World War I: Home Front in two minutes
- Washington directed the economy through the War Industries Board, Food Administration and Railroad Administration, and Liberty Bonds and a 77 percent top tax rate financed the war.
- The Committee on Public Information under George Creel sold the war with posters and Four Minute Men speakers, while anti-German feeling led to English-only orders and attacks on German Americans.
- The Espionage and Sedition Acts (1917–1918) punished dissent; Schenck v. United States (1919) upheld such limits under a clear and present danger test, and Eugene V. Debs got ten years.
- The war cut off European immigration and opened factory jobs to women, Mexican migrants and Southerners; in the Great Migration, African Americans left segregation and low pay for northern cities.
- Migrants met hostility: white mobs killed dozens in East St. Louis in 1917, and the Red Summer of 1919 brought racial violence to Chicago and other cities.
- Fear of radicals after the Russian Revolution, the 1919 strikes and the bombings led to the Palmer raids of 1919–1920; Congress also passed a literacy test (1917) and immigration quotas (1921).
- On the exam: Topic 7.6 tests claims and evidence about civil liberties, migration and race; compare wartime limits on speech with the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Civil War.
Topic 7.6 key terms
- Socialist Party of America
Party founded in 1901 that wanted public ownership of the biggest industries and opposed U.S. entry into World War I. Its candidate, Eugene V. Debs, won about 900,000 votes in 1912, 6 percent of the total.
- Eugene V. Debs
(1855–1926) Socialist Party leader and five-time candidate for president. Convicted under the Espionage Act for this 1918 antiwar speech and sentenced to ten years in prison.
- "Safe for democracy"
Wilson's phrase for America's war aim in April 1917: to defend and spread democratic government, not to win territory. Debs, Emma Goldman and the marchers on Fifth Avenue all threw it back at the government.
- War Industries Board
Federal agency that set production priorities, shared out scarce materials like steel, and fixed prices for war goods.
- Food Administration
Agency led by Herbert Hoover that asked Americans to conserve food at home so more could ship to the Allies.
- Railroad Administration
Federal agency that ran the nation's railroads under government control from December 1917 to March 1920.
- National War Labor Board
Wartime board that mediated labor disputes in exchange for a no-strike pledge, and backed workers' right to organize.
- Liberty Bonds
Loans the Treasury sold to ordinary Americans to pay for the war, in four Liberty Loan drives.
- Selective Service Act (1917)
The draft law Wilson signed on May 18, 1917. Men 21 to 30 (later 18 to 45) had to register. About 2.8 million were called up by lottery, and almost 2 million more volunteered.
- Claims and evidence (skill 3.D)
Her claim: if the war is for democracy, democracy should begin at home. Her evidence: the draft, a law that forces men to fight. Is that enough? What happened next: two years in prison. Reel 6 fills in the rest.
- Committee on Public Information (CPI)
The government's wartime propaganda agency (1917–1919), run by George Creel. It produced posters, films and pamphlets, and organized volunteer speakers called Four Minute Men.
- Espionage Act (1917)
Made it a crime to obstruct the draft or recruiting, or to help the enemy, with up to 20 years in prison. About 2,000 people were prosecuted, and about half were convicted.
- "Clear and present danger"
The test from Schenck v. United States (1919): speech can be punished when it creates a clear and present danger of harms Congress has the power to prevent.
- Anti-German hysteria
Wartime fear of anything German. Foods, streets and towns were renamed, German was pushed out of schools, churches and public life, and German Americans were accused of disloyalty. Some were attacked.
- Sedition Act (1918)
A May 1918 amendment to the Espionage Act. It made "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the government, the Constitution, the flag or the military a crime. Congress repealed it in 1920.
- American Protective League (APL)
A private volunteer group, approved by the Justice Department in March 1917, whose members spied on neighbors and helped arrest suspected draft dodgers. It claimed about 250,000 members.
- Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
The "Wobblies": a radical union that organized unskilled and immigrant workers and opposed the war. Federal raids in 1917 and a mass trial in 1918 broke it.
- Immigration peaked before the war
Immigration from Europe peaked in the early 1900s. World War I cut it sharply, so employers with war orders looked for workers at home.
- Jobs for women
Labor shortages opened war-plant, rail-yard and streetcar jobs to women. About a million worked in war industries, most moving up from lower-paid jobs. Many lost them when the soldiers came home.
- Migration of Mexicans
The Mexican Revolution began in 1910. Violence at home, plus jobs on U.S. farms, mines and railroads, drew hundreds of thousands north.
