Objective: To examine the impact of the Red Scare on American society.

Objective: To examine the impact of the Red Scare on American society.

Describe the political climate in the US between 1914 and 1920

Date Fact

5-8 Aug. 1920

In West Frankfort, Illinois, mobs burned the homes of foreigners, clubbed and stoned immigrants on the streets. 5000 state police were called out to restore order.

May 1920 Henry Ford launched anti-Jewish propaganda campaign.

1920 Georgia politician Tom Watson won a seat in the US Senate. Major plank = anti-Catholicism

1919 Alabama state legislator passed a convent inspection law

Sep 1920 5,000 immigrants p/day passed through Ellis Island, NY

1918 “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (a document created by Semitic Russian secret police, purporting to “prove” a Jewish plot existed for world domination) 1st appeared in the US

1919-1920

Postwar economic recession afflicted the US. Agricultural depression began in 1920

Oct 1915 The new Ku Klux Klan was founded by William Simmons.

1919 The 18th Amendment is ratified

1914 The Menace (an anti-Catholic weekly) had a circulation of nearly 1.5 million

1917 Beginning of Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The US refused to recognize the Bolshevik government.

1919 Red Scare in the US. Fearing infiltration and influence, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was extremely active in “hunting suspicious person”

Four facts:

1.Ku Klux Klan. “We believe that the American stock, which was bred under highly selective surroundings … and should not be mongrelized … automatically and instinctively developed the kind of civilization which is best suited to its own healthy life and growth; and this cannot be safely changed except by ourselves and along the lines of our own character. .

2..

3...

4..

Summary …

What is the political climate in the US between 1914 and 1920?

•Anti-immigrant and violence erupted

•Henry Ford prominent American very anti-semitic, anti-catholic, and anti-African American

•Americans saw anarchists and communists as threat to government.

How does the political climate change after 1917 and why?

•Bolshevik Revolution – Czar overthrown

•Russia becomes U.S.S.R. – with a Communist government

•America fears anarchists and communists will overthrow government in U.S.

•America leaves our troops in U.S.S.R to fight Lenin & refuses to recognize the Soviet government.

· People feared a communist revolution would occur in the U.S.

Fear of Radicals

· People blamed communists and Anarchists for labor strikes, labor problems

Labor Unrest

· Since many anarchists were immigrants, discrimination against immigrants increased.

Post-War American Attitudes Following WWI

deep social tensions aggravated by high wartime inflation

Food PricesClothing Prices

deep social tensions aggravated by high wartime inflation

Steel Strike (1919)Organized Labor had won 8-hour workday due to war time production (contract work)By 1919 – ½ workers had a 48-hour work weekUnions on decline because

seen as a direct connect to radicals = immigrantsrise in violent labor strikesdiscriminatory (women or African Americans)made strides in work-hoursfarmers in industrial work used to working alone

Study Table B & analyze the numbers under the quota

acts:1. Quota 1921 law numbers :

___total Northwestern Europe ____total Eastern and Southern Europe

2. Quota 1924 law numbers :_____ total Northwestern Europe ____ total Eastern and Southern Europe

3. Overall trends and reasons for the laws:

Country Quota Under 1921

Law

Quota Under 1924

Law

Relative Percentage

UK 77,342 34,007 44.0

Germany 67,607 51,227 75.8

France 5,729 3,954 69.0

Norway 12,202 6,453 52.9

Sweden 20,042 9,561 47.7

Poland 21,076 5,982 28.4

Austria 7,451 785 10.5

Yugoslavia 6,426 671 10.4Czechoslovakia 14,557 3,073 21.1

Hungary 5,638 473 8.4

Italy 42,057 3,845 9.1

Rumania 7,419 603 8.1

Table 4.1 Compiled from House of Representatives Report No. 1621, 1924, p.190: United States Bureau of Immigration. Annual Report of the Commissioner – General of Immigration. 1924. pp24 ff.

Study:Immigration and National Origins (doc C)

1. What were the intended purpose of the Immigration Act of 1921 and the National Origins Act of 1924?

2. Describe the attributes/fears that the immigrants instilled in the authors of the laws.

3. How did the laws change and why?

4. The day the National Origins Act of 1924 went into effect was marked as Humiliation Day in Japan, the beginning of a major “Hate America” campaign. What are two reasons that the Japanese reacted this way?

Read the excerpt Immigration and National Origins

In the decade before World War I, more than 10 million people flooded into the United States. Unlike the old immigrants, who had come from northern and western Europe in the 1800s, these new immigrants were primarily from eastern and southern Europe. They were not Anglo-Saxon, nor were they Protestants.

For various reasons, including prejudice, many Americans wanted to limit the number of these immigrants. Some citizens believed that the newcomers did not have adequate job skills to be self-sufficient. Many worried that the immigrants would not be able to adapt to the American way of life. Labor unions feared that immigrant laborers would work for lower wages than their union workers. This would make it difficult for union members to find work at the higher wage they desired. Labor unions therefore headed the drive for more restrictive immigration laws.

In 1921, Congress passed the first Immigration Act to establish an effective quota system. Three percent of the total of each nationality already in the country, based on the census of 1910, would be admitted. The maximum quota for all nationalities combined was to be 375, 803 per year.

This proved to be a temporary measure. Continued opposition to immigrants from eastern and southern Europe led to the passage of the National Origins Act of 1924. This was designed to prevent any major racial or ethnic changes in the population of the United States.

By the terms of this new law, the quotas were set at 2 percent of each nationality based on the census of 1890. Most of the immigration from eastern and southern Europe began after 1890. The maximum quota for all immigration was to be 164,667. Canadians and Latin Americans were not part of the quota system in this or future acts. The Japanese were specifically excluded from all future immigration as “aliens ineligible to citizenship.” The law of 1924 was a slap in the face to the Japanese. It marked the beginning of disintegration in United States-Japanese relations.

In 1929, a second National Origins Act was passed. The 1929 act established quotas of 2 percent of each nationality based on the census of 1920 but limited to a maximum quota of 153,714 of all nationalities. The years of unlimited immigration had ended long since.

· The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 set up a quota system allowing only a certain number of people from each country into the U.S.

Closing the Golden Door

The Door gets locked?

· The National Origins Exclusion Act and the Immigration Act of 1924Superseded the 1921 Emergency Quota Act – further aimed at restricting Southern and Eastern Europeans and prohibited East Asians.

* However, people from the Western Hemisphere were unaffected by the quota, and thousands of Mexicans and Canadians entered the U.S.

* The law favored Protestant nations from Northern Europe.

Keep on Guarding the Gates

1. What problems did immigrants pose?

2. Why did the quota law, 1921, seem to be satisfactory?

3. If these were satisfactory why did the restrictions become more strict?

4. Where did the “older type of immigration” come from and provide?

5. What drain on society did immigrants cost?

6. What would the US lack by imposing strict immigration restrictions?

Homework Readingprint from Aeries

More Post-War American Attitudes Following WWI

Period of Disillusionment …

1. veterans, artists, and intellectuals2. Society was lacking idealism and vision3. Sense of personal alienation4. Americans were obsessed with materialism

and outmoded moral values.

Safeguarding America for Americans“In this brief review of the work which the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country …”

A. Mitchell Palmer

The Palmer RaidsSeveral cities across the countryA.Mitchell Palmer and John Edgar Hoover

A. found no evidence of a proposed revolution

B. numbers of suspects, many of them members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) were held without trial.

C. Many “suspects” were deported D. In New York, five elected Socialists

were expelled from the legislature.

Palmer Raids