Unit VIII

The Years Between The Wars,
1919-1941 and 1945

A.  The Return of the Old Guard
         1. The election of 1920
                   a. A deadlocked GOP convention nominated the affable Senator Warren G. Harding.  “Harding was a handsome, semi-educated political hack with a taste for liquor, women, and poker, had an utterly empty mind and an enduring loyalty to the Republican creed of 1890.” (John Blum)  Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, who had thrilled the Old Guard when he broke the Boston police strike in 1919 saying, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime,” was nominated for the vice-presidency.
                   b. The Democratic nominees, James Cox and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, made the election a referendum on joining the League.
           2.Americans were tired of wartime belt tightening and of Wilson’s progressivism and internationalism.  Harding promised a "return to normalcy” and said, “There should be less government in business and more business in government.”  Coolidge said, “The business of America is business.”

B.  The Politics of Normalcy
          1. The Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922) raised the tariff to 50%.  It was later blamed for impeding European post-war recovery.  The British economist John Maynard Keynes (pronounced Kains) urged the USA to eliminate tariffs, cancel war debts, and stimulate Europe’s economic recovery as America would do after World War II with the Marshall Plan. The Republican Congress would have none of it. 
         2. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon promoted a “spare the rich” tax bill.
         3. The courts issued strike injunctions and declared a child labor law unconstitutional.
                   a. Duplex Printing Press Company v. Deerling (1921) permitted strike injunctions.
                   b. Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Company (1922) overturned a heavy fine imposed by Congress on the profits of companies that employed children. 
                   c.Adkins v. Children’s Hospital (1923).  Federal minimum wage legislation for women was an unconstitutional infringement of liberty of contract.
          4. Immigration
                    a. The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 3% of the number of persons from that country living in the United States in 1910.   
                    b. The Immigration Act of 1924 and the National Origins Act of 1929 restricted immigration even more.  “Refuse the refuse.” 
                              1) Northern and Western Europeans were admitted at a rate of four to one over southern and eastern Europeans.  Eastern European radicals had supported progressivism.
                              2) Asians were completely excluded, a reflection of anti-Asian racism and fear of the “yellow peril.”
                              3) Fewer immigrants would protect the jobs of American-born laborers.

C.  The Rise of Intolerance
          1. The Red Scare (1919-1920)
              With the return of the doughboys and the end of the wartime no-strike pledge and wage freeze, there were several violent strikes across the country, including the Boston police strike.  Americans were alarmed at the inroads that Bolshevism was making in Germany and even in the USA.  Some members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, “wobblies”) were Communists.  There was a rash of dynamite bombings, and Wilson’s Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer promised a crackdown on war protesters, aliens, labor leaders, anarchists, and Bolshies.  In the Palmer Raids, over 7000 radicals were arrested, and 249, including “Red Emma” Goldman, were deported to the USSR.
         2. The Sacco-Vanzetti Case (1920)
                   a. Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti were born in Italy, were atheists, and had been involved in war protest and labor strikes.  The trial focused on their political views and fanned anti-foreigner bigotry.  The judge called them “anarchist bastards.”
                   b. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murdering two employees in a shoe factory in Braintree , MA during a payroll robbery.  Although evidence was scant, the jury foreman said, “They ought to hang anyway.”  Sacco and Vanzetti went to the electric chair in 1927.  Ballistics tests done in 1980 proved that Sacco’s gun was a murder weapon and Vanzetti’s was not.
         3. The Scopes “Monkey Trial” (1925)
                   a. This trial of the decade was a clash between religious fundamentalism with its literal creationist interpretation of the Bible and evolution, between rural and urban culture, and between traditional values and materialism.
                   b. The cast of characters included Clarence Darrow who defended John T. Scopes, William Jennings Bryan who assisted the prosecution, and H.L. Mencken, a cynical newspaper columnist, who ridiculed fundamentalism.
                   c. Scopes was convicted of violating a Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools, but the decision was appealed and reversed on a technicality.
         4. The Ku Klux Klan opposed African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, Communists, foreigners, and immigration.  By the 1920s, its membership, which reached three million, had spread beyond the Deep South.  Many of its members were elected to local office but very few to the US Congress.  D.W. Griffith’s overtly racist movie, The Birth of a Nation (1915), caricatured southern blacks and glorified the KKK as heroes.
         5. Election of 1928
            Coolidge announced, “I do not choose to run.”  The GOP nominated Herbert Hoover.  Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York was the Democratic nominee and the first Catholic to run for the presidency.  The election was colored by anti-Catholic, anti foreigner bigotry.  “He swears allegiance to the Autocrat on the Tiber and hates public schools, democracy, and independence,” said Charles Fry, a prominent Lutheran clergyman.  Smith also favored progressive reform and the repeal of prohibition.  There was the post-war prosperity as well. Smith carried only six states of the "Solid South" and Massachusetts.

