US History Student Notes

Wilson's Vision for Peace

Wilson outlined his vision for a stable, long-lasting peace in Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world following WW1.
14 points was a speech President Woodrow Wilson made to Congress on Jan 8th, 1918.

The principle that each nation had the right to choose its own government became central to Wilson’s Fourteen Points (Initiated after Bolshevik party took over Russia).

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Fourteen points advocated for peace and the end of World War 1.
Fourteen points called for free trade, freedom of the seas, arms reduction, arbitration of international disputes, and adjustment of European borders along ethnic lines - all to be achieved through open negotiation of public treaties.
Wilson itemized 14 strategies to ensure national security and world peace.
Allies never formally endorsed Fourteen Points.
Fourteen Points was the main platform on which the war was sold to the American people, Wilson wanted to stress that the war was not for nationalism but to ensure peace in the world.

American Support for World War II

Opposition to War

Roosevelt condemned foreign aggression.
But prepared for war even while the U.S remained isolationist through much of the 1930s (Believed involvement was inevitable because of America’s belief in democracy).
Government believed through a Senate investigation that Wall Street bankers, corporate munitions makers, and other “merchants of death” had led America into Great War → Believed they should’ve never have been involved in World War 1.
Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts → mandating an arms embargo against both victim and aggressor in any military conflict.
Clearly America didn’t want to get involved with any wars → Isolationism.

Support for War

Late in 1930s → people changed views as they became afraid of the threat posed by the rise of fascism abroad.
With the Public’s mood shift, especially amongst supporters of New Deal, Roosevelt aligned diplomacy to that of Britain, France, and China. → US must quarantine aggressors and help its allies.
US needs to become a great arsenal of Democracy.
American businesses and banks had heavily invested into the allies with $3.5 billion invested by businesses, and allies had borrowed $2 billion from American banks.
Anti-Semitism inspired the Jewish community to urge the government to get involved.
Japanese Bombing of Pearl Harbor → pushed America into the war.

Causes of the Great Depression

It was not just one factor, but instead a combination of domestic and worldwide conditions that led to the Great Depression.
Stock Market Crash of 1929 - Occurred on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929.
After two months, stockholders had lost more than $40 billion dollars.
Bank Failures - Throughout the 1930s over 9,000 banks failed.
Bank deposits were uninsured and thus as banks failed, people simply lost their savings.
Surviving banks, unsure of the economic situation and concerned for their own survival, stopped being as willing to create new loans.
This exacerbated the situation leading to less and less expenditures.
Reduction in Purchasing Across the Board - With the stock market crash and the fears of further economic woes, individuals from all classes stopped purchasing items.
This then led to a reduction in the number of items produced and thus a reduction in the workforce.
As people lost their jobs, they were unable to keep up with paying for items they had bought through installment plans and their items were repossessed.
More and more inventory began to accumulate. The unemployment rate rose above 25% which meant, of course, even less spending to help alleviate the economic situation.
American Economic Policy with Europe - As businesses began failing, the government created the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930 to help protect American companies.
This charged a high tax for imports, thereby leading to less trade between America and foreign countries along with some economic retaliation.
Drought - The Dust Bowl in the midwest → many could not even pay their taxes or other debts and had to sell their farms for no profit to themselves.

Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act)

Shaped immigration policy for the next four decades.
1924 law limited immigration from all countries to a total of 165,000 a year, less than 20% of the pre-WW1 average.
Based number of immigrants allowed in the country as a percentage of the 1890 census.
Meant to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe.
In the first decade of the 20th century, avg number of Italians entering → 200,000.
In 1924, after annual quota number of Italians was set less than 4,000.
All Asian immigrants banned from getting citizenship.
Mexicans and Canadians were exceptions because supply of cheap labor was needed.
Half a million Mexicans entered in the 1920s.

Union Movements and Labor Relations

Craft Unionism vs Industrial Unionism

Craft unionism refers to a model of trade unionism in which workers are organized based on the particular craft or trade in which they work.
The primary goal of craft unionism is the betterment of the members of the particular group and the reservation of job opportunities to members of the union and those workers allowed to seek work through the union's hiring hall.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL)—one of the first national unions—organized workers according to the principles of craft unionism.
The earliest unions were craft unions.
Since craft unions revolved around specific trades, their members were predominantly skilled workers and it was very exclusive.
The AFL imposed membership restrictions on women, immigrants, and African-American workers.
Industrial unionism - in which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of differences in skill.
One of the foremost industrial unions was the International Workers of the World (IWW); formed in 1905.
In 1935, following unsuccessful efforts to encourage the AFL to adopt principles of industrial unionism, nine labor leaders under John L. Lewis abandoned the AFL and formed an industrial union called the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
The CIO organized workers across entire industries, such as mining and auto manufacturing, and had a membership of more than 2.8 million within seven years of its founding.
The AFL and CIO represented two competing views of labor organization—craft unionism and industrial unionism, respectively—and were bitter rivals, as each fought to poach workers from the other.
Eventually, these unions put their differences aside and merged to form the AFL-CIO → represents 12 million people and ended rift between craft and industrial unionism.