- Great Migration
The movement of Black Southerners to northern and western cities, starting about 1916. Segregation, racial violence, boll-weevil ruin on the cotton farms, and factory jobs drove it.
- Chicago Defender
A Black weekly published in Chicago. It urged Southern Black readers to come north, and Pullman porters carried it into towns where it was unwelcome.
- East St. Louis massacre (1917)
White mob violence against Black residents of East St. Louis, Illinois, the worst of it on July 2, 1917. It grew out of a strike, strikebreaking and fear of job competition during the wartime migration. AMSCO calls it the largest of the wartime race riots; historians now call it a massacre.
- NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 by Black and white reformers. It fought lynching and segregation through court cases, publicity and protest, and published The Crisis, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.
- Close Ranks
Du Bois's July 1918 editorial in The Crisis, urging Black Americans to put their grievances aside until the war ended. Critics such as Hubert Harrison answered that those grievances were lynching, segregation and disfranchisement, and could not wait.
- service by African Americans
Almost 400,000 Black Americans served in World War I, in segregated units; only a few were allowed to be officers, and all were barred from the Marine Corps. Du Bois hoped their service would win equal rights at home.
- 1918 pandemic
A worldwide influenza outbreak that reached the United States in 1918 and killed about 675,000 Americans (AMSCO says 500,000 to 675,000). Army camps and troop ships helped it spread, and cities closed schools, churches and theaters to slow it.
- Strikes of 1919
About one American worker in five walked out in 1919 as prices rose after the war. The Seattle general strike, the Boston police strike and the steel strike all failed, and many Americans blamed radicals for them.
- Red Scare
Fear of a Communist revolution in 1919 and 1920. Anger at Germans during the war turned against radicals, unions and immigrants, and the government arrested and deported people it called dangerous.
- Palmer raids
Justice Department raids in November 1919 and January 1920 on radical groups, mostly immigrants. Agents arrested more than 6,000 people, often without warrants, and 556 were deported. Courts and Labor Department officials soon pushed back.
- Emergency Quota Act (1921)
The first law to put a numerical cap on European immigration: each nationality could send 3 percent of its 1910 U.S. population, about 357,000 people a year in all. It favored northern and western Europe and reflected nativism, hostility to immigrants, especially the 'new' immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Canadians and Latin Americans were exempt.
- Race riots (1917–1921)
The textbook name for the wave of racial violence from East St. Louis in 1917 to Tulsa in 1921. Many were white mobs attacking Black residents, so historians now call the worst of them massacres.
- Claims and evidence
Skill 3.D. Officials claimed Black farmers plotted an insurrection. Wells tested that claim against the scene itself: a plot does not begin by killing its own members and burning its own church.
- Moore v. Dempsey (1923)
Supreme Court case from the Elaine trials. Justice Holmes wrote that a trial dominated by a mob violates due process, so federal courts may review such state convictions.
- New Negro movement
A movement of Black writers, artists and activists, strongest in the 1920s, who rejected deference and demanded full citizenship. McKay's sonnet is one of its early landmarks.
- Commutation
A president shortens a sentence but leaves the conviction on the record. Debs went free; his conviction stood.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Prisoner 9653
1917–1920
Key terms: Socialist Party of America, Eugene V. Debs, "Safe for democracy"
Election night · November 2, 1920
Election night, 1920. The movie house flashed the returns between pictures. One of the candidates was in prison.
Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party ran for president from a federal penitentiary. Atlanta. Prisoner number 9653.
His party put the number on its campaign buttons. He got about nine hundred thousand votes.
His crime was a speech, in Canton, Ohio, in June 1918.
Eugene V. Debs
I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech.
Eugene V. Debs
I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it.
A Justice Department stenographer took down every word.
Eugene V. Debs
…it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world.
The speech got him ten years.
Woodrow Wilson
The world must be made safe for democracy.
Woodrow Wilson, asking Congress for war, April 1917.
That summer, marchers in New York turned his words into a question.
MR. PRESIDENT, WHY NOT MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY?
Over Here
1917–1918
Key terms: War Industries Board, Food Administration, Railroad Administration, National War Labor Board, Liberty Bonds
America declared war in April 1917. To fight in France, Washington had to run the economy at home.
The War Industries Board decided what factories made, who got the steel, and what everything cost.
Herbert Hoover's Food Administration asked families for wheatless Mondays and Wednesdays, and meatless Tuesdays. Those were requests, not orders. Hoover's name became a verb: to Hooverize.
