Question 1 minus intro n conslus
Question 1 minus intro n conslus
Life in the USA by 1919 was very revolutionary; socially, religiously and economically. For example, women were becoming more independent and were being taken more seriously, there was a dramatic rise in the variety of different industries, the different classes were integrating, the amount of immigrants was on a dramatic rise and religious views were being expressed very noticeably.
To begin with, women were becoming independent. They were beginning to earn their own living and no longer living up to the "housewife" standard that this era possessed. Equality was a big issue and women wanted to be taken more seriously and be admired for the qualities they really possess and not at how good a cleaner they were. They no longer relied on their husband's wages to survive, they had independence and they knew it. They were able to buy gifts for themselves ranging from faux fur and hats to pianos and cars - especially as cars were becoming a great demand.
Also, cars were no longer reserved for the rich upper class, but due to Henry Ford, became available for middle class society to purchase.
The Ford Motor Company was incorporated in 1903 with Henry Ford as vice-president and chief engineer. The infant company produced only a few cars a day at the Ford factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit. Groups of two or three men worked on each car from components made to order by other companies.
Henry Ford realized his dream of producing an automobile that was reasonably priced, reliable, and efficient with the introduction of the Model T in 1908. This vehicle initiated a new era in personal transportation. It was easy to operate, maintain, and handle on rough roads, immediately becoming a huge success.
By 1918, half of all cars in America were Model Ts. To meet the growing demand for the Model T, the company opened a large factory at Highland Park, Michigan, in 1910. Here, Henry Ford combined precision manufacturing, standardized and interchangeable parts, a division of labour, and, in 1913, a continuous moving assembly line. Workers remained in place, adding one component to each automobile as it moved past them on the line. Delivery of parts by conveyor belt to the workers was carefully timed to keep the assembly line moving smoothly and efficiently. The introduction of the moving assembly line revolutionized automobile production by significantly reducing assembly time per vehicle, thus lowering costs. Ford's production of Model Ts made his company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world.
Cars were not the only industry rising dramatically. The amount of telephones produced in the same time increased by 13 million to 20 million and there was an amazing rise in radio sales, starting from 60,000 up to 10 million. Efficiency was becoming a bit part of everyday life.
Advertising boomed in the 1920's, mostly taking a shine to electrical goods for the home such as vacuum cleaners (as electricity was becoming exceedingly popular as a new energy source as old sources of energy was hardly used compared to 10 years previously. The land was covered in deserted mines for example. As the sales of certain industries were increasing, so were economical issues, for example immigrants.
The amount of immigrants living in Britain rose from 1.2 million in 1918, to 3 million in 1920 and dramatically increased to 8 million within the next year. The numbers then began to steadily decrease reaching 6.5 million in 1924, 2.3 million in 1927, 1 million in 1930 until it reached its lowest amount 450,000 in 1933. The increase and decrease in the amount of immigrants wasn't the only thing that was changing.
Socially, racism was still a very big issue. There would still be situations, for example, of a gang of white people (farmers usually) ...
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The amount of immigrants living in Britain rose from 1.2 million in 1918, to 3 million in 1920 and dramatically increased to 8 million within the next year. The numbers then began to steadily decrease reaching 6.5 million in 1924, 2.3 million in 1927, 1 million in 1930 until it reached its lowest amount 450,000 in 1933. The increase and decrease in the amount of immigrants wasn't the only thing that was changing.
Socially, racism was still a very big issue. There would still be situations, for example, of a gang of white people (farmers usually) hanging Indians for whatever reason they saw acceptable. Also, Cherokee Indians were used for jobs such as building the Empire State building. This is a very manual, semi-skilled job and could be seen as an easy wage for Indians at this point especially as having a "not very skilled" job showed they were probably not very well educated (or educated at all.) Contrastingly, it was not known how much they were getting paid. A high wage could mean they might be accepted into society, but a low wage could mean they were being used, almost as slave labour. As the gap between white people and people of colour was greater than ever, different classes were beginning to show coincidental similarities.
With headlines reading titles like "Eager Buying Has Reached All Classes of People Throughout the Country" it was obvious both classes were starting to have the same opportunities. Things were not running so smoothly religiously.
Some Christians (mainly Methodists) had very strong views and wanted them heard. They wanted education changed because the idea of "evolution" went against their beliefs of Adam and Eve. This could show a decline in the popularity of religion.
There were not only negative phenomenon's that were occurring around 1919. There were positive and negative consequences of WW1 that affected the USA in 1919.
The USA had been reluctant to get involved in WW1. It did not take sides in the disputes, which affected Europe or get involved in alliances, which might drag America into the war. Yet in 1917, the USA joined the war on the side of Britain and her Allies and made the deciding contribution that brought about the defeat of Germany and the Central Powers. However many Americans where asking themselves if it was worth it.
The USA had come out of the war as the world's leading economy. The war had helped it in many ways.
Through out the war there had been a one-way trade with Europe. Money had poured into the USA for food, raw materials and munitions. American industry and agriculture had prospered.
