Year: 2011

03/1/11

Red Scare!

The Red Scare as described by Foner was a changing point in America in 1919-1920. During this time there was a period of political intolerance inspired by the postwar strike wave and social tensions and fears brought up by the Russian Revolution.  General A.Palmer dispatched federal agents to raid the offices of radical and labor organizations throughout the country. During these raids, over 5,000 people were arrested and the government deported hundreds of immigrant radicals. Hoover also developed files on thousands of Americans suspected of holding radical political ideas. In early 1920 the Red Scare collapsed and imprisoned immigrants were released.

The reading and the political cartoon shown above bear striking resemblance. Foner did not leave out any details that are not portrayed in the image. The cartoon illustrates Uncle Sam spanking labor unions and strikes. This appears as though these organizations were disobedient children and had to be reprimanded which was what Foner describes in the chapter reading.

03/1/11

Steel strike of 1919

The Steel Strike of 1919 was an attempt by the weakened Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers to organize the United States steel industry in the wake of World War I. The strike began on September 22, 1919, and collapsed on January 8, 1920.
The steel strike of 1919 was in Chicago and united about 365,000 mostly immigrant workers who demanded for union recognition, higher wages, and an eight hour workday. Before 1917, the managers of steel mills would just make up their own wages and working conditions. During the war, workers were in the Amalgamated Association, the union that was nearly destroyed at its defeat at Homestead. Employers responded to the strike by associating the strikers with communism and disloyalty and so the strike would eventually collapse in 1920. Foner portrays the steel strike as the bringing of the war and how workers fought for their rights. It was complete in the way of how it depicts who the workers were mostly, whether they got what they striked for, and how the strike would come to an end.

03/1/11

Ketchup for my Liberty Sandwich, Please?

In World War I, Germany was considered the main culprit and provacateur of the war. Therefore, it stirred the movement against Germans in United States. Prior to the war, German-Americans were able to express and promote their ethnic culture through the fine arts and language. Once the war began, German-Americans came under public scrutiny and ostracism. To raise support for the war, German culture was belittled to establish the notion of superiority of America. Any traces of German culture was erased in America. For example, instead of saying “hamburger,” which has German roots, it was called “liberty sandwich.”

I thought Foner did a good job in presenting the Anti-German Crusade.  He stated several statistics to demonstrate how the war negatively affected German-Americans and their culture.  However, Foner could have developed and expanded the topic more to illustrate the hardships of German-Americans during the war. The three images above adds depth to the portrayal of how German-Americans were singled out and excluded from mainstream America.

03/1/11

The Espionage Act

Eugene V. Debs, convicted in 1918 under the Espionage Act for delivering an antiwar speech. His sentence was 10 years. Surprisingly, Debs RAN FOR PRESIDENT WHILE STILL IN PRISON in 1920 and received 900,000 votes.

According to Foner, the espionage Act of 1917 prohibited not only spying and interfering with the draft, but also “false statements” that might impede military success. It basically made it illegal to say anything against the government—anything which criticized the government, which brought the government into disrepute, as the law said. Foner also mentions the Sedition Act of 1918 that made it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that intended to cast “contempt, scorn, or disrepute” on the “form of government”, or that advocated interference with war effort. Many people were arrested under these acts. I did more research and found that citizens convicted of these crimes were subject to a fine of up to $10,000 or to imprisonment for not more than 20 years or both. I also found that other groups use these acts as the opportunity to fight old battles against old enemies (employers used these acts to get labor leaders and IWW radical laborites arrested not because of what they said about the war, but because they wanted them out of their factories).

03/1/11

The Brainwashing Committee

In 1917, President Wilson’s administration came up with the CPI, or Committee on Public Information. What this committee did was it tried to manipulate the opinions of the public. They wanted to convince Americans to agree with America’s stance to go into World War 1. They did this by using “posters, newspaper advertisements, and motion pictures” to help spread the governments ideas. They also had Four-Minute Men who would go around trying to help sway the public’s opinions. These men targeted every audience, including most immigrant groups. In the end this committee proved very successful.