To save coal, Congress moved the clocks. Daylight saving time began on March 31, 1918. Washington had even taken over the railroads.
A National War Labor Board tried to settle disputes before they became strikes. Wages rose, and so did prices. Union membership nearly doubled.
The war cost over 30 billion dollars. More than half was borrowed, mostly through Liberty Bonds. Taxes covered about a fifth. The top rate hit 77 percent.
Movie stars sold bonds too. On Wall Street, Douglas Fairbanks held Charlie Chaplin up over the crowd.
Factories ran around the clock and couldn't find enough workers. Hold that thought.
Woodrow Wilson
If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression.
He said that in the same speech.
Four Minutes
1917–1919
Key terms: Selective Service Act (1917), Claims and evidence (skill 3.D), Committee on Public Information (CPI), Espionage Act (1917), "Clear and present danger"
On May 18, 1917, Woodrow Wilson signed the draft law. That night, in a Harlem hall ringed with soldiers and police, Emma Goldman got up to speak.
Emma Goldman
If it is true that America went into war in order to fight for democracy — why not begin at home?
A patrolman took it down in shorthand. It became Government's Exhibit 31 at her trial, and she got two years.
Many Americans backed the war. The government didn't leave that to chance.
George Creel
a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world's greatest adventure in advertising.
While the projectionist changed reels, a local volunteer gave a speech. The rule was four minutes.
A week later, citing Schenck, the Court upheld Eugene Debs's conviction. The vote was unanimous.
Eight months after Schenck, Holmes changed course.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market
He wrote it in dissent. The Court took decades to catch up.
Liberty Cabbage
1917–1918
Key terms: Anti-German hysteria, Sedition Act (1918), Espionage Act (1917), American Protective League (APL), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
By spring 1918, Main Street had new signs. Banks named "German-American" dropped the German. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage," the makers' own idea.
Iowa's governor ordered English only in public, on trains and on the telephone. Those who spoke no English were told to worship at home.
Some of the fear had a cause. In 1916, German agents blew up the Black Tom munitions pier in New York harbor.
In May 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act. It banned "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the government, the flag or the uniform.
The American Protective League claimed about 250,000 volunteers. Their badges read "Secret Service." They reported neighbors for "disloyal" talk.
In Collinsville, Illinois, a mob seized Robert Prager, a German-born miner.
He had tried to join the Navy. Just after midnight on April 5, 1918, they hanged him.
The trial Madison County, Illinois · 1918
Eleven men were tried. The jury acquitted them all within minutes. Outside the courthouse, a band leading draftees to the train was playing "Over There."
Strikers were treated as enemies too. In Bisbee, Arizona, deputies loaded 1,186 miners into cattle cars.
Most were immigrants. They were left in the New Mexico desert.
Eugene V. Debs
The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
Two weeks later, federal agents arrested him.
Eugene V. Debs
…while there is a lower class, I am in it,
Eugene V. Debs
and while there is a criminal element I am of it,
Eugene V. Debs
and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
The judge gave him ten years.
The Road North
1916–1919
Key terms: Immigration peaked before the war, Jobs for women, Migration of Mexicans, Great Migration, Chicago Defender
The war cut off immigration from Europe just as factories needed more hands than ever.
So Americans moved to the jobs.
Women took jobs men had held: in munitions plants, in rail yards, on streetcars.
Mexicans fleeing a revolution came north to farms, mines and railroads.
White Southerners came north too. Akron's tire factories tripled the city in ten years.
The biggest move was Black Southerners. They left segregation, lynching, and farm work that paid about seventy-five cents a day. Chicago's packinghouses paid three dollars a day.
Their guide was the Chicago Defender, a Black weekly. Pullman porters carried bundles south.
Letter writer, Port Arthur, Texas
I never dreamed that there was such a race paper published and I must say that its some paper.
The South tried to stop them. Macon, Georgia, charged labor agents twenty-five thousand dollars for a license. Police pulled travelers off trains.
Many rode the Illinois Central, straight up from Mississippi and Louisiana to Chicago.
Between 1910 and 1920, Chicago's Black population more than doubled. Detroit's grew sevenfold.
They found better pay and the vote. They also found crowded housing, unions that kept them out, and fifty-eight bombings of Black homes by 1921.
Silent
1917–1918
Key terms: East St. Louis massacre (1917), NAACP, Close Ranks, service by African Americans
In East St. Louis, Illinois, the Aluminum Ore Company brought in Black migrants to break a strike. White workers, afraid for their jobs, blamed the migrants.