D.  The Teapot Dome Scandal (1923)
          1. In 1900, oil fields had been set aside for the future needs of the navy.  Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall leased oil fields in Teapot Dome, WY to oil companies owned by Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair.  Fall admitted to accepting $325,000 in kickbacks and a $100,000 bribe.   He went to prison.  (Current value is ten times greater than it was in the 1920s.) Charles Forbes, Secretary of the Veterans’ Bureau, skimmed $250 million.  President Harding told him to resign and go abroad.  He was convicted and went to jail. Attorney General Harry Daugherty sold presidential pardons to bootleggers who had violated the Volstead Act.  He escaped convictions by two hung juries.
         2. President Harding was a poor judge of character.  He hung out with the “Ohio gang,” and there was also his dalliance with Nan Britton with whom he fathered an illegitimate daughter Elizabeth.  Harding died of a heart attack in August 1923.  "Silent Cal" was president.

E.  The Ballyhoo Years
      The Roaring Twenties were a repudiation of wartime austerity.  Model-T Fords were mass produced and affordable by middle class Americans.  By 1929, thirty million cars jammed the roads.  This affected highway construction, jobs, the demand for rubber and oil, motels, freedom of mobility, and a population shift to the suburbs.  There was the Coolidge prosperity, flappers who demonstrated their rebellion against conservative social mores by wearing short skirts, bobbing their hair, drinking and smoking in public, and having casual sex, easy divorce, bootleggers, speakeasies, Scarface Al Capone, talkies, The Jazz Singer, Charlie Chaplain, Rudolph Valentino, Lucky Lindy (Charles A. Lindbergh and the trans-Atlantic flight), and Babe Ruth.  Heroes, individualism, and independence still flourished in the age of Babbittry.

F.  The Lost Generation
          1. African-Americans tried to find their way.
                   a. The Harlem Renaissance
                        Harlem was a magnet for African-American intellectuals and artists.  African-American musicians, literary magazines, and theatrical companies flourished. 
                              1) The poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes who wrote on African-American culture and the tension between trying to enter the mainstream and being rejected by prejudice.
                              2) James Weldon Johnson was a novelist, poet, journalist, politician, lawyer, songwriter, and an early civil rights activist.
                              3) Zora Neale Hurston was a novelist who wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God.
                              4) Josephine Baker was a singer and dancer who was given the nicknames “Black Venus,” “Black Pearl,” and the “Créole Goddess.”  She was an expatriate.
                    b. Also based in Harlem was the flamboyant Marcus Garvey who advocated segregation and separate businesses for blacks.  This was unpopular with the NAACP and urban African-Americans.  He promoted a “Back to Africa” movement and was convicted of fraud.
           2. F. Scott Fitzgerald in This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby wrote of the disillusionment and confusion of the lost generation, of the emptiness of quickly acquired riches, and of the frenetic gaiety that concealed them.
          3. Ernest Hemingway typified the expatriates who wandered about Europe, especially the Latin Quarter on the left bank of the Seine in Paris .  They followed the custom of some American writers of living in the innovative centers of Europe .  They sought to avoid the repressive effects of prohibition, materialism, and normalcy in America .  In A Farewell to Arms, Hemmingway repudiated the nineteenth century idea that war was a way to personal and national glory.  In The Sun Also Rises, he portrayed the rootlessness of the expatriates.  Jake Barnes, the hero, was in love with Lady Brett Ashley, but, because his war wounds left him impotent, he could not love her physically; she was incapable of commitment and of loving him psychologically.  They symbolized the sterility of post-war society.
         4. Sinclair Lewis, in Main Street, exposed the dullness, narrow-mindedness, and mean-spiritedness of small town America.  In Babbitt, he satirized the boorishness and materialism of a small town real estate agent who went along to get along.  George Babbitt was the loud mouthpiece of prevailing social and political opinion.  He was really a shy man who realized that he had become loutish, but he did not dare to be true to himself.  Babbitt epitomized the mediocrity and materialism of Coolidge America.  Intellectuals in the 1920s wanted to be everything that Babbitt was not: urban, non-materialistic, idealistic, and a free spirit.
         5. H.L. Mencken, “the sage of Baltimore ,” was a newspaper columnist.  He was a cynic who satirized the KKK, bigots, fundamentalists, and prohibitionists.  He debunked religion and politics.  The middle class majority, whom he called the booboisie, was unenlightened.
         6. The muckrakers had attacked corruption so that the underlying goodness of America could emerge.  The writers of the 1920s struck at the heart.  America was empty and immoral.  There was no underlying goodness.  Critics say that the writers of the lost generation were disillusioned and held unrealistically high ideals of which mere mortals fell short.
         7. Conservativism and liberalism in the 1920s
                   a. conservativism: the return of the Old Guard, high protective tariff, spare-the-rich tax policy, isolationism, religious fundamentalism, prohibition, KKK, the Red Scare, anti-Communist, anti-labor, anti-immigration, anti-Sacco and Vanzetti, and anti-evolution.
                   b. liberalism: individualism of heroes, the Harlem Renaissance, the automobile and mobility, the sexual revolution, and scoffed at prohibition, creationism, and mediocrity.

