign illustrates how religious beliefs helped to inspire the protesters. A fireman assaulting young African- encouraged by Governor Ross Barnett, rampaged through the streets of American demonstrators with a high- Oxford, where the university is located. Two bystanders lost their lives in pressure hose during the climactic demonstrations in Birmingham. the riot. President Kennedy was forced to dispatch the army to restore order. Broadcast on television, such pictures proved a serious problem for B i r m i n g h a m the United States in its battle for the “hearts and minds” of people around The high point of protest came in the spring of 1963, when demonstrations the world and forced the Kennedy administration to confront the took place in towns and cities across the South. In one week in June, there contradiction between the rhetoric of were more than 15,000 arrests in 186 cities. The dramatic culmination freedom and the reality of racism. came in Birmingham, Alabama, a citadel of segregation. Even for the Deep South, Birmingham was a violent city—there had been over fifty bombings of black homes and institutions since World War II. With the movement flagging, some of its leaders invited Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Birmingham. While serving a nine- day prison term in April 1963 for violating a ban on demonstrations, King composed one of his most eloquent pleas for racial justice, the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Res ponding to local clergymen who coun- seled patience, King related the litany of abuses faced by black southerners, from T H E C I V I L R I G H T S R E V O L U T I O N 771 police brutality to the daily humiliation of having to explain to their children why they could not enter amusement parks or public swimming pools. The “white moderate,” King declared, must put aside fear of disorder and com- mit himself to racial justice. In May, King made the bold decision to send black schoolchildren into the streets of Birmingham. Police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor unleashed Confrontations in Birmingham his forces against the thousands of young marchers. The images, broadcast on television, of children being assaulted with nightsticks, high-pressure fire hoses, and attack dogs produced a wave of revulsion throughout the world. It led President Kennedy, as will be related later, to endorse the movement’s goals. Leading businessmen, fearing that the city was becoming an international symbol of brutality, brokered an end to the demonstrations that desegregated downtown stores and restaurants and promised that black salespeople would be hired. In June 1963, a sniper killed Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. In September, a bomb exploded at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, killing four young girls. (Not until the year 2002 was the last of those who committed this act of domestic terrorism tried and convicted.) T h e M a r c h o n W a s h i n g t o n On August 28, 1963, two weeks before the Birmingham church bombing, 250,000 black and white Americans converged on the nation’s capital for the March on Washington, often considered the high point of the nonviolent civil rights movement. Calls for the passage of a civil rights bill pending before Congress took center stage. But the march’s goals also Three participants in the 1963 March included a public-works program to reduce unemployment, an increase on Washington stand in front of the in the minimum wage, and a law barring discrimination in employment. White House with signs invoking These demands, and the marchers’ slogan, “Jobs and Freedom,” revealed freedom and the memory of slavery. how the black movement had, for the moment, forged an alliance with white liberal groups. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered his most famous speech, including the words, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” The movement was not without internal tensions. March organizers ordered SNCC leader John Lewis (later a congressman from Georgia) to tone down his speech, the original text of which called on blacks to “free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery” and march “through the heart of Dixie the way Sherman did . . . and burn Jim Crow to the ground.” Lewis’s rhetoric forecast the more militant turn many in the movement would soon be taking. 772 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the major events in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s? Civil rights activists also resurrected the Civil War–era vision of national authority as the custodian of American freedom. Despite the fact that the federal government had for many decades promoted segregation, blacks’ historical experience suggested that they had more hope for justice from national power than from local governments or civic institutions— home owners’ associations, businesses, private clubs—still riddled with racism. It remained unclear whether the federal government would take up this responsibility. T H E K E N N E D Y Y E A R S John F. Kennedy served as president for less than three years and, in domestic affairs, had few tangible accomplishments. But his administra- tion is widely viewed today as a moment of youthful glamour, soaring hopes, and dynamic leadership at home and abroad. Kennedy’s inaugural address of January 1961 announced a watershed in American politics: “The torch has been passed,” he declared, “to a new “The torch has been passed” generation of Americans” who would “pay any price, bear any burden,” to “assure the survival and success of liberty.” But although the sit-ins were by now a year old, the speech said nothing about segregation or race. At the outset of his presidency, Kennedy regarded civil rights as a distraction from his main concern—vigorous conduct of the Cold War. K e n n e d y a n d t h e W o r l d Kennedy’s agenda envisioned new initiatives aimed at countering com- munist influence in the world. One of his first acts was to establish the Peace Corps, which sent young Americans abroad to aid in the eco- The Peace Corps nomic and educational progress