On July 2, 1917, white mobs burned the Black neighborhood and shot people as they ran. At least thirty-nine Black people and nine white people died. About six thousand Black residents lost their homes.
Twenty-six days later, close to ten thousand Black New Yorkers marched down Fifth Avenue without saying a word.
One placard remembered Crispus Attucks, the first man killed in the Boston Massacre.
The only sound was the drums. Four days later, a delegation took a petition against lynching to the White House. They were told the president was busy.
A year later, with Black soldiers in France, Du Bois urged his readers to set their grievances aside.
W. E. B. Du Bois
Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens
Many of his readers were furious. Almost 400,000 Black Americans served in the war, in segregated units.
Nineteen Nineteen
1918–1921
Key terms: 1918 pandemic, Strikes of 1919, Red Scare, Claims and evidence (skill 3.D), Palmer raids, Emergency Quota Act (1921)
In October 1918 the Star closed. So did theaters, churches and schools across the country. Influenza killed about 675,000 Americans.
The war ended in November 1918. Four million men came home to canceled war orders and rising prices.
In 1919, one worker in five went on strike. In February, Seattle shut down for five days.
Boston's police walked out. Governor Calvin Coolidge broke the strike.
Calvin Coolidge
There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.
Then came the bombs. On June 2, 1919, they exploded in eight cities. One wrecked the attorney general's house.
A. Mitchell Palmer
Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago.
The Bolsheviks had taken Russia in 1917. Palmer believed the fire had reached America.
In November 1919 and again in January 1920, federal agents raided radical groups. The January raids reached more than thirty cities. Agents arrested thousands, most of them immigrants.
In between, on December 21, 1919, the army transport Buford sailed for Russia with 249 deportees. The press called it the Soviet Ark. Emma Goldman was aboard.
Palmer warned of a Red uprising on May Day, 1920. Police guarded cities all day. Nothing happened.
Congress had already passed a literacy test over Wilson's veto in 1917, and barred almost all immigration from Asia.
After the war, immigration came back: about 800,000 people in 1921.
In May 1921, Congress set quotas: three percent of each nationality counted in the 1910 census. The cuts fell hardest on southern and eastern Europe. Three years later came a stricter law.
Red Summer
1919–1921
Key terms: NAACP, Race riots (1917–1921), Claims and evidence, Moore v. Dempsey (1923), New Negro movement
W. E. B. Du Bois
We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.
Chicago, July 27, 1919. A seventeen-year-old named Eugene Williams was swimming near a beach white people claimed.
He drifted across an invisible line in the water. Men on the shore threw stones. He drowned.
A week of rioting followed. Thirty-eight people died, twenty-three of them Black.
The NAACP's James Weldon Johnson called it the Red Summer. Between spring and fall, racial violence hit at least two dozen cities.
Near Elaine, Arkansas, Black sharecroppers met in a church to form a union and demand a fair price for cotton. Someone fired into the meeting.
White posses and federal troops hunted Black sharecroppers. At least a hundred died. Some estimates run past two hundred.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Had this been a conspiracy of Negroes to kill whites, they would not have started in by killing their own members, break up their own meeting, nor burn their own church.
Wells interviewed twelve men sentenced to death. In 1923 the Supreme Court ruled that a trial swept along by a mob denied them due process.
Claude McKay
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Claude McKay
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
May 31, 1921. Greenwood was Tulsa's prosperous Black district. Armed Black veterans went to the courthouse to stop a lynching.
By the next afternoon, a white mob had burned thirty-five blocks.
Estimates of the dead run as high as three hundred.
Christmas, 1921
1921
Key terms: Commutation, Espionage Act (1917), Emergency Quota Act (1921), Great Migration
President Harding commuted Debs's sentence. He walked out of Atlanta on Christmas Day, 1921.
Behind him, the prisoners crowded the windows and cheered. He turned, took off his hat, and wept.
The next day, he met Harding at the White House.
Harding reportedly said he'd heard "so damned much" about Debs that he was glad to meet him.
Between 1917 and 1921, the war made democracy bigger for some Americans and smaller for others. Often it did both at once.
It opened factory gates to women and to Southerners, Black and white. It also sent people to prison for speeches and began closing the door to immigrants.
The trains from the South kept coming. In the next fifty years, millions more made the trip.
Letter writer, Chicago, to Hattiesburg
I should have been here 20 years ago. I just begin to feel like a man.
MR. PRESIDENT, WHY NOT MAKE AMERICA SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY?