Unit Six Review Sources (1898-1945)

These sources are not in chronological order. For each source, provide the following:

I. Provide context of the source. Also consider POV, audience, purpose.

II. Which decade and how do you know? (1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s)

III. What is the nature of the source? Is the source religious, political, social, diplomatic, or economic and how so? Each source could be more than one; pick primary one.

IV. List some external SFI (specific factual information) relating to it.

These sources are organized here by topic

I. Diplomacy/Foreign Policy: Washington’s Farewell Address, War 1812, Monroe Doctrine, and Mexican War are significant prior acts of diplomacy. When doing final review, consider the chronology of the whole and the change from isolationism to interventionism (WWII and onward).

“The designs of the Powers in the Far East if successful will deprive this country of an already large market which must increase to enormous proportions in the near future, and by depriving Great Britain of her best market will lessen the ability of our best customer to purchase our products. Last year Great Britain purchased our products to the value of 483,625,024 dollars and she and her colonies took 60 per cent of the total value of our exports to all the world. The value of the trade of Great Britain and the United States with China amounts to six times that of the combined trade of Germany France and Russia with the Celestial Empire; consequently England and the United Stales have a right to declare that their interests in China are paramount and to act in concert in safe guarding those interests

-Senator JR Proctor, 1897

Related SFI: Open Door Policy. Make sure to consider America’s need to establish overseas markets for our fast growing industrial output in the Gilded Age. Don’t forget the whole reason for the Mexican War was to gain California as a way of exporting to Asia fifty years earlier.

Spanish American War: gained Philippines, our base in the Pacific. We are interventionist/imperialist, but still respecting the Monroe Doctrine by staying out of European alliances/meddling (even though we are fighting Spain! Just not in Europe, but in Cuba and Philippines.

President McKinley’s justification for imperialism: The Christian responsibility to ‘uplift and civilize’. Reminds me of the justification for enslavement in the antebellum South.

Filipino Insurrection: we could not fathom that the Filipinos expected their freedom from us after our helping them gain freedom from Spain. Markets!

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Our foreign policy is becoming more interventionist along with our industrial, economic, and naval might, but it’s still focused on our hemisphere and keeping Europe out (Monroe Doctrine).

“With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the…United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it….Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments…not by the will of their people. We shall, happily, still have an opportunity to prove that friendship…towards the millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy, who live amongst us…and we shall be proud to prove it towards all who are in fact loyal to their neighbors and to the Government….They are, most of them, as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other…allegiance. If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with a firm hand of stern repression….”

Woodrow Wilson, Address to Congress’s War, April 2, 1917

“The Road Not Taken”. Our Monroe Doctrine tradition was tested by our involvement in WWI. As an export intensive economy required our selling internationally, we could not stand for Germany to interfere with that; thus, their subs sinking our merchant ships let us into war. Our involvement on the winning side opened our opportunity to lead the world community diplomatically with a new vision for world cooperation. However, with Congress and Wilson unable to negotiate a compromise on America’s involvement in the League of Nations and Wilson’s subsequent stroke, America had shrunk back to isolationism by 1920.

“In the field of national policy, the fundamental trouble with America has been, and is, that whereas their nation became in the twentieth century the most powerful and 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.”

Henry R. Luce, "The American Century," Life, February 1941.

Our isolationism will last through the 20’s and 30’s as Depression rocks Europe and leads the way for totalitarian governments to arise. Once Hitler began to rise, England and France could not hold him down without American help. Our not helping led to Hitler gobbling up almost all of Europe. Make sure to review the process leading from Neutrality Act of 1935 to Lend Lease and Pearl Harbor.

Of course after WWII we will no longer shirk our international duty, joining NATO—a military alliance with Western Europe that is the exact opposite of what Washington envisioned. However, NATO has helped keep the international peace since 1945.

II. Economic: Bank of US; Cotton Gin; Market Revolution; American System; Civil War mass production; Steel/Railroad/Coal Industry; Social Darwinism; Homestead Strike; Interstate Commerce Act are significant prior acts of economics. When doing final review, consider the effects of economic growth. Market Revolution led to rise of reform movements in early 19th century. The Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s led to excesses that the Progressive Era will try to reign in by ending laissez-faire with government regulation.