of developing countries and to improve the image of the United States there. When the Soviets in April 1961 launched a satellite carrying the first man into orbit around the earth, Kennedy announced that the United States would mobilize its resources to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The goal seemed almost impossible when announced, but it was stunningly accomplished in 1969. Like his predecessors, Kennedy viewed the entire world through the Kennedy as Cold Warrior lens of the Cold War. This outlook shaped his dealings with Fidel Castro, who had led a revolution that in 1959 ousted Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Until Castro took power, Cuba was an economic dependency of T H E K E N N E D Y Y E A R S 773 the United States. When his government began nationalizing American landholdings and other investments and signed an agreement to sell sugar to the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower administration suspended trade with the island. The CIA began training anti-Castro exiles for an invasion of Cuba. In April 1961, Kennedy allowed the CIA to launch its invasion at a site known as the Bay of Pigs. But the assault proved to be a total failure and only strengthened Cuba’s ties to the Soviet Union. The Kennedy adminis- tration tried other methods, including assassination attempts, to get rid of Castro’s government. T h e M i s s i l e C r i s i s Meanwhile, relations between the two “superpowers” deteriorated. In August 1961, in order to stem a growing tide of emigrants fleeing from East to West Berlin, the Soviets constructed a wall separating the two parts of A Cold War symbol the city. Until its demolition in 1989, the Berlin Wall would stand as a tan- gible symbol of the Cold War and the division of Europe. The most dangerous crisis of the Kennedy administration, and in many ways of the entire Cold War, came in October 1962, when American spy planes discovered that the Soviet Union was installing missiles in Cuba capable of reaching the United States with nuclear weapons. Rejecting advice from military leaders that he authorize an attack on Cuba, which would almost certainly have triggered a Soviet response in Berlin and perhaps a nuclear war, Kennedy imposed a The Cuba blockade blockade, or “ quarantine,” of the island and demanded the missiles’ removal. After tense behind-the-scenes negotiations, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles; Kennedy pledged that the United States would not invade Cuba and secretly agreed to remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, from which they could reach the Soviet Union. The crisis seems to have lessened Kennedy’s passion for the Cold War. Indeed, he appears to have been shocked by the casual way military leaders spoke of “winning” a nuclear exchange in which tens of millions of Americans and Russians were certain to die. In 1963, he called for greater cooperation with the Soviets. That summer, the two countries agreed to a The 1963 nuclear test-ban treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and in treaty space. In announcing the agreement, Kennedy paid tribute to the small movement against nuclear weapons that had been urging such a ban for several years. 774 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the major crises and policy initiatives of the Kennedy presidency? James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, in a classroom where white classmates refused to sit near him. K e n n e d y a n d C i v i l R i g h t s In his first two years in office, Kennedy was preoccupied with foreign policy. But in 1963, the crisis over civil rights eclipsed other concerns. Until then, Kennedy had been reluctant to take a forceful stand on black demands. He used federal force when obstruction of civil rights law became acute, as at the University of Mississippi. But he failed to protect New York City train passengers activists from violence, insisting that law enforcement was a local matter. reading the news of President Events in Birmingham in May 1963 forced Kennedy’s hand. In June, Kennedy’s assassination, he went on national television to call for the passage of a law banning November 22, 1963. discrimination in all places of public accom- modation, a major goal of the civil rights movement. The nation, he asserted, faced a moral crisis: “We preach freedom around the world, . . . but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other, that this is a land of the free except for Negroes?” Kennedy did not live to see his civil rights bill enacted. On November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, he was shot and killed. Most likely, the assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald, a trou- bled former marine. Partly because Oswald was murdered two days later by a local T H E K E N N E D Y Y E A R S 775 nightclub owner while in police custody, speculation about a possible conspiracy continues to this day. In any event, Kennedy’s death brought an abrupt and utterly unexpected end to his presidency. It fell to his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, to secure passage of the civil rights bill and to launch a program of domestic liberalism far more ambitious than any- thing Kennedy had envisioned. L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y Unlike John F. Kennedy, raised in a wealthy and powerful family, Lyndon Johnson grew up in one of the poorest parts of the United States, the cen- Texas background tral Texas hill country. Johnson never forgot the poor Mexican and white children he had taught in a Texas school in the early 1930s. Far more inter- ested than Kennedy in domestic reform, he continued to hold the New Deal view that government had an obligation to assist less-fortunate members of society. T h e C i v i l R i g h t s A c t o f 1 9 6 4 Just five days after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson called on Congress to enact the civil rights bill as the most fitting memorial to his slain predecessor. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels, and theaters. It also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex—a provision Landmark legislation added by opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberal and female members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope. Johnson knew that many whites opposed the new law. After signing it, he turned to an aide and remarked, “I think we delivered the South to the Republican Party.” F r e e d o m S u m m e r The 1964 law did not address a major concern of the civil rights The 1964 voter registration movement—the right to vote in the South. That summer, a coalition of drive civil rights groups launched a voter registration drive in Mississippi. Hundreds of white college students from the North traveled to the state to take part in Freedom Summer. An outpouring of violence greeted the campaign, including thirty-five bombings and numerous beatings of civil rights workers. In June, three young activists—Michael Schwerner and 776 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the purposes and strategies of Johnson’s Great Society programs? Andrew Goodman, white students from the North, and James Chaney, a local black youth, were kidnapped by a group headed by a deputy sheriff and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Although many black lives Mississippi had been lost in the movement, the deaths of the two white students now focused unprecedented attention on Mississippi and on the apparent inability of the federal government to protect citizens seeking to exercise their constitutional rights. Freedom Summer led directly to one of the most dramatic confronta- tions of the civil rights era—the campaign by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to take the seats of the state’s all-white offi- The MFDP cial party at the 1964 Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The civil rights movement in Mississippi had created the MFDP, open to all residents of the state. At televised hearings before the credentials committee, Fannie Lou Hamer of the MFDP held a national Fannie Lou Hamer audience spellbound with her account of growing up in poverty in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta and of the savage beatings she had endured at the hands of police. Party liberals, including Johnson’s running mate, Hubert Humphrey, pressed for a compromise in which two black delegates would be granted seats. But the MFDP rejected the proposal. T h e 1 9 6 4 E l e c t i o n The events at Atlantic City severely weakened black activists’ faith in the responsiveness of the political system and forecast the impending Fannie Lou Hamer testifying at the Democratic national convention of 1964 on behalf of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y 777 breakup of the coalition between the civil T H E P R E S I D E N T I A L E L E C T I O N rights movement and the liberal wing of the O F 1 9 6 4 Democratic Party. For the moment, how- ever, the movement rallied behind Johnson’s campaign for reelection. Johnson’s oppo- 9 4 4 3 4 4 nent, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, 6 10 4 demanded a more aggressive conduct of 4 12 43 14 3 21 4 the Cold War. But Goldwater directed most 9 29 3 5 8 17 of his critique against “internal” dangers 4 26 13 26 3 40 6 7 7 12 12 10 to freedom, especially the New Deal wel- 9 3 13 11 fare state, which he believed stifled indi- 5 4 8 6 8 vidual initiative and independence. He 7 10 12 25 voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 4 10 3 14 His acceptance speech at the Republican national convention contained the explosive statement, “Extremism in the defense of Electoral Vote Popular Vote liberty is no vice.” Party Candidate (Share) (Share) Democrat Johnson 486 (90%) 42,825,463 (61%) Stigmatized by the Democrats as an Republican Goldwater 52 (10%) 27,146,969 (38.4%) extremist who would repeal Social Security and risk nuclear war, Goldwater went down to a disastrous defeat. Johnson received almost 43 million votes to Goldwater’s 27 million. Democrats swept to two-to-one majorities in both houses of Congress. But Goldwater’s message enabled him to carry five Deep South states, and segregationist governor George Wallace of Alabama showed in several Democratic primaries that politicians could strike electoral gold by appealing to white opposition to the civil rights movement. Although few realized it, the 1964 campaign marked a mile- stone in the resurgence of American conservatism. T h e C o n s e r v a t i v e S i x t i e s The 1960s, today recalled as a decade of radicalism, clearly had a con- Young Americans for Freedom servative side as well. With the founding in 1960 of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), conservative students emerged as a force in politics. There were striking parallels between the Sharon Statement, issued by ninety young people who gathered at the estate of conservative intellec- tual William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, to establish YAF, and the Port Huron Statement of SDS of 1962 (discussed later in this chapter). Both manifestos portrayed youth as the cutting edge of a new radical- ism, and both claimed to offer a route to greater freedom. The Sharon 778 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the purposes and strategies of Johnson’s Great Society programs? A 1967 rally by members of Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative group that flourished in the 1960s. Statement summarized beliefs that had circulated among conservatives during the past decade—the free market underpinned “personal freedom,” government must be strictly limited, and “international communism,” the gravest threat to liberty, must be destroyed. Goldwater also brought new constituencies to the conservative Conservative strength cause. His campaign aroused enthusiasm in the rapidly expanding suburbs of southern California and the Southwest. Orange County, California, many of whose residents had recently arrived from the East and Midwest and worked in defense-related industries, became a nation- ally known center of grassroots conservative activism. And by carrying five states of the Deep South, Goldwater showed that the civil rights revolution had