G.  Post-War Diplomacy
          1. Isolationism
                   a. In the 1920s, there was a recoiling from the horror of war.  The Nye Committee concluded that the USA went to war to protect American bankers and merchants.  Americans resented allied propaganda, deceit, and secret agreements.  There was a longing for “normalcy,” prosperity, and “Ain’t We Got Fun.”  The USA had fought for democracy, and there was the post-war rise of fascist dictators: Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco.  Hitler had proclaimed his goals of totalitarianism in Mein Kampf in 1925 that was widely published in the USA .
                   b. America , however, had come too far to return to nineteenth century isolationism.  It was not isolationist regarding Central America or the Open Door policy in China .  The USA was never too isolationist to carry on brisk trade.  It became less involved in Europe , but it did participate in conferences to prevent the recurrence of war.
         2. The Washington Disarmament Conference (1921)
                    a. There was an agreement to a 5 (US): 5 ( Britain ): 3 ( Japan ) ratio.  This represented 100,000 tons of war ships.  With the German navy destroyed, Britain no longer needed a large and expensive navy, but it wanted to prevent the US Navy from becoming more powerful than the Royal Navy.  The USN withdrew thirty ships from service.  “Scuttle the Navy.”  Japan rankled at the inequality, but its navy emerged as the strongest because it needed to dominate only the Pacific Ocean.  The US and Royal Navies had two oceans to protect.  In 1936, Japan renounced this treaty.
                   b. The Five Power Treaty (1927) (a.k.a. The Naval Disarmament Conference)
                       With France and Italy joining in, the ratio was 5: 5: 3: 1.67: 1.67.
         3. The Dawes Plan (1924) lent $110 million to Germany to stimulate its economy and enable Germany to pay the $33 billion it owed in reparations. 
         4. The Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)
             The US Secretary of State and the French foreign minister entered a pact to renounce war as a solution to international disputes.  Eventually it was signed by sixty-two nations.
          5. The Young Plan (1929) set up an international bank to process the payment of the indemnity and recommended that the allies reduce it to $18 billion.
          6. The Hoover Moratorium (June 1931)
                   a. When the depression hit, the allies would not pay their war debt and post-war debt (about $134 billion today) to the USA if Germany did not pay them.
                   b. The Hoover Moratorium suspended payment of the allies’ debt for one year to give the international economy a chance to recover.   France demanded that the moratorium be extended until the end of the Great Depression. 
                   c. At the Lausanne Conference in July 1932, the allies agreed to reduce Germany ’s indemnity provided that America cancel their debt to the USA .  All tolled, the allies paid 10% of their debt.  Finland met all of its debt.  In 1932, Hitler denounced the Versailles Treaty and halted reparation payments.  Germany had paid $4.5 billion.
          7. Hoover’s Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, condemned Japan’s invasion of China based on the Open Door Policy of 1900. (The Stimson Doctrine, 1932)

H.  Boom - Bust
          1. Rapid economic expansion
                    a. People bought on credit, a.k.a. the installment plan.  Everyone had to have a Model-T Ford, a vacuum cleaner, a refrigerator, a telephone, a radio, and a washing machine.
                    b. Many people invested in the stock market.  The get-rich-quick dream was made possible by buying on margin.  This was paying part of the value of a share of stock and borrowing the rest from the broker.  For example, a person paid $10 for a share of stock worth $100.  Each buyer had to cover the drop in value, or the margin.  If the value dropped to $70, the holder had to pay $20 more.  If he could not meet the call loan, he forfeited his investment to the broker.  Everyone hoped to make killing by buying low and selling high.
          2. Bust
                    a. In 1963, Milton Friedman blamed the Federal Reserve for starting the depression.  The Fed became alarmed that many banks were investing heavily in the stock market, were lending large amounts, and were not reserving sufficient funds to cover withdrawals.  In an attempt to curb these reckless financial practices, it raised interest rates in 1928 and again in 1929.  This slowed borrowing, purchasing, and production.   
                    b. The USA lacked a large middle class with purchasing power.  It is axiomatic that for capitalism to flourish there must be a strong middle class that can buy what is produced.  In 1929, more than two-thirds of American families had an annual income of less than $1500, the minimum needed to support a family.  The average income for families not engaged in agriculture was $870, and for farmers it was $223.  Production outstripped purchasing power.  Easy credit and the captains of industry holding down wages had taken their toll. This was the crisis of the old order (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., 1957).
                    c. The depression hit the farmers in the early 1920s.  With advances in machinery and fertilizers, crop production increased.  In the post-war period, the government no longer purchased large quantities of grain, and European countries set high tariffs.  In 1930, the price per bushel was ten times lower that it had been a decade earlier. In Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck depicted the desperation of the farmers and the Great Plains Dust Bowl.