Foner covers this topic in less than a page, however he covers it very well. He tellsthe story like it is, and does not praise or admonish the CPI. He rather explains how this was the first time that America had dealt with this sort of mass advertising, and it influenced many people of the future, including advertisers of today. Although they did not know it at the time, this committee shifted the way America ran, and its impacts are still felt today.

02/28/11

Herbert Hoover

When United States voters elected Herbert Hoover, who had established a worldwide reputation as mining engineer, writer, and war-relief administrator, 31st president in 1928, the country was enjoying an industrial and financial boom.

02/28/11

Zimmerman Telegram

Zimmerman Telegram is one important reason why the U.S went to World War I. Foner talks about how the Zimmerman Telegram was made public by the British spies in March 1917. He says how the German foreign secretary  Arthur Zimmerman call on Mexico to join the war against the U.S and promised to help recover their territory lost in the Mexican War of 1846-1848. I think that Foner basically covered most of what the Zimmerman Telegram was.
A revolution in Russia overthrew the czar and established a constitutional government making it more plausible to believe that the U.S would be fighting on the side of democracy. The war resolution was passed the Senate 82-6 and House of Representative 373-50.

02/28/11

The Sinking of the Lusitania

Foner’s coverage for the sinking of the Lusitania is a bit broad, he should go more in depth about how Americans reacted to the death of several Americans on the ship and how this incident changed Americans perspective and got them involved in World War I. However Foner gave a good general overview of the background of what began before and after the sinking of the Lusitania. Adding onto Foner’s coverage, on May 7, 1915 the Lusitania was carrying about 1,900 passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. Soon being spotted by the Germans, their U-boat launched a torpedo into the Lusitania; it took 18 minutes for the ship to sink. Among the passengers that were killed were 124 Americans. The sinking of the ship and the deaths of several Americans had an intense impact on the United States.

02/28/11

Assignment due 3/2

•Read Foner, Chapter 19
•Identify one important change that occurred (or began to occur) in the U.S. during World War I and has not yet been written about on the blog for this assignment.
•Include an image (political cartoon, photograph, painting, etc.) that represents the change.
•Write one paragraph critiquing Foners coverage of the topic.  How complete is his coverage of the change?  How does your image change or add to the history that Foner presents?
02/28/11

Muckrakers

In the Progressive era, there were a group of writers known commonly known as the muckrakers.  This group wrote public articles adressing the problems in American society.  They were very succesful at hat they did, as many rules and prohibitions changed because Americans realized how wrong American society was and that we needed a change.  The picture above depicts Joseph Pultzier, who was a Hungarian Immigrant and took over “The New York World” and transformed it into a place to bash the problems in American society

02/28/11

Don’t “hog” up the line!

In a time where demands of cheap and avaible meat far exceeds what the local butcher could put out, slaughterhouses have become the only option. Eating meat is a part of daily life, and people barely wonder where it came from before it was sold off on the shelter of supermarkets with their nicely wrapped packages.

It wasn’t until 1906, when the novel “The Jungle” was published that people began to question and become aware of what actually happens behind the scenes. Due to the public outcray cause by the book, the government immediately took action and form the Food and Drug Administration also known as the FDA.

In the photo above, Ford’s perfection in the assembly line was efficiently adopted to “eliminate loss of time between each operation and the next, and to reduce the energy expended by the worker on the manipulation of heavy carcasse.”

02/28/11

Big Brother FTC

                                                                                                     

The Federal Trade Commission was established by the U.S. Congress.  Five members are joined together for a seven year term to police businesses.  The main goal of this board is to promote and protect the rights of consumers.  This includes identity theft, false advertising, monopolies, any kind of unfair business competition and price-fixing.  Finally citizens were protected from market abuse and enjoyed ‘industrial freedom.’