redrawn the nation’s political map, opening the door to a “southern strategy” that would eventually lead the entire region into the Republican Party. Well before the rise of Black Power, a reaction against civil rights gains offered conservatives new opportunities and threatened the stability of the Democratic coalition. In 1962, YAF bestowed its Freedom Award on Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, one of the country’s most Strom Thurmond prominent segregationists. During the 1960s, most conservatives aban- doned talk of racial superiority and inferiority. But conservative appeals to law and order, “freedom of association,” and the evils of welfare often had strong racial overtones. Racial divisions would prove to be a political gold mine for conservatives. L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y 779 T h e V o t i n g R i g h t s A c t One last legislative triumph, however, lay ahead for the civil rights move- ment. In January 1965, King launched a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, a city where only 355 of 15,000 black residents had been allowed to register to vote. In March, defying a ban by Governor Wallace, King Selma, Alabama attempted to lead a march from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery. When the marchers reached the bridge leading out of the city, state police assaulted them with cattle prods, whips, and tear gas. Once again, violence against nonviolent demonstrators flashed across television screens throughout the world. Calling Selma a milestone in “man’s unending search for freedom,” Johnson asked Congress to enact LBJ’s support a law securing the right to vote. He closed his speech by quoting the demonstrators’ song, “We Shall Overcome.” Never before had the move- ment received so powerful an endorsement from the federal govern- ment. Congress quickly passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allowed federal officials to register voters. In addition, the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the poll tax, which had long pre- vented poor blacks (and some whites) from voting in the South. I m m i g r a t i o n R e f o r m By 1965, the civil rights movement had succeeded in eradicating the legal bases of second-class citizenship. The belief that racism should no longer serve as a basis of public policy spilled over into other realms. In 1965, The Hart-Celler Act and its the Hart-Celler Act abandoned the national-origins quota system of consequences immigration, which had excluded Asians and severely restricted south- ern and eastern Europeans. The law established new, racially neutral criteria for immigration, notably family reunification and possession of skills in demand in the United States. On the other hand, because of growing hostility in the Southwest to Mexican immigration, the law established the first limit, 120,000, on newcomers from the Western Hemisphere. The new law had many unexpected results. At the time, immigrants represented only 5 percent of the American population—the lowest pro- portion since the 1830s. No one anticipated that the new quotas not only New wave of immigration would lead to an explosive rise in immigration but also would spark a dramatic shift in which newcomers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia came to outnumber those from Europe. Taken together, the civil rights revolution and immigration reform marked the triumph of a pluralist conception of Americanism. By 1976, 85 percent of respondents 780 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties What were the purposes and strategies of Johnson’s Great Society programs? to a public-opinion survey agreed with the statement, “The United States American pluralism was meant to be . . . a country made up of many races, religions, and nationalities.” T h e G r e a t S o c i e t y After his landslide victory of 1964, Johnson outlined the most sweeping proposal for governmental action to promote the general welfare since the New Deal. Johnson’s initiatives of 1965–1967, known collectively as the Great Society, provided health services to the poor and elderly in the new Medicaid and Medicare programs and poured federal funds Expanding social programs into education and urban development. New agencies, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Endowments for the Humanities and for the Arts, and a national public broadcasting network, were created. These measures greatly expanded the powers of the federal government, and they completed and extended the social agenda (with the exception of national health insurance) that had been stalled in Congress since 1938. Unlike the New Deal, the Great Society was a response to prosperity, not depression. The mid-1960s were a time of rapid economic expansion, fueled by increased government spending and a tax cut on individuals and businesses initially proposed by Kennedy and enacted in 1964. Johnson and Democratic liberals believed that economic growth made it possible As part of his War on Poverty, to fund ambitious new government programs and to improve the quality President Lyndon Johnson visited of life. Appalachia, one of the poorest places in the United States. T h e W a r o n P o v e r t y The centerpiece of the Great Society, however, was the crusade to eradicate poverty, launched by Johnson early in 1964. Michael Harrington’s 1962 book The Other America revealed that 40 to 50 million Americans lived in poverty. During the 1930s, Democrats had attributed poverty to an imbalance of economic power and flawed economic institutions. In the 1960s, the administration attributed it to an absence of skills and a lack of proper attitudes and work habits. Thus, the War on Poverty did not address the economic changes that were reducing the number of well-paid manufac- turing jobs and leaving poor families in rural areas like Appalachia and decaying urban ghettos with little hope of economic advancement. One of the Great Society’s most popular and successful components, food stamps, offered direct aid to the poor. But, in general, the War on L Y N D O N J O H N S O N ’ S P R E S I D E N C Y 781 Poverty