In what ways did World War one impact American society?

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In what ways did World War one impact American society?

The impacts of world war one on American society were wide and far reaching, affecting all groups in society. The massive anomaly in industrial output was the “trigger” cause for this massive change but many slower events were also causes – for example mass immigration before and during the war, the increasing demands for power from women and the “problem” of the huge numbers of ex slaves looking for work.

A key impact is the political shift to the right after the war. This encouraged large industrialists like Henry Ford to start up their companies, kick starting the economy but resulting in some of the social changes outlined below. The right wing politicians believed in a “laissez-faire” approach to most things, and consequently did little to protect the vulnerable members of society such as poorly paid workers, women and immigrants. During the Republican Ascendancy 1921-29, there were three presidents. A classic president from this period was “silent Cal”, Calvin Coolidge (1924-28), who believed that there was no reason for him to intervene except to veto suggestions from men in congress more active than him. No president during this period intervened to defend the rights of the workers or any other vulnerable members of society despite the fact that they all mentioned it in nearly all state of the union address.

This policy was supported by many of the “new”, wealthy, middle class Americans who has a clear majority in the poles. Presidents such as Calvin Coolidge were popular at the time among these large elements of the population simply because they kept interest rates low and had a large surplus in tax revenue while still reducing tax rates year on year. The clear effect on this was to keep wealth redistribution to virtually nothing and to provide few benefits. This shows that one of the key impacts of world war one was the desperation of the middle classes to increase their standard of living through producing lots of consumer goods, without worrying about the quality of life of the worker who had to produce it!

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There was a phenomenal effect on Women after the war. During the war, many women had taken up posts that were previously occupied by men due to the demand for low skilled labor. While doing this, some of them felt that they had shown that they were equal to men and continued the Woman’s suffrage movement that had started at Seneca Falls in 1848. Using arguments like the fact that the “inferior” African-Americans already had the vote (although they were in practice excluded from it), women got the vote with the 19th amendment on the 18th August 1920.

However, ...

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