                    d. The USA emerged from the Great War as the world’s leading creditor nation.  The tariff impeded European economic recovery.  The USA continued to loan large sums to Europe to pay for US exports.  During the Depression world trade fell to lower than half its pre-depression level as the USA raised its tariff to 59% and European nations raised their tariffs.
                    e. During the summer of 1929, some, including Herbert Hoover, saw danger in the rapid expansion of the market and got out.  Prices fell, and there was panic selling on Wall Street.  Before the crash, the industrial index was 381, up more than 200 points from early 1928.  On Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, the market fell 69 points, or 18%.  The market rallied later in 1929, and businesses did not fail in appreciable numbers until mid-1930.
                    f. Between 1930 and 1933, 15,051 of the nation’s 24,633 banks failed, wiping out life savings of over nine million people.  With less demand, factories cut production, which caused more unemployment and even less purchasing.  In 1933, the national unemployment rate was 24.9%, 37% among non-farm workers.  The unemployed and homeless, whom FDR called “the forgotten man ,” followed rumors of jobs, riding the rails and living in hobo jungles and Hoovervilles.  Iowa farmers threatened to hang a judge for foreclosing on their farms.  Chicago schoolteachers who protested not being paid in ten months were clubbed by the police.  “Brother, can you spare a dime.” This was the greatest crisis since the Civil War.  When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, he feared that he might be the last president.  If he failed to relieve the depression, there might be a revolution.  John Maynard Keynes was asked if there had ever been anything like the Great Depression.  “Yes,” he said.  “It was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.”
                    g. If people had not lost their money in the stock market or failed banks, the depression was a shopper’s paradise.  A house could be built for less than $3000 (about $49,700 today).  A tailor made suit cost about $10 ($166 today), a pair of shoes $4 ($66.20 today), and a pound of steak 29 cents ($4.80 today).

I.  Hoover and the Depression
          1. President Herbert Hoover was a champion of laissez-faire capitalism and individualism.  His campaign slogan in 1928 was “A chicken in every pot.  A car in every garage.”  When the depression hit, he steadfastly maintained that the federal government should not give direct relief to the poor and unemployed.  This should  come from local government, philanthropy, and churches.  He appealed to businesses not to cover losses by cutting wages and encouraged them to form voluntary associations to curb harmful trusts.  He did not perceive the depth of the depression.  “Prosperity is right around the corner.”  “The economy will rally in sixty days.”
         2. Hoover established the Federal Farm Board in 1929 to buy surplus grain, but he refused to regulate production.  Granaries were bulging, prices were falling, and people were starving.  He signed a bill for $20 million to make loans to farmers, but he opposed grants.
         3. In 1930, he signed a bill for $2.5 billion to construct roads and buildings.  This was very liberal for someone molded in the McKinley-Coolidge tradition.  It failed to revive the economy.
         4. In 1931, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff that raised the tariff to 59%. 
          5. In an attempt to save banks from collapse, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) (1932) made loans to banks and businesses.  Too late.
         6. The Bonus Army, or the Bonus Expeditionary Force
             In 1932, about 15,000 World War I veterans and their families converged on Washington , DC to appeal for the bonus which Congress had approved in 1924.  On President Hoover’s orders, the army drove the veterans out of the capitol with tear gas, cavalry, and tanks and burned down their makeshift dwellings.

J.  Demand Side Economics and Laissez-faire Economics
          1. Demand side economics was the theory of John Maynard Keynes.  Franklin Roosevelt embraced no doctrine whole-heartedly, but New Dealers followed much of Keynes’s thinking.  Keynes believed that, when there was high unemployment, government programs should bring about full employment.  The government should stimulate a demand for goods.  It should put money into the hands of people by providing jobs or by direct relief.  With this money people could buy goods, which would increase the demand, which would, in turn, stimulate more production and employment.  His thesis was that government should tax highly and raise interest rates in times of inflation and spend extensively and lower interest rates in times of depression.
         2. Post Wotld War I conservatives like Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover believed in maintaining the the status quo, self-interest (individualism), and laissez-faire capitalism.  Conservatives hold that the government should not regulate business and should not take away the earnings of hard-working Americans and give it to others who do not support themselves. The government should sustain an economy that facilitates the pursuit of happiness, not provide the happiness.Conservatives hold that liberals believe that government is the solution to social and economic problems.  To conservatives, government is not the solution.  It is the problem.