concentrated not on direct economic aid but on equipping the poor Head Start with skills and rebuilding their spirit and motivation. It provided Head Start (an early childhood education program), job training, legal services, and scholarships for poor college students. It also created VISTA, a domes- tic version of the Peace Corps for the inner cities. The War on Poverty required that poor people play a leading part in the design and implemen- tation of local policies, a recipe for continuing conflict with local political leaders accustomed to controlling the flow of federal dollars. F r e e d o m a n d E q u a l i t y Race and poverty Recognizing that black poverty was fundamentally different from white, because its roots lay in “past injustice and present prejudice,” Johnson sought to redefine the relationship between freedom and equality. Economic liberty, he insisted, meant more than equal opportunity: “You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. . . . We seek . . . not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result.” Johnson’s Great Society may not have achieved equality “as a fact,” FIGURE 25.1 but it represented the most expansive effort in the nation’s history to Percentage of mobilize the powers of the national government to address the needs of the Population below least-advantaged Americans. Poverty Level, by Coupled with the decade’s high rate of economic growth, the War on Race, 1959–1969* Poverty succeeded in reducing the incidence of poverty from 22 percent to 13 percent of American families during the 1960s. It has fluctuated 60 Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American around the latter figure ever since. By the 1990s, thanks to the civil 50 rights movement and the Great Society, the historic gap between whites 40 and blacks in education, income, and access to skilled employment nar- 30 rowed considerably. But nearly a quarter of all black children still lived Total 20 in poverty. White centage below poverty level 10 Per 0 1959 1961 1963 1965 1967 1969 Year *The poverty threshold for a non-farm family of four was $3,743 in 1969 and $2,973 in 1959. T H E C H A N G I N G B L A C K M O V E M E N T During the 1960s, an expanding In the mid-1960s, economic issues rose to the forefront of the civil rights economy and government programs agenda. Violent outbreaks in black ghettos outside the South drew atten- assisting the poor produced a tion to the national scope of racial injustice and to inequalities in jobs, steady decrease in the percentage of Americans living in poverty. education, and housing that the dismantling of legal segregation left intact. 782 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties How did the civil rights movement change in the mid-1960s? A semblance of normal life resumes amid the rubble of the Watts uprising of August 1965. T h e G h e t t o U p r i s i n g s The first riots—really, battles between angry blacks and the predomi- nantly white police (widely seen by many ghetto residents as an occupying army)—erupted in Harlem in 1964. Far larger was the Watts uprising of 1965, which took place in the black ghetto of Los Angeles only days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. An estimated 50,000 persons took part in this “rebellion,” attacking police and firemen, looting white-owned Watts riots businesses, and burning buildings. It required 15,000 police and National Guardsmen to restore order, by which time thirty-five people lay dead, 900 were injured, and $30 million worth of property had been destroyed. By the summer of 1967, urban uprisings left twenty-three dead in Newark and forty-three in Detroit, where entire blocks went up in flames Detroit and Newark and property damage ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The violence led Johnson to appoint a commission headed by Illinois gover- nor Otto Kerner to study the causes of urban rioting. Released in 1968, the Kerner Report blamed the violence on “segregation and poverty” and offered a powerful indictment of “white racism.” But the report failed to offer any clear proposals for change. With black unemployment twice that of whites and the average black family income little more than half the white norm, the movement looked for ways to “make freedom real” for black Americans. In 1964, King T H E C H A N G I N G B L A C K M O V E M E N T 783 called for a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” to mobilize the nation’s resources to abolish economic deprivation. His proposal was directed against poverty in general, but King also insisted that after “doing some- thing special against the Negro for hundreds of years,” the United States had an obligation to “do something special for him now”—an early call for Affirmative action what would come to be known as “affirmative action.” In 1966, King launched the Chicago Freedom Movement, with demands quite different from its predecessors in the South—an end to discrimination by employers and unions, equal access to mortgages, the integration of public housing, and the construction of low-income hous- ing scattered throughout the region. Confronting the entrenched power of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s political machine and the ferocious opposition of white home owners, the movement failed. M a l c o l m X The civil rights movement’s first phase had produced a clear set of objec- tives, far-reaching accomplishments, and a series of coherent if sometimes competitive organizations. The second witnessed political fragmentation and few significant victories. Even during the heyday of the integration Black control struggle, the fiery orator Malcolm X had insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts rather than working with whites. Malcolm Little dropped his “slave surname” in favor of “X,” symbolizing blacks’ separation from their African ancestry. He became a spokesman for the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, and a sharp critic of the ideas of integration and nonviolence. On a 1964 trip to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Islam’s spiritual home, Malcolm X witnessed harmony among Muslims of all races. He now began to speak of the possibility of interracial cooperation for radical change in the United States. But when members of the Nation of Islam assassinated Legacy of Malcolm X him in February 1965 after he had formed his own Organization of Afro- American Unity, Malcolm X left neither a consistent ideology nor a coher- ent movement. However, his call for blacks to rely on their own resources struck a chord among the urban poor and younger civil rights activists. T h e R i s e o f B l a c k P o w e r Malcolm X was the intellectual father of “Black Power,” a slogan that came to national attention in 1966 when SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael used it during a civil rights march in Mississippi. 