Comparison in Period 7 in two minutes
- From 1890 to 1945 America went from a largely rural country with a small federal government to an urban, industrial world power; most Americans lived in urban areas by 1920.
- Wars changed America's role: the Spanish–American War brought overseas territory, World War I sent troops to Europe without League membership, and World War II made the United States the strongest power.
- At home, the Progressives (income tax, Federal Reserve, woman suffrage) and the New Deal (Social Security, bank deposit insurance, minimum wage, union rights) expanded the government's role.
- Mass culture and migration changed daily life: radio and movies created shared entertainment, well over a million Black Southerners moved north and west, and quotas restricted immigration.
- Change was uneven: Jim Crow persisted, the government interned about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 1942, and officials pushed Mexican families to leave in the 1930s, then recruited braceros.
- Historians weigh which shock mattered most: World War II ended the Depression and made a superpower, but the Progressives and New Deal built modern government and 1898 began the overseas empire.
- On the exam: Topic 7.15 asks you to compare which events mattered most in shaping American identity; make a claim, corroborate it, qualify it with groups the change missed, and modify it.
Topic 7.15 key terms
- Perry's expedition (1853–54)
Commodore Matthew Perry sailed a U.S. Navy squadron into Edo Bay in July 1853 and pressed Japan's government to open ports to American ships. The Treaty of Kanagawa (1854) gave U.S. ships access to two ports.
- Surrender of Japan (September 2, 1945)
Japan's government and armed forces signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. The United States and eight other Allied nations signed for the Allies, formally ending World War II.
- Superpower
A nation strong enough to act in every part of the world. After 1945 the United States, with the largest navy and the atomic bomb, was one of two: the other was the Soviet Union.
- Limited welfare state
A government that regulates the economy and helps people in need, but leaves business in private hands. The New Deal built it: Social Security, deposit insurance, unemployment insurance, labor law.
- Mass culture
Entertainment and news that reach millions at once, such as movies, radio and national magazines, so people far apart share the same stories, voices and stars.
- Quotas (1921, 1924)
Laws that capped immigration by nationality. They gave southern and eastern Europeans the smallest numbers and barred nearly all immigrants from Asia.
- Great Migration
Black Southerners' move to Northern and Western cities, starting in World War I and surging again in World War II.
- Progressive amendments
Four amendments ratified 1913-1920: the income tax (16th), direct election of senators (17th), Prohibition (18th, repealed in 1933) and women's suffrage (19th).
- Four Minute Men
Volunteer speakers the Committee on Public Information sent to theaters in 1917–18. Each gave a four-minute talk, often while the projectionist changed reels, to promote the war effort.
- For the war's duration
The promise on many wartime jobs opened to women and minorities: the job was theirs only until the war ended. Most went back to returning men in 1945–46.
- Newsreel
A short filmed news roundup shown before the feature in movie theaters. In the 1930s and 1940s it brought the war to the whole country at once.
- Historical significance
How much an event mattered: how many people it reached, how deeply, and for how long. To argue it, compare the event with others and back your claim with evidence.
- Complex argument (skill 6.D)
Corroborate: add evidence that backs the claim. Qualify: show where it stops being true. Modify: rewrite it to fit the evidence.
- Mobilization
Turning the whole economy to war: the draft, rationing, retooled factories and millions of new workers, many of them women and people of color.
- Collective security
Nations promise to defend each other through an organization like the UN instead of each going it alone.
- Japanese American internment
Executive Order 9066 (1942) forced Japanese Americans on the West Coast out of their homes and into camps. Many historians now call it incarceration.
- Bracero program (1942)
A U.S.–Mexico agreement that brought Mexican workers for farms and railroads, at wages and in conditions the workers often had no power to change.
- The American Century (1941)
Henry Luce's name for the 1900s in a 1941 essay in Life. He argued that the United States should accept its power and lead the world.
- Century of the Common Man (1942)
Vice President Henry Wallace's reply to Luce: the war should lead to a world where ordinary people everywhere gain freedom and a better living, not to one nation's rule.
- The color line (1903)
W. E. B. Du Bois's phrase, in The Souls of Black Folk, for racial division as the defining problem of the 1900s, in the United States and around the world.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Tokyo Bay
September 2, 1945 (and 1853)
Key terms: Perry's expedition (1853–54), Surrender of Japan (September 2, 1945), Superpower
Sunday, September 2, 1945 Tokyo Bay
More than two hundred fifty Allied ships lie at anchor in the haze.