02/28/11

Conservation

Yellowstone national park, the first national park

During the progressive era, economic development and special interest groups would deplete the resources of the environmentand cause irreversible damages to the landscape. In reponse to this, Roosevelt began to turn federal lands into national parks in order to conserve national resoures and to protect the environment. Although land was set aside to preserve nature, activities suchs as logging, mining, and construction were not come to a complete halt but was  limited.

02/28/11

McKinley’s Last Show

President McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz on September 6, 1901 but did not pass away until September 14, 1901. He was shot twice, one causing minor damage while the other pierced through his abdomen, pancreas, kidney and stomach. Only one of the bullets were taken out because the other couldn’t be found. Shortly after McKinley was shot, it look liked his health was improving and would live, but he ultimately didn’t make it. McKinley’s assassinations led to Roosevelt to succeed him

02/28/11

Womens Movements

Women were gaining momemtum in the 1900s fighting their hardest for rights. They were able to gain power in the labor force and were now demanding rights as a citizen and equal human being. The movement demanded that the government expand laws to include women and to stop the discrimination based upon gender. Rights such as abortions, voting, and more working power came into effect because of the women who fought so hard during this time

02/28/11

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis was a muckraking journalist. A Danish American immigrant, he went through poverty himself, and as a photo journalist he was primarily interested in bringing up the issues of poverty in his pictures. The main subject of his pictures were the awful conditions in which poor people had to live, he photographed slums, tenement houses, lodging houses in the city. His first major work published in 1889 called “How the other half lives” generated a lot of public attention. It was an illustrated account about life in the city. After the book came out NYC Police Commissioner had to close down the lodging houses that were featured in the book.

02/28/11

Difficult to get drunk

In 1917, US Congress passed the prohibition act which prohibits the manufacture, transportation and sales of alcohol.  However, drinking alcohol is not prohibited.  The following picture depicted an alcohol retailer is closed because of violation of National Prohibition Act.  The alcohol beverage is prohibited in public.

Although alcoholic beverage is prohibit for manufacture, transportation and sale, drinking alcohol is not prohibited which created opportunities for alcohol smugglers.  After the Prohibition Act is enforced, many people started to sell alcohol as bootleggers.

02/28/11

Woodrow Wilson and Progressivism

Woodrow Wilson; 28th President of the United States of America

Republican candidate Woodrow Wilson was elected as the new President in 1913.  The former governor of New Jersey won a staggering 42 percent of the popular vote, beating out Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft in rankings, who had 27% and 23% respectively.  Wilson set up regular press conferences to inform the public on issues of legislation and to try to raise the publics’ opinion of him.  He also personally delivered messages to congress believing that it was more noble that writing them on a piece of paper.  He passed the Underwood tariff which vastly reduced tariffs on imported goods, and also implemented an income tax of the richest 5% of Americans.  He also passed the Clayton act of 1914 which “exempted labor unions from antitrust laws”.  To help out the lower and middle classes, Wilson also passed the Keating-Owen Act which outlawed child labor; the Adamson Act which created an 8 hour work day on all American railroads, and the Warehouse Act which gave credit to farmers who stored their crops in federally licensed warehouses.

02/28/11

Settlement House Movement

This was social movement aimed for reform in the United States. The goal of this movement was to bring unity in a community amongst the rich and the poor. This in action would promote a more interdependent community. One of the more famous settlement house’s was founded by a woman by the name of Jane Adams in Chicago. This movement encouraged the diffusion of culture, knowledge and education in poverty stricken and low-income neighborhhoods.

picture traced back to www.uic.edu
02/28/11

The strike being identified as the “Bread and Roses”

In 1912 immigrant textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, led by the Industrial Workers of the World, went on strike when their wages were lowered in response to a law shortening the work week. The courage of the female workers, who were willing to brave frigid weather as well as police and militia in order to march on picket lines, led to the strike being identified as the “bread and roses” strike.
I.W.W. leaders Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn moved in and helped organized the strike, which was opposed by the AFL as being revolutionary.