TAH Grant Summer 2012: World war i homefront

World War I: The Home Front

Growth of Government

The War Industries Board and War Socialism

Bernard Baruch

The Experience of the War Industries Board points to the desirability of investing some government agency with the powers to encourage, under strict government supervision, such cooperation and coordination in industry as should tend to increase production, eliminate waste, conserve natural resources, improve the quality of products, promote efficiency in operation, and thus reduce costs to the ultimate consumer.

Powers• Allocate scarce resources• Control the flow of raw materials• Order factories to convert to war production• Set prices • Demand levels of efficiency• Coordinate purchasing• Organize railroad shipping• Cost Plus Contracts• No bid contracts• Relaxing of Anti-Trust laws to encourage concentration in

production• Food Administration• The power to compel compliance

The War Labor Board

Powers

• Granted workers the right to organize• Empowered the government to arbitrate

contracts• Limited the power of workers to strike• It supported the 8 hour day and overtime pay• It supported equal pay for women• It does not have the power to compel

compliance

The Committee on Public Information: The Creel Commission, 1917-1919

Activities

• 75,000 community speakers• Daily newspaper• Feature length films• Posters

Civil Liberties

• "The war power is of necessity an inherent power in every sovereign nation. It is the power of self-reservation and that power has no limits other than the extent of the emergency."

• A. Mitchell PalmerDecember 1918

Expanded Federal Power• The Espionage Act• The Sedition Act• The Trading with the Enemies Act

These impacted the press and the mail service • Deportation of aliens• The Draft• Citizen’s and local government groups used violence and

intimidation• Lots of anti German activity leading to at least one lynching

of a German American in St Louis• Wide spread attacks on peace groups, socialists, and radical

labor and political organizations

Taking Direction from the Top

Woodrow WilsonWoe be to the man who seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure.

Theodore RooseveltHe who is not with us absolutely and without reserve of any kind, is against us, and should be treated as an alien enemy. Our bitterest experience should teach us for a generation to crush under our heal every movement that smacks in the smallest degree of playing the German game.

The Red Summer of 1919

• Labor and Post War Conditions: The Seattle General Strike, Boston Police Strike, The Great Steel Strike

• The creation of a US Communist party• Some bombings in the mails by fringe anarchists• The Red Scare and Palmer Raids: All things progressive tied to

anti-Communism and the emergence of Herbert Hoover• Massive deportations of immigrants suspected of leftist

activity without any due process, culminating in the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927

• More than 20 race riots occurred in 1919, marking a distinct change in the pattern of racial violence in the US

Other Critical WWI Era changes

• Immigration from Europe greatly reduced leading to immigration restriction legislation in 1924

• The association of all progressive activity with Communism

• The Great Migration• Woman Suffrage