784 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties How did the civil rights movement change in the mid-1960s? A highly imprecise idea, Black Power suggested everything from the election of more black officials (hardly a radical notion) to the belief that black Americans were a colonized people whose freedom could be won only through a revolutionary struggle for self-determination. But however employed, the idea reflected the radicalization of young civil rights activists and sparked an explosion of racial self-assertion, reflected in the slogan “black is beautiful.” The abandonment of the word “Negro” in favor of “Afro-American,” as well as the popularity of African styles of dress and the “natural,” or “Afro,” hairdo among both men and women reflected a new sense of racial pride and a rejection of white norms. Inspired by the idea of black self-determination, SNCC and CORE repudiated their previous interracialism, and new militant groups Female students on the campus of sprang into existence. Most prominent of the new groups, in terms Howard University in Washington, of publicity, if not numbers, was the Black Panther Party. Founded D.C., sport the Afro, a hairstyle in Oakland, California, in 1966, it became notorious for advocating representative of the “black is armed self-defense in response to police brutality. The party’s youth- beautiful” campaign of the 1960s. ful members alarmed whites by wearing military garb, although they also ran health clinics, schools, and children’s breakfast programs. But internal disputes and a campaign against the Black Panthers by police and the FBI, which left several leaders dead in shootouts, destroyed the organization. By 1967, with the escalation of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, the War on Poverty had ground to a halt. By then, with ghetto uprisings punctuating the urban landscape, the antiwar movement assuming mas- Social crisis sive proportions, and millions of young people ostentatiously rejecting mainstream values, American society faced its greatest crisis since the Depression. V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T O l d a n d N e w L e f t s To most Americans, the rise of a protest movement among white youth came as a complete surprise. If blacks’ grievances appeared self-evident, those of white college students were difficult to understand. What per- suaded large numbers of children of affluence to reject the values and institutions of their society? In part, the answer lay in a redefinition of the meaning of freedom by what came to be called the New Left. The New Left V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T 785 The New Left challenged not only mainstream America but also what it dismissively called the Old Left. Unlike the Communist Party, it did not take the Soviet Union as a model or see the working class as the main agent of social change. Instead of economic equality, the language of New Deal liberals, the New Left spoke of loneliness, isolation, and alienation, of pow- erlessness in the face of bureaucratic institutions and a hunger for authen- ticity that affluence could not provide. By 1968, thanks to the coming of age of the baby-boom generation and the growing number of jobs that required Rising college attendance post–high school skills, more than 7 million students attended college, more than the number of farmers or steelworkers. The New Left’s greatest inspiration was the black freedom movement. More than any other event, the sit-ins catalyzed white student activism. Here was the unlikely combination that created the upheaval known as The Sixties—the convergence of society’s most excluded members demanding full access to all its benefits, with the children of the middle class rejecting the social mainstream. T h e F a d i n g C o n s e n s u s Members of Students for a The years 1962 and 1963 witnessed the appearance of several pathbreak- Democratic Society (SDS) at a 1963 National Council meeting in Indiana. ing books that challenged one or another aspect of the 1950s consensus. Despite their raised fists, they appear James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time gave angry voice to the black revolution. eminently respectable compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the environmental costs of economic radicals who emerged later in the growth. Michael Harrington’s The Other America revealed the persistence decade. The group is entirely white. of poverty amid plenty. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, criti- cized urban renewal, the removal of the poor from city centers, and the destruction of neighborhoods to build highways. Yet in some ways the most influential critique of all arose in 1962 from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an offshoot of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy. Meeting at Port Huron, Michigan, some sixty college students adopted a document that captured the mood and summarized the beliefs of this generation of student protesters. The Port Huron Statement offered a new vision of social change. “We seek 786 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties How did the Vietnam War transform American politics and culture? the establishment,” it proclaimed, of “a democracy of individual participation, [in which] the individual shares in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life.” Freedom, for the New Left, meant “participatory democracy.” Although rarely defined with precision, this became a standard by which students judged existing social arrangements— workplaces, schools, government—and found them wanting. In 1964, events at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed the possibil- ity for a mobilization of students in the name of participatory democracy. Berkeley was an immense, impersonal Mario Savio, a leader of the 1964 institution where enrollments in many classes approached 1,000 stu- Free Speech Movement at the dents. The spark that set student protests alight was a new rule prohibiting University of California, Berkeley, political groups from using a central area of the campus to spread their addressing a crowd on campus from the roof of a police car. ideas. Students responded by creating the Free Speech movement. Thousands of Berkeley students became involved in the protests in the months that followed. Their program moved from demanding a repeal of the new rule to a critique of the entire structure of the university and of an education geared toward preparing graduates for corporate jobs. The university gave in on the speech ban early in 1965. A m e r i c a a n d V i e t n a m By 1965 the black movement and the emergence of the New Left had shat- tered the climate of consensus of the 1950s. But what transformed protest into a full-fledged generational rebellion was the war in Vietnam. The war tragically revealed the danger that Walter Lippmann had warned of at the outset of the Cold War—viewing the entire world and every local situation within it through the either-or lens of an anticommunist crusade. Vietnam and anticommunism A Vietnam specialist in the State Department who attended a policy meeting in August 1963 later recalled “the abysmal ignorance around the table of the particular facts of Vietnam. . . . They [believed] that we could manipulate other states and build nations; that we knew all the answers.” As noted in the previous chapter, the Truman and Eisenhower admin- istrations had cast their lot with French colonialism in the region. After the French defeat, they financed the creation of a pro-American South V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T 787 V O I C E S O F F R E E D O M F r o m Y o u n g A m e r i c a n s f o r F r e e d o m , T h e S h a r o n S t a t e m e n t ( S e p t e m b e r 1 9 6 0 ) Although the 1960s is usually thought of as a decade of youthful radicalism, it also witnessed the growth of conservative movements. The Sharon Statement marked the emergence of Young Americans for Freedom as a force for conservatism in American politics. In this time of moral and political crisis, it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths. We, as young conservatives, believe: That foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force; That liberty is indivisible, and that political freedom cannot long exist without economic freedom; That the purposes of government are to protect those freedoms through the preservation of internal order, the provision of national defense, and the administration of justice; That when government ventures beyond these lawful functions, it accumulates power which tends to diminish order and liberty; . . . That the market economy, allocating resources by the free play of supply and demand, is the single economic system compatible with the requirements of personal freedom and constitutional government, and that it is at the same time the most productive supplier of human needs; . . . That the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties; That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace. F r o m T o m H a y d e n a n d O t h e r s , T h e P o r t H u r o n S t a t e m e n t ( J u n e 1 9 6 2 ) One of the most influential documents of the 1960s emerged in 1962 from a meeting sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society in Port Huron, Michigan. Its call for a “democracy of individual participation” inspired many of the social movements of the decade and offered a critique of institutions ranging from the government to universities that failed to live up to this standard. We are the people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit. . . . Freedom and equality for each individual, government of, by, and for the people—these American values we found good principles by which we could live as men. As we grew, however, our comfort was penetrated by events too troubling to dismiss. First, the . . . Southern struggle against racial bigotry compelled most of us from silence to activism. Second, . . . the proclaimed peaceful intentions of the United States contradicted its economic and military investments in the Cold War. . . . The conventional moral terms of the age, the politician moralities—“free world,” “people’s democracies”—reflect realities poorly if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles. But neither has our experience in the universities brought us moral enlightenment. Our professors and administrators sacrifice controversy to public relations; . . . their skills and silence are purchased by investors in the arms race. . . . We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love. In affirming these principles we are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the twentieth century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs. We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things—if anything, the brutalities of the twentieth century teach that means and ends are intimately related, that vague appeals to “posterity” cannot justify the mutilations of the present. . . . We see little reason why men cannot meet with increasing skill the complexities and responsibilities of their Q U E S T I O N S situation, if society is organized not for minority, but for majority, participation in decision-making. 