K.  FDR and the New Deal
       Twentieth century liberals believed in reform, the general welfare, and regulated capitalism.  They held that the greatest threats to democracy were the government policy of laissez-faire and the excesses of greedy capitalists.  New Dealers wanted the government to manage the economy, curb harmful business practices, and ensure the citizenry a basic level of subsistence. FDR railed against the “economic royalists” and "unscrupulous money changers" as had Andrew Jackson against Biddle and the Bank.  FDR and his idol Jackson had the same supporters (liberal intellectuals, farmers, factory workers, and the poor) and the same adversaries (bankers, industrialists, and the elite). 
          1. Aims of the New Deal: relief, recovery, and reform.  FDR did not have a master plan.  People just wanted him to do something, and if that did not work to try something else.  In his inaugural address in 1933 he said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” 
          2. The First One Hundred Days (March 1 – June 16, 1933), in chronological order
                    a. To stop runs on the banks, FDR immediately issued an executive order declaring a bank holiday.  The Glass-Steagall Banking Reform Act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insured bank accounts up to $5000.
                    b. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) provided jobs in reforestation and flood control.  It was the most popular New Deal program.  Jockey Hollow was a CCC camp.
                    c. The Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) granted money to states for relief.
                    d. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) paid farmers for reducing crop production by up to one half to strengthen the price per bushel.
                    e. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) constructed dams and power plants at Muscle Shoals, Tennessee to provide jobs and rural electrification in the seven state area in the Tennessee River Valley where less than 2% of the farms had electricity.  The government was criticized for becoming a provider of electric power, but private corporations were not doing it.
                   f. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) prohibited insider trading and buying on margin.
                   g. The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) appropriated money to pay mortgages which supported homeowners, banks, and the building trade.
                   h. The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) was the cornerstone of the New Deal.  Government, businesses, and labor formulated fair competition codes with about 700 industries such as textiles, coal, oil, steel, automobile, and retail trade that were enforceable by law.  The NIRA abolished child labor, set minimum wages and maximum hours, and Section 7a guaranteed the right of labor to bargain collectively.
                   i. The Public Works Administration Title II of the NIRA, provided jobs building about 39,000 schools, 2500 hospitals, 325 airports, as well as libraries, bridges, highways, parks, and college football stadiums across the south.  The PWA, under Harold Ickes, was the New Deal’s “pump priming:” increase employment and create more consumers.
                   j. FDR supported the Twenty-first Amendment, the repeal of prohibition. 
          3. Opponents of the New Deal
                    a. The Liberty League was a group of industrialists and conservative Democrats led by Al Smith.  They opposed the Wagner Act and wanted to end the New Deal.
                    b. In 1934, Dr. Francis Townsend called for payments of $200 per month to people over sixty years of age.
                   c. Governor Huey Long of Louisiana proposed a “share our wealth” program which would provide a guaranteed annual income of $2500 for every family (about $39,100 today), double the national median income.   It would be paid for by limiting annual income to $1 million and total personal assets to $8 million ($125 million in today's money).  “The kingfish” announced that he would run for the presidency in 1936.  He was assassinated in 1935.
                   d. Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, the radio priest, called for a living wage and at first supported FDR.  Later he claimed that FDR was a tool of the banks and called for the nationalization of the banks.  He was anti-banker, anti-Communist, and anti-Semitic.  In 1934, Fortune said that Father Coughlin was “just about the biggest thing that ever happened to radio.”
          4. The Supreme Court struck down the NIRA and the AAA.
                   a. Schechter Poultry Corporation v. US (1935) (“The Sick Chicken Case”)
                      Schechter appealed his conviction for violating the health code of the NIRA by selling tainted poultry.  The Supreme Court declared that the NIRA was unconstitutional because the New Dealers of the executive branch were setting fair competition codes enforceable by law, and this power was reserved to the legislative branch.  The NIRA also exceeded the government’s interstate commerce authority.  Schechter was selling chickens only in New York.  The decision invalidated NIRA regulations on minimum wage and the right of labor to organize.    
                    b. US v. Butler (1936)
                        The Agricultural Adjustment Act was declared to be unconstitutional.  Congress controlled production which exceeded its powers.  The Second AAA (1938) accommodated this.
          5. The Second New Deal (1935-1936)
                    a. After the Supreme Court struck down the NIRA, including the PWA, Congress passed the Works Progress Administration (WPA) which provided funds for building roads and bridges and for artists and writers.  It also passed the Wagner Act which set up the National Labor Relations Board to supervise collective bargaining.
                    b. The Social Security Act (1935) provided for old age insurance, unemployment compensation, and support for the disabled.  It was not thought that old-age benefits would be very expensive because they commenced at age sixty-five.  In 1935, the average life expectancy was sixty.  Today it is 78.2.
                    c. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established minimum wage and forbade child labor.
                    d. The relief and recovery programs of the New Deal did not sharply increase the deficit.  FDR’s policy was “pay as you go.”  The Wealth Tax Bill imposed a 75% tax on an annual income of over $5 million.
          6. FDR tried to pack the court. (1937)
                    a. He proposed to increase the membership of the US Supreme Court from nine to a maximum of fifteen.  A member could be added for each justice who did not retire at age 70.  Historically, the Supreme Court had six members in 1789, 5 in 1801, 7 in 1807, 9 in 1837, 10 in 1863, 7 in 1866, and 9 since 1869.  Several states required judges to retire at specific ages.
                    b. Many conservatives and liberals alike opposed it because they feared that it would destroy the independence of the court and enlarge the power of the presidency.  FDR suffered his worst defeat, but his conflict with the court was resolved when one anti-New Dealer retired, another died, and the court upheld controversial aspects of the Social Security Act and the Wagner Act.  Between 1937 and 1941 FDR filled seven vacancies on the Supreme Court.
          7. An evaluation of the New Deal
                    a. Most people either idolized or demonized FDR.
                              1) Edgar Robinson (1955) attacked FDR as a despot.
                              2) The prevailing liberal view, represented by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1960), is that FDR steered a course between totalitarianism and socialism.
                              3) Amity Shales (2007) wrote that the regulationz and taxation of the New Deal frightened businessmen and prevented economic growth.
                              4) William Leuchtenburg, a revisionist of the 1960s, said that the New Deal was a halfway revolution which helped farmers and factory workers but did little for African-Americans.  The NIRA and AAA did not include domestic servants and sharecroppers.  The HOLC and FHA wanted to protect property values and maintained segregated neighborhoods.  The PWA, NIRA, and CCC excluded women from jobs or gave preference to men.  Because FDR needed the votes of southern members of Congress to pass his New Deal programs, he did not challenge segregation or push for a federal anti-lynching statute, and he was reluctant to heed his wife Eleanor’s entreaties for more assistance to poor African-Americans. Even so, in 1936, many blacks changed their loyalty from the party of Lincoln to the party of FDR.
                    b. New Deal reforms that still survive include social security, the FDIC and SEC, collective bargaining, farm subsidies, welfare, and minimum wage.
                    c. The New Deal failed to achieve full economic recovery, but it did halt the downward slide.  In 1933, unemployment was 24.9%, and in 1941 it was 9.9%, but it was World War II that brought full employment and business recovery.  There was another recession in 1937-8, but the president did little more than propose additional funding for public works projects.  By 1938, the New Deal had run its course, and Americans were becoming more concerned about foreign affairs.