Political: Spoils system/corruption had been around for a long time. But with the arrival of big money with big business, corruption was exacerbated on a local/municipal level (Boss Tweed) on up to Federal level. The Progressives went after this heavily, instituting such measures as the secret ballot and referendum.

“If we do not follow the most scientific approved methods, the most modern discoveries of how to conserve and propagate and renew wherever possible those resources which Nature in her providence has given to man for his use but not abuse, the time will come when the world will not be able to support life, and then we shall have no need of conservation of health, strength, or vital force because we must have the things to support life or everything else is useless.... [D]o not forget that the conservation of life itself must be built on the solid foundation of conservation of natural resources, or it will be a house built upon the sands that will be washed away.”

Marion Crocker, General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 1912

Environmental aspect of Progressive Era movements. The deforestation relating to the industrial revolution led to discussion of saving some for the future. Thus, John Muir (preservationist) suggesting leaving forests untouched. Gifford Pinchot (conservationist) was like TR; wisely use the forest in such a way as to be sustainable. This was a major change in American thought and would require Federal Government involvement through the establishment of the National Forest System.

Very often people who admit the facts, who are willing to see that Mr. Rockefeller has employed force and fraud to secure his ends, justify him by declaring, “It’s business.” That is, “it’s business” has come to be a legitimate excuse for hard dealing, sly tricks, special privileges. It is a common enough thing to hear men arguing that the ordinary laws of morality do not apply in business.

-Ida Tarbell, A History of the Standard Oil Company

Muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Tarbell helped motivate the middle class in a way that never happened in the reform era of the early 19th century.

In any essay regarding women, don’t forget Tarbell/Mother Jones/Suffragettes of this era. In fact, study women from Revolution on up through WWII:

Republican Motherhood>>>Cult of Domesticity/Reformers/early Woman’s Movement/Lowell Girls>>>Progressive Era/Suffrage Movement/wartime factory work>>>Flappers>>>Rosie the Riveter

“Wilson’s arrival in the White House in 1913 was a perfect instance of Victor Hugo’s saying, ‘Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’ Since the Civil War, the United States had become by far the world’s richest country, with an industrial economy which made all others on earth seem small, and it had done so very largely through the uncoordinated efforts of thousands of individual entrepreneurs. The feeling had grown that it was time for the community as a whole, using the resources of the United States Constitution, to impose a little order on this new giant and to dress him in suitable clothes, labeled ‘The Public Interest.’ Theodore Roosevelt had already laid out some of these clothes, and Wilson was happy to steal them.”

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, 1997

Besides environment, the Progressive Era sought to reign in excesses of Gilded Age laissez-faire business methods. Wilson’s Triple Wall of Privilege attack was aimed at power of Banks, Trusts, and Tariffs—all economic interests. Wilsonian acts such as the Federal Reserve and Clayton Anti-trust Act strengthened TR’s FDA in regulating American business for the first time.

“By the 1920s the United States possessed the most prolific production technology the world has ever known. . . . [Henry] Ford’s work and the emulation of it by other manufacturers led to the establishment of what could be called an ethos of mass production in America. The creation of this ethos marks a significant moment.... Certain segments of American society looked at Ford’s and the entire automobile industry’s ability to produce large quantities of goods at surprisingly low costs.... When they did so, they wondered why [other goods] could not be approached in precisely the same manner in which Ford approached the automobile.... The ethos of mass production, established largely by Ford, will die a hard death, if it ever disappears completely.”

David A. Hounshell, historian, From the American System to Mass Production, 1984

Ford’s assembly line accelerated already steady industrial production in America in the 1920’s. Unfortunately, despite arrival of credit to help purchase newly mass produced goods, worker pay did not keep up with prices of new goods, thus setting long term Depression causing overproduction/underconsumption problem.

New Deal is like the Progressive Era on steroids. Government goes from industrial regulation to regulation/job creation/housing creator/banking system regulator/agricultural price fixer/old age pensioner/etc etc etc. There was and still is debate about effectiveness of such huge governmental involvement; Republicans thought it wasteful and inefficient. Extreme liberals like Huey Long thought it didn’t go far enough and insisted on government controlled redistribution of wealth (aka communism). The extent of government control in the economy is one of the major differences between Dems and Reps, and the New Deal was a huge leap away from laissez-faire and toward the modern era of government involvement.