The Red Scare

Hysteria of the perceived threat posed by communists, socialists, radicals and leftists in the U.S. was known as the Red Scare.
The government was afraid because of the Bolshevik revolt in 1919, afraid it would happen in the US as it contained many immigrants from those countries.
Communists were often referred to as “Reds” for their allegiance to the red Soviet flag.
Bolshevik group in US formed US communist party.
The radicals were largely harmless and posed little threat.
Municipal police forces, state militias and federal courts part of large postwar offensive against radicals.
Foremost among the “Red Hunters” was Attorney General Mitchell Palmer who led arrests and deportations of thousands of immigrants and radicals → most never had been charged with a crime.
Palmer Raids → January 1920s → Federal agents arrested 6,000 alleged radicals in 33 cities.
Officials eventually deported 600 of them.
Kickstarter decline of anti-Red drive.
Sacco and Vanzetti → two anarchists wrongfully prosecuted because of radical fears of the time.

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters

First African American labor union to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.
The BSCP embodied Randolph’s belief that segregation and racism were linked to the unfair distribution of wealth and power that condemned tens of millions of black and white Americans to chronic misery.
Founded in 1925 by labor organizer and civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) aimed to improve the working conditions and treatment of African American railroad porters and maids employed by the Pullman Company, a manufacturer and operator of railroad cars.
Pullman exploited their difficult situation by demanding long hours of hard work with poor compensation.
The Pullman Company, arguing that 85 percent of the porters supported the company’s in-house union, refused to recognize the BSCP.
Throughout the ensuing years, the BSCP fought a multifaceted battle against the Pullman Company.
In 1932 their tenacity paid off. Although the weight of the Great Depression virtually crushed the BSCP, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal provided a way out.
The National Industrial Recovery Act, enacted in 1933, reinforced the Railway Labor Act, while the Emergency Railroad Transportation Act (1933) specifically banned company unions. That legislation provided some of the strongest-ever protections for organized labor.
After much stalling, the Pullman Company agreed to begin negotiating in good faith with the porters, and on April 25, 1937, it signed the first agreement between a union of African American workers and a major American corporation.

Labor Organizing During the First New Deal

In 1933, the number of labor union members was around 3 million, compared to 5 million a decade before.
Most union members in 1933 belonged to skilled craft unions, most of which were affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
The union movement had failed in the previous 50 years to organize the much larger number of laborers in such mass production industries as steel, textiles, mining, and automobiles.
The tremendous gains labor unions experienced in the 1930s resulted, in part, from the pro-union stance of the Roosevelt administration and from legislation enacted by Congress during the early New Deal.
The National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) provided for collective bargaining. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (also known as the Wagner Act) required businesses to bargain in good faith with any union supported by the majority of their employees.
Meanwhile, the Congress of Industrial Organizations split from the AFL and became much more aggressive in organizing unskilled workers who had not been represented before.

Convict Lease System and Debt Peonage

Convict leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the Southern United States.
Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations (e.g. Tennessee Coal and Iron Company).
The lessee was responsible for feeding, clothing, and housing the prisoners.
U.S. Steel is among American companies who have acknowledged using African-American leased convict labor.
Persisted in various forms until it was abolished by President Franklin D. Roosevelt via Francis Biddle's (AG in WWII America) "Circular 3591" of December 12, 1941.
Debt Peonage is when the sharecropper could not pay off their debts and could not leave their property. Virtual Slavery.

Responses to the Great Depression

By 1932, one of every four workers was unemployed. Banks failed and life savings were lost, leaving many Americans destitute.
With no job and no savings, thousands of Americans lost their homes.
People lost welfare in the Great Depression (In addition to jobs and wages).
The poor congregated in cardboard shacks in so-called Hoovervilles on the edges of cities across the nation; hundreds of thousands of the unemployed roamed the country on foot and in boxcars in futile search of jobs.
Blaming Wall Street speculators, bankers, and the Hoover administration, the rumblings of discontent grew mightily in the early 1930s. By 1932, hunger marches and small riots were common throughout the nation. (They turned to the Communists and Socialists).
Communists and socialists played a large role in mobilizing discontent and turning the attention of the American people to the federal government as a solution to their problem.
They thought inequality and exploitation that were endemic to capitalism had precipitated the Great Depression.
Organized many protests - with 50,000 people protesting in Boston and 100,000 protesting in Detroit.
Radicals organized crowds of people that would move furniture back into people's homes if they were evicted.
Family farmers took militant direct action as well.
When ⅓ of farmland in Mississippi and Iowa was scheduled for sale.
Neighbors aborted sales by intimidating buyers.
Or buying the farms and returning to owners at a small price.
Crowded courtrooms to prevent sales.
In the south → radicals armed themselves because of the tension → were forming an army of the working class.
When Ford laid off 60,000 workers → more than 3,000 protestors joined the protest led by communist auto union.
Hunger marches demanded jobs for laid off employees.
In Washington D.C. veterans marched to receive money due to them in 1945 but needed now in 1932 → Hoover calls out the army → public opinion turns against Hoover.
People wanted a “New Deal” out of life → Leads to the election of FDR who promises a New Deal.
New Deal was a bunch of programs that were designed to restore production and stability in banking, agriculture, and industry.