L.  FDR and Foreign Affairs
          1. The Good Neighbor policy
             In his inaugural address in 1933, FDR pledged that the USA would respect the sovereignty of Latin American nations.
                   a. The Pan-American Conference at Montevideo , Uruguay (1933): “No state has the right to interfere in the internal and external affairs of another.”  The Marines were withdrawn from Nicaragua , Haiti , and the Dominican Republic in 1933-1934.
                   b. With the growing threat of European militarism, the Buenos Aires Conference (1936) established hemispheric solidarity.
         2. American neutrality
                   a. The Neutrality Act of 1935 placed an embargo on selling arms and making loans to belligerents, and it forbade US citizens to travel on ships registered to belligerents.  This was a reaction against the policies that brought the USA into World War I.
                   b. The Neutrality Act of 1937 forbade the sale of arms to either side in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).
                            1) The Loyalists were the de facto, socialist government after King Alfonso was forced into exile.  Francisco Franco led the insurgents against the government. The Loyalists were supported by Stalin and American volunteers who opposed the dictatorships and who formed the Washington and the Lincoln Brigades.  Franco was pro-king and pro-Church and was supported by Mussolini and Hitler who wanted to prevent Bolshevik expansion into Spain.
                            2) There was pressure in the USA from isolationists and the Nye Committee to eschew foreign entanglements.  On the other hand, some in America were alarmed at the growth of dictatorships in Europe . The democracies, they thought, were doing nothing about fascism, and the Communists were the only ones who were standing up to Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.  Some American economists were impressed with Stalin’s Five Year Plans.
                   c. Germany was growing stronger, and Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 because of a dispute over the border of Ethiopia and Italian East Africa.  FDR’s Quarantine Speech in 1937 urged an international embargo against all aggressors. 
                   d. The Neutrality Act of 1939 repealed the embargo of 1935 and authorized “cash and carry”of arms to belligerents. This helped Britain that had the cash and did not help China that didn’t. It forbade US ships to carry any goods to belligerents.
                   e. Isolationists were convinced that European nations were addicted to war, and the USA should not be drawn in again.  Even when Germany took Poland, the Low Countries, and France, was bombing England, and invaded the USSR, Senator Borah, Senator Nye, Charles A. Lindbergh, and William Randolph Hearst’s America First Committee  insisted that the USA stay out of the war.  In the 1940 campaign, FDR said, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”  In his mind, however, if America were attacked a war would not be foreign.
                   f. Lend Lease (1941)
                      The USA lent tanks, planes, and fifty obsolete destroyers to England.  England leased to the USA eight military bases including Newfoundland and Bermuda.  The USA was the “Arsenal of Democracy.”
         3. The Selective Service Act (1940) was the first instance of compulsory military service in peacetime.  There was not widespread opposition to the draft during World War II.
         4. In his Four Freedoms Speech on January 6, 1941, FDR spoke of “freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear everywhere in the world,” all threatened by Nazism.
         5. FDR and Winston Churchill met in the North Atlantic near Newfoundland (August 1941).  The Atlantic Charter was a blueprint for the post-war world that would protect free trade and the security and self-determination of peoples.
        6. During September and October 1941, German submarines fired upon the USS Greer and sank the USS Kearny and the merchant ship Reuben James that were off the coast of Iceland.  FDR then said that the navy could go into hostile waters and shoot first.