Social: Enlightenment; Republicanism; First and Second Great Awakening; Reform Era/Movements/Transcendentalism/Hudson River School of Art/the rise of American culture; the Common Man/Log Cabins-Hard Cider—those are all some of the main social themes to consider leading up to this era.

Notice the relationship between those items and political ideas of the time.

The Great Migration was both a push migration(Jim Crow) but also a pull migration (northern industrial jobs during WWI). African Americans moved to industrial cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York City. With newfound higher level of freedom of expression in northern cities, the Harlem Renaissance occurred, elevating A-A self-confidence. Some like Marcus Garvey began to float self-segregating ideas of black nationalism, much to the chagrin of the mainstream NAACP and WEB DuBois who wanted Black equality in America.

Of course the arrival of African Americans to the north during the war was not a problem; there was plenty of work. When the war ended and vets returned, the vets fought for higher wages in the widespread strikes of 1919. African Americans served as scabs during those strikes, being in serious need of employment themselves. The resentment of local whites to these folks was the spark for the race riots in northern cities (esp Chicago) in 1919.

Flappers. The new woman (at least visually) flabbergasted everyone.

When you throw together the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the strikes and labor unrest of 1919, women smoking and strange immigrants having arrived in throngs over the last twenty years, a fear arose that America was careening toward its own socialist/communist rebellion. Thus the Red Scare of the early 1920’s. In an act of social isolationism, America closed off virtually all immigration (Immigration Act of 1924) from all but NW Europe until 1965.

Here is a question that each Negro soldier is asking. What is the Negro soldier fighting for? On whose team are we playing? Myself and eight other soldiers were on our way from Camp Claiborne, [Louisiana], to the hospital here at Fort Huachuca [Arizona]. We had to lay over until the next day for our train. On the next day we could not purchase a cup of coffee at any of the lunchrooms around there. As you know, Old Man Jim Crow rules. The only place where we could be served was at the lunchroom at the railroad station but, of course we had to go into the kitchen. But that’s not all; 11:30 a.m. about a two dozen German prisoners of war, with two American guards, came into the station. They entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time. I stood on the outside looking on, and I could not help but ask myself these questions: Are these men sworn enemies of this country? Are they not taught to hate and destroy . . . all democratic governments? Are we not American soldiers, sworn to fight for and die if need be for this our country? Then why are they treated better than we are? Why are we pushed around like cattle? If we are fighting for the same thing, if we are to die for our country, then why does the Government allow such things to go on? Some of the boys are saying that you will not print this letter. I’m saying that you will.

-Letter from GI to Yank magazine, June 1944.

Double V! A crusade against racism/Nazism, which is what WWII was propagandized as being, laid bare the hypocrisy of Jim Crow America. African Americans could better organize now that they were safely in Northern cities. Also, FDR realized the importance of African Americans in the industrial war effort, so he protected their right to be hired with his Fair Employment Practices commission. Once the war is over, President Truman will sign an executive order desegregating the US military—just in time for Americans of all ethnicities to fight and die together in Korea in the early 1950’s.

A spectacular population increase has accompanied the west coast’s industrial revolution. The Portland metropolitan area showed a 31 per cent increase in population since 1940; the Seattle area shows an increase in population for the same period of 200,000; and an estimated 1,500,000 people have entered California since 1940. Since most industrial activity on the west coast is confined to the manufacture of aircraft and the construction of ships, sharp curtailment of employment is threatened in the post-war period. With a population increase of 14 per cent, California, for example, faces the problem of shifting 1,500,000 workers from war activities to civilian jobs after the war....

The typical white defense migrant is a young man, twenty-five years of age or younger, married, from a small town or rural area in the Pacific Northwest, anxious to settle in the area, and primarily interested in industrial employment in the post-war period. A study made recently in the Kaiser yards in Portland indicates that only 23.6 per cent of the migrants expressed a definite intention to leave after the war; that only a very few have maintained economic ties elsewhere or have jobs to which they might return; that considerable numbers have purchased property in the area; that a majority have their families with them; and that 86 per cent must find new employment immediately after their present employment terminates.

Source: Carey McWilliams, “Watch the West Coast,” The Nation, September 1944.

Migration! For the first couple of centuries, Americans moved west (Manifest Destiny). Then by 1900 they moved northeast and to cities, until the Great Depression’s Dust Bowl pushed Okies to California. They were followed by African Americans during WWII thanks to the shipyards, aircraft plants, and the Fair Employment Practices Commission!