Universal Negro Improvement Association

The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded in 1914 in the United States by Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant.
The organization was founded to work for the advancement of people of African ancestry around the world. Its motto is "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!" and its slogan is "Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad!"
Dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa.
Most black leaders in the U.S. criticized Garvey as an imposter, particularly after he announced, in New York, the founding of the Empire of Africa, with himself as provisional president.
Garvey was deported in 1927 → The UNIA never revived.
Although the organization did not transport a single person to Africa, its influence reached multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic, and it proved to be a forerunner of black nationalism, which emerged in the U.S. after World War II.

National Woman’s Party

The National Woman's Party (NWP) is an American women's political organization formed in 1916 to fight for women's suffrage founded by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns.
The National Woman's Party broke from the much larger National American Woman Suffrage Association, which was focused on attempting to gain women's suffrage at the state level.
The NWP prioritized the passage of a constitutional amendment ensuring women's suffrage throughout the United States.
NWP picketed White House to demand Voting Rights for women.
NWP formed an alliance with President Wilson and united local and state suffrage groups in a centrally directed effort.
NWP used Wilson’s rhetoric to their advantage like pointing out that his speech on “Wilson’s ‘safe for democracy’ speech put compelling logic behind the drive for universal suffrage.
NWP and NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association) worked together.
By 1914 women won the right to vote in the territory of Alaska and 11 states. They spent the next three years keeping pressure on Eastern states. 3 years later it won women voting rights in 8 additional states.
Achieved its goal with the 1920 adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Then the NWP advocated for other issues including the Equal Rights Amendment, which is still seeking ratification today.

National Labor Relations Act

The 1935 Wagner Act encouraged trade unionism as a spur to economic recovery and a bulwark of American democracy. Targeted two main issues:
Social turmoil (unhappy workers meant less work).
Wage stagnation and underconsumption (blamed for depression) → only way to get big companies to raise wages was to allow people to unionize and fight companies.
The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 is a foundational statute of United States labor law which guarantees basic rights of private sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and conditions at work, and take collective action including strike if necessary.
Helped democratize the workers by giving them a general voice.
The act also created the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts elections that can expect employers to engage in collective bargaining with labor unions (also known as trade unions). → oversight to see if any company was voiding the act by creating company unions or suppressing union workers.
The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.

Eugenics

Eugenics Movement (1920s -1930s)→ focused on eliminating undesirable traits from the population. Best way to do this was by preventing “unfit” individuals from having children.
Sir Francis Galton argued that social institutions such as welfare and mental asylums allowed inferior humans to survive and reproduce at higher levels.
Led to criminals and mentally disabled people being sterilized.
Euthanasia was considered.
Buck V Bell made sterilization in Virginia legal.

Red Summer

Around 25 race riots following World War 1 during the summer of 1919.
Called “Red Summer” because of the sheer bloodiness.
Especially in Chicago.
When a young black male swam into a white only area, he was stoned and drowned.
Police didn’t arrest the white man who did it.
Race riot erupted throughout the city.
13 days of rioting:
35 dead, 25 blacks, 13 whites.
537 injured.
1000+ black families homeless.
The Red Summer refers to the summer and early autumn of 1919, which was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the United States, as a result of racial riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county.
In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases, many black people fought back, notably in Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The racial riots against blacks resulted from a variety of postwar social tensions related to the demobilization of veterans of World War I, both black and white, and competition for jobs and housing among ethnic white people and black people.
Authorities viewed with alarm African Americans' advocacy of racial equality, labor rights, or the rights of victims of mobs to defend themselves.
In addition, it was a time of labor unrest in which some industrialists used black people as strikebreakers, increasing resentment.
Feared Socialist and communist influence on the black civil rights movement following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. They also feared foreign anarchists, who had bombed homes and businesses of prominent business and government leaders.

Flint Sit-Down Strike

The 1936–1937 Flint sit-down strike against General Motors (General Motors sit-down strike) changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated locals on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the domestic United States automobile industry.
General Motors (GM) provided many men in Flint, Michigan with jobs in the 1930’s, but the working conditions were horrible and the pay was unfair.
While previous attempts to strike occurred in the Flint plants in 1930 and 1934, they were broken up by the company and the Flint police.
1935, Congress passed the Wagner Act → Encouraged by these legal protections, on December 30, 1936 GM employees in the GM Fisher Number One Plant began their 44-day sit-in, during which they refused to work or leave the Fisher One, Fisher Two, and Chevrolet Number 4 plants.
GM decided to make the plant conditions intolerable by cutting the plants’ heat and electricity and by preventing food deliveries.
General Motors and their sympathizers found this sit-down form of protest to be an affront to American values, such as the right to property.
After a series of violent clashes between the strikers, police, and GM “goons,” including the Battle of Bull’s Run, Governor Murphy summoned the U.S. National Guard to establish peace.
On February 11, 1937, with its automobile production severely crippled, GM reached an agreement with the UAW to end the labor strike.