M.  America at War
          1. Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy”)
                    a. The sneak attack destroyed 19 ships and 150 planes.  There were about 4000 American casualties including 2403 killed, 1177 on the USS Arizona.  Japan lost 129.
                    b. Many historians think that the US embargo on oil and steel made war inevitable and forced Japan to attack the USA .  It is clear that the president was looking for a way for the USA to enter the war and rescue England .  Secretary of War Henry Stimson said that the USA was trying to maneuver Japan into firing the first shot in order to turn the isolationist tide and force Congress to declare war.  It is also clear that an attack was expected, but more likely on British or Dutch possessions in the Pacific or on the Philippines rather that on Pearl Harbor.  There were some preliminary indications that would have given the US Navy a few hours warning, but inter-service rivalry and neglect caused a breakdown in communication.  Charles Beard (1948) said that FDR knew of Japan ’s plans weeks in advance, withheld the information, deliberately provoked, and even conspired in the attack on Pearl Harbor .  Gordon Prange, David M. Kennedy, and John Garraty hold that there is no evidence to support Beard’s revisionist interpretation.  Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote that, in 1941, FDR wanted to go to war against Germany, not Japan , and that the charge that he conspired in the attack is absurd.  It is beyond imagination that Roosevelt, who identified emotionally with the navy, had he expected an attack on Hawaii, would have failed to put the battle ships out to sea.  Leaving a few smaller vessels for the Japanese to attack would have provided the casus belli. Defense of and opposition to FDR seem to be based on partisanship.
                    c. Congress declared war on Japan , and three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the US .  Isolationism in the USA evaporated immediately.  Americans were more united than they had been at any other time in their history.  There was very little anti-war protest.
          2. After Pearl Harbor , the navy claimed that informers and farmers of Japanese descent aided the attack.  There was fear that the West Coast would be invaded.  Executive Order 9066 (February 19, 1942) authorized the relocation of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans, 70% of whom were US citizens, from the West Coast to detention camps in Ricky Mountain and mid-western states.  American citizens who were charged with no crime were arrested and were forced to leave their homes, farms, and businesses.  President Roosevelt claimed that it was justified by military necessity on the grounds that they were a threat to security, although German-Americans were not likewise relocated and interned.  There was anti-Asian racism.  In his order FDR wrote, “The Japanese race is an enemy race.”  General John Dewitt, who was in charge of implementing the order, said, “A Jap is a Jap.”
                    a. Korematsu v. US (1944) upheld the conviction of Fred Korematsu for non-compliance with Executive Order 9066.  The court held that, since the USA was threatened by hostile forces and since it was impossible to separate loyal from disloyal Japanese-Americans, curtailing the civil rights of all of the members of the group was justified.  Justice Robert H. Jackson, who dissented in the 6-3 decision, held that it violated habeas corpus rights.
                    b. Finally, in December 1944, Ex Parte Endo forbade the internment of Japanese-Americans who had not been convicted of a crime.
          3.  After Pearl Harbor , Congress declared “enemy agents,” forced 10,000 on the West Coast to leave their homes, imposed a curfew, restricted the travel of about 50,000, and interned hundreds of violators.
          4. Social changes             
                    a. There is usually more change during wartime than peace time.  In 1940, only 40% of those over twenty-five years of age had gone beyond eighth grade; 25% had graduated from high school; 5% had completed college.  The majority of Americans lived in small towns of fewer than 25,000 people.  With more than twelve million men entering the armed forces and twenty percent of the population joining the Great Migration from south to north and also to the West coast for jobs in the war industry, small town America , where people clung to their ethnic and economic class, was dissolving. 
                    b. The Office of War Mobilization regulated wages and food prices.  Gasoline, rubber, and other items in short supply were rationed.  In 1941, three million automobiles were manufactured in the USA.  Only 139 non-military cars were made during the entire war.
                    c. The war ended the Great Depression.  It created seventeen million jobs, and 70% of the workers doubled their income.  The G.I. Bill of Rights (1944) provided returning veterans college education and low-interest loans for homes, farms, and small businesses.
                    d. Six million women entered the work force, over half of them, like Rosie the Riveter, in defense work.  After the war, many women did not want to return to the kitchen, and by 1947 the number of women in the work force surpassed its wartime peak.