During the war the USA had taken over European overseas markets and many American industries had become more successful than their European competitors. For example, the USA had replaced Germany as the world's leading producer of fertilisers, dyes and other chemical products.
The war had led to advances in technology; for example, mechanisation and the new materials like plastic. The USA was the world leader in developing these technological changes and applying them to industry.
Statistics back up these optimistic consequences of WW1. For instance, the production of Iron ore had increased from 41.4 million tons to 75.3 between 1914 and 1917, Coal from 422.7 to 551, Petrol from 265.7 to 335.3 and Wheat from 763.4 to a massive 1025.8.
Exports also increased dramatically in this time. Chemical rose from 21.9 ($ millions) to 281, Wheat from 87.9 to 298.2 and lastly Iron and Steel from 251.5 to 1133.7.
Unfortunately, not all consequences were as rewarding.
Unemployment and strikes were increasing dramatically. Four million soldiers were demobbed in 1919. At the same time, industries, geared up to high levels or production during the war, laid off workers so returning soldiers were lucky to find employment.
There was more trouble on the work front. Prices had doubled between 1914 and 1919 but wages had hardly risen at all. Workers demanded higher wages but bosses knew that high unemployment gave them a strong hand, and were unwilling to compromise. With so many other unemployed people wanting jobs, bosses knew they could easily find replacement that wouldn't question their wages.
Also, there were fears of radicalism. In Europe the war had triggered the Communist revolution in Russia. And in the USA, the home of capitalism, two Communist parties were established in 1919. Anarchists started a wave of bomb attacks.
The rise of Communism combined with the violent strikes by workers, made people terrified that revolution was spreading to the USA.
There were Race riots to deal with as well. In twenty-three across the USA, there were race riots in 1919. Many black people, who had moved to northern citied from the South after 1910, found themselves under attack from the white communities around them. These riots were also a reaction to the discrimination and poor economic circumstances that blacks faced after the war.
Isolation was another consequence of WW1. President Woodrow Wilson was expecting the USA to take a leading role in the world affairs after the war. He had drawn up the "Fourteen Points" which became the basis for the newly created League of Nations. He desperately wanted the USA to play a major part in the League and thus achieve his dream of world peace.
But in 1919 Americans were against the League and against Wilson. They did not want more of their soldiers killed and thought they had done more than enough already. Congress proceeded to refuse to support the League and then Wilson himself. They voted for what the new Republican President Harding called "normalcy". Harding had invented this word and no one at the time knew exactly what he meant. But it was a powerful idea. Americans wanted to get back to normal - to what life was like before the shock of the war.
For some Americans these feelings of isolation went even further. They wanted to end the open-door policy that had brought millions of people to the USA in the nineteenth century.
Attitudes to immigrants had been changing for some time. By 1900 there was not as much land available and, as industry became more mechanised, the need for workers declined. Also, Americans believed that the quality of immigrants was declining- many of the newer immigrants were poor labourers with little formal education.
Anti-immigrant feeling had increased during the war, especially against the Germans. In 1917 a literacy test meant that immigrants had to prove they could read a forty-word passage before they would be allowed into America. These tests disadvantaged people from Eastern Europe, Italy and Russia as many of them had not been to school.
After the war, problems for new immigrants in the post-war depression got worse. Immigrant Ghettos were appearing in the big northern cities in America. They were often dangerous places with violent crime, drunkenness and prostitution. Many Americans believed the immigrants were to blame for these urban problems. This led to a widespread intolerance of foreigners, which continued into the 1920s.
Not only did some Americans blame foreigners for the increase in crime, they also blamed the consumption of alcohol. This is when the idea for Prohibition came into increasingly popular.
For many years a relatively small number of groups had developed well-organised campaigns against alcohol. These groups were predominantly Christians (especially Methodists) and White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPS), and lived in rural, small town areas of the South and Midwest. The American Temperance campaign was led by two organisations, the Women's Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League (ASL).
The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874. The main objective of the WCTU was to persuade all states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. Early campaigners for prohibition included William Lloyd Garrison, Frances E. Willard, Anna Howard Shaw, Carry Nation and Ida Wise Smith.
Under the leadership of Frances E. Willard (1879-1898) and Anna Howard Shaw (1847-1919), the organisation succeeded in bringing about temperance education in schools. The WCTU also supported the prison reform, women's suffrage and the abolition of prostitution.
The Anti-Saloon League was founded in 1893 in Ohio. An organisation opposed to the sale of alcoholic beverages, it drew most of its support from church and temperance societies. Many business leaders believed their workers would be more productive if alcohol could be withheld with them. John D. Rockefeller, alone, donated over $350,000 to the organisation.
A leader of the League said of his organization, "It has not come...simply to build a little local sentiment or to secure the passage of a few laws, or yet to vote the saloons from a few hundred towns. These are mere incidents in its progress. It has come to solve the liquor problem." Its motto was "The saloon must go." The leadership had definite ideas of how this was to be accomplished. They used local churches as the vehicles to carry their message to the people and solicit the funds to run the attack on the nation's saloons.
By 1917, eighteen states had banned alcohol and