1. How do the young conservatives who We would replace power rooted in possession, wrote the Sharon Statement under- privilege, or circumstance by power and stand freedom? uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason, 2. What do the authors of the Port Huron and creativity. As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual Statement appear to mean by partici- participation [so] that the individual [can] patory democracy? share in those social decisions determining the 3. What are the main differences, and quality and direction of his life. . . . A new left are there any similarities, between the must consist of younger people. . . . [It] must outlooks of the young conservatives start controversy throughout the land, if national and the young radicals? policies and national apathy are to be reversed. Vietnamese government. By the 1960s, the United States was committed to Commitment to South Vietnam the survival of this corrupt regime. Fear that the public would not forgive them for “losing” Vietnam made it impossible for presidents Kennedy and Johnson to remove the United States from an increasingly untenable situation. Kennedy’s foreign policy advisers saw Vietnam as a test of whether the United States could, through “counterinsurgency”—intervention to counter internal uprisings in non- communist countries—halt the spread of Third World revolutions. South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem resisted American advice to broaden his government’s base of support. In October 1963, after large Buddhist dem- onstrations against his regime, the United States approved a military coup that led to Diem’s death. When Kennedy was assassinated the following month, there were 17,000 American military advisers in South Vietnam. L y n d o n J o h n s o n ’ s W a r Lyndon B. Johnson came to the presidency with little experience in foreign relations. But he knew that Republicans had used the “loss” of China as a weapon against Truman. In August 1964, North Vietnamese vessels encountered an American ship on a spy mission off its coast. When North Vietnamese patrol boats Secretary of Defense Robert fired on the American vessel, Johnson proclaimed that the United States was McNamara, on the left, and his deputy, Cyrus Vance, at a May 1965 a victim of “aggression.” In response, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin meeting at the White House where the resolution, authorizing the president to take “all necessary measures to repel war in Vietnam was discussed. A bust armed attack” in Vietnam. Only two members—senators Ernest Gruening of President Kennedy stands in the of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon—voted against giving Johnson this background. McNamara later wrote in blank check. (Over forty years later, in December 2005, the National Security his memoirs that his misgivings only grew as the war progressed. Agency finally released hundreds of pages of secret documents that made it clear that no North Vietnamese attack had actu- ally taken place.) Immediately after Johnson’s 1964 election, the National Security Council recommended that the United States begin air strikes against North Vietnam and introduce American ground troops in the south. Johnson put the plan into effect. At almost the same time, he intervened in the Dominican Republic. Here, military leaders in 1963 had overthrown the left-wing but noncommunist Juan Bosch, the country’s first elected president since 1924. 790 C h a p t e r 2 5 ★ The Sixties How did the Vietnam War transform American politics and culture? T H E V I E T N A M W A R , 1 9 6 4 – 1 9 7 5 CHINA NORTH VIETNAM BURMA Dien Bien Phu U.S. air raids (MYANMAR) 1966–1968, 1972 Hanoi Haiphong Gulf of Tonkin LAOS Gulf of Tonkin incident Thanh Hoa August 1964 H a i n a n Vinh Mek Vientiane ong R. Dong Hoi 17th P Demilitarized zone arallel demarcation line Geneva Accords, July 1954 Tet offensive Invasion of Laos Hue January–February 1968 February–March 1971 Da Nang THAILAND My Lai massacre March 1968 Pleiku Qui Nhon rail CAMBODIA inh T hi M SOUTH o C Invasion of Cambodia VIETNAM South China H April–June 1970 Na Trang Sea Phnom Penh Saigon Tet offensive January–February 1968 Gulf of Thailand M e ko n g Surrender of South Vietnam D e l t a April 30, 1975 Major battles or actions U.S. and South Vietnamese offensives 0 100 200 miles North Vietnamese offensives North Vietnamese supply routes 0 100 200 kilometers A war of aerial bombing and small guerrilla skirmishes rather than fixed land battles, Vietnam was the longest war in American history and the only one the United States has lost. V I E T N A M A N D T H E N E W L E F T 791 In April 1965, another group of military men attempted to restore Bosch to power but were defeated by the ruling junta. Fearing the unrest would lead to “another Cuba,” Johnson dispatched 22,000 American troops. The operation’s success seemed to bolster Johnson’s determination in Vietnam. By 1968, the number of American troops in Vietnam exceeded half a million, and the conduct of the war had become more and more brutal. The North Vietnamese mistreated American prisoners of war held in a camp known sardonically by the inmates as the Hanoi Hilton. American planes dropped more tons of bombs on the small countries of North and South Vietnam than both sides had used in all of World War II. They spread chemicals that destroyed forests to deprive the Viet Cong of hiding places and dropped bombs filled with napalm, a gelatinous form of gasoline that burns the skin of anyone exposed to it. An antiwar placard parodies a famous army recruiting poster from World War I. The original read, “I Want You.” T h e A n t i w a r M o v e m e n t As casualties mounted and American bombs poured down on North and South Vietnam, the Cold War foreign policy consensus began to unravel. By 1968, the war had sidetracked much of the Great Society and had torn families, universities, and the Democratic Party apart. Opposition to the Vietnam Opposition to the war became the organizing theme that united people War with all kinds of doubts and discontents. With college students exempted from the draft, the burden of fighting fell on the working class and the poor. In 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. condemned the administration’s Vietnam policy as an unconscionable use of violence and for drainin