                    e. Winning the war was the priority, and civil rights leaders postponed efforts for integration and equal rights.  The war did increase opportunities for African-Americans.  In 1942, most had been assigned to transportation, construction, and kitchen work.  By the end of the war, some were pilots, and 7000 were officers.  Some combat units were integrated with replacements, and some training camps were integrated.
          5. There was a controversy over the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, with its industry and an army base, and on Nagasaki, a naval base, both with a large civilian population.
                     a. Some justify the use of the atomic bomb.
                               1) FDR had decided to use the atomic bomb as soon as it was available, and President Truman proceeded with this decision.  His primary motive was to avoid an invasion that, according to the Herbert Hoover Commission, would cost 500,000 to one million American and seven million Japanese fatalities and one million American casualties.  Civilian suicides on Saipan, the defense of Okinawa, and Kamikaze attacks demonstrated that the Japanese were committed to fight to the death to defend their home islands.  Japan planned to inflict such heavy losses that America would accept a cease fire, and Japan would not have to admit defeat.
                               2) Very strong in America at the time was the attitude of revenge for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and for the atrocities against allied POWs, particularly in the Bataan Death March and Singapore .
                               3) President Truman wanted to end the war before the USSR could invade Manchuria and insist on a role in the occupation of Japan .
                               4) Twenty years later, Gar Alperovitz speculated that nuclear power was used to intimidate the USSR in the post-war era.  Evidence that this motivated Truman is thin.
                    b. Some condemn the use of the atomic bomb.
                              1) They hold that Japan was near collapse, and using the atomic bomb was unnecessary.  Japan only wanted to retain the emperor as its cultural and religious leader.  On July 26, 1945, the Potsdam Declaration called for unconditional surrender by which it meant that Japan must surrender its armed forces but would be allowed to retain the emperor.  When Japan rejected unconditional surrender, the USA dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6.  On August 8, the Red Army invaded Manchuria, and Japan vowed to fight on.  The USA dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9.  On August 15, the emperor announced that he accepted the Potsdam Declaration.
                              2) Some scientists opposed using the atomic bomb.  Some wanted a demonstration of the bomb before it was used on cities.  This was rejected because the bomb might not detonate, the USA did not have many to spare, the bomber might be shot down, and allied prisoners could be moved to the target area.
                              3) Some say that the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was so barbaric that it canceled out Pearl Harbor and war atrocities.  The nuclear weapon seems to be the issue.  Some think that there is little moral difference between killing more than 90,000 in Tokyo in one night with many bombs and killing 75,000 in Hiroshima , or 25,000 in Nagasaki , with one bomb.
          6. Box score: war deaths
              USSR :       20 million combatants and 7 million civilians.  Three hundred thousand were killed taking Berlin alone.  There was more fighting on the Russian front that in all other theaters of the war combined.   Three-fourths of the German Army fought and incurred 70% of its casualties there. While the Americans and British were driving 60,000 Germans out of Sicily, over 2.2 million men, 6300 tanks, and 4400 planes were fighting at Kursk, the largest battle in history.
               Germany: 3.5 million combatants and 3.6 million civilians
               Japan:      1.3 million combatants, 672,000 civilians
               Britain:    264,443 combatants, 671,000 civilians 
               USA:       407,316 killed; 67,846 wounded not mortally; 16 million men and women were in uniform.
               Poland:    320,000 combatants, 6 million civilians, including 3.2 million Jews
               China:      4 million combatants, 18 million civilians
               France:    213,324 combatants,  350,000 civilians
               All tolled, over 50 million people were killed in the war.
          7. World War II ended isolationism in America .
          8. It introduced nuclear weapons and collective security, i.e., the UN and NATO.
          9. The Cold War was an outgrowth of World War II.
                    a. The Red Army came through Eastern Europe during the war and did not leave.
                    b. Unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor and appeasement at Munich would be behind US policy for the next four decades.  They would lead to maintaining a strong peacetime military and the Cold War policy of containment.
                    c. The holocaust was followed by the immigration of European Jews into Israel, displacing Palestinian Arabs, and the creation of Israel by the UN in 1948.