Japan's foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, climbs the ladder of the battleship Missouri, on an artificial leg.
Less than four weeks earlier, two atomic bombs had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Behind General Douglas MacArthur stands General Jonathan Wainwright. He surrendered the American forces in the Philippines in 1942, and spent three years as a prisoner.
On the bulkhead above them hangs a faded flag with thirty-one stars.
Commodore Perry's warships carried that flag into this bay in 1853, to force Japan to open its ports.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
These proceedings are closed.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.
Americans watched it in movie houses like this one. Ninety-two years after Perry, the United States had the largest navy in the world. Most of that change came after 1890, in four shocks. A war with Spain in 1898. The Great War. The Great Depression. And this war. Which one did the most to make modern America?
Two Americas
1890 · 1945
Key terms: Limited welfare state, Mass culture, Quotas (1921, 1924), Great Migration, Progressive amendments
The 1890 census could no longer find a frontier line. In 1890, one American in three lived in a town or city. By 1920, most did.
Empty an American's pockets in 1890. For most people, Washington was the money and a two-cent stamp.
In 1945: a ration book, a draft card, a Social Security card and a pay stub with income tax withheld.
In 1890, there were no movies and no radio. By 1940, four homes in five had a radio.
By 1945, Americans bought about ninety million movie tickets a week.
In 1890, there was no limit on how many Europeans could come.
By 1924, quotas had cut southern and eastern Europe to a trickle and barred nearly all of Asia.
Inside the country, well over a million Black Southerners moved north and west.
In 1890, women voted on equal terms in one state.
By 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment barred every state from denying women the vote.
Four shocks got the country from one picture to the other.
Five Reels
1917 · 1945
Key terms: Four Minute Men, For the war's duration, Newsreel, Historical significance
In 1917 a volunteer stood under this screen and sold the war in four minutes.
In the spring of 1945, it showed what American soldiers found when they opened the Nazi camps.
The projectionist took over this booth in 1943, when her husband joined the Navy. He's due home next month.
Up here are five reels no newsreel ever made. Each holds one American life, 1890 to now. Run them, and decide which shock changed each life the most.
The Star's projectionistDramatized
Pick a can. When the dot flashes, pull the lever.
Which Shock?
1890–1945
Key terms: Complex argument (skill 6.D), Mobilization, Collective security, Japanese American internment, Bracero program (1942)
Five lives, and each shock was the biggest one for somebody. The exam wants one answer, and where it breaks.
Here's one. Claim: the Second World War did the most to make modern America.
Corroborate it. By 1945, more than twelve million Americans were in uniform. In 1890, the Army, Navy and Marines together had about thirty-nine thousand.
War plants ended the Depression's unemployment: from about fifteen percent in 1940 to about one percent in 1944.
In 1917, fifty House members voted against war. In 1941, one did: Jeannette Rankin, again.
The Senate refused the League of Nations in 1919 and 1920. In 1945 it approved the United Nations, eighty-nine to two.
Now qualify it. At home, the Depression came first.
Social Security, insured bank deposits, the minimum wage and union rights all came from the New Deal.
The Progressives came earlier, with the income tax, the Federal Reserve and women's votes.
Qualify again. Whose America? The war opened factory jobs to Black and Mexican American workers.
In 1942 the government sent about 120,000 Japanese Americans to camps. More than two-thirds were American citizens.
In the 1930s, officials pushed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to leave. In 1942, Washington recruited Mexican farmworkers to come back, as braceros.
Measure the period five ways, and the biggest jump moves each time.
So modify the claim. The Second World War made America a world power and finished what the New Deal began at home.
For millions of Americans, the biggest change was a train north, a quota or a camp.
One more connection. In 1898, America took Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. On December 7 and 8, 1941, Japan struck all three.
The smallest shock had the longest fuse.
Whose Century?
1941–1945
Key terms: The American Century (1941), Century of the Common Man (1942), The color line (1903), Superpower
Ten months before Pearl Harbor, the publisher Henry Luce named the century.
Henry R. Luce
…to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world…
Luce, a missionary's son raised in China, was pushing Life's readers toward the war. His century said little about who at home would share it.
Henry A. Wallace
I say that the century on which we are entering … can be and must be the century of the common man.
And back in 1903, Du Bois had named the century's problem: the color line.
On the Missouri, sailors took Perry's flag down for the trip home to Annapolis.
It took fifty-five years to make the country on that deck. What it did with that power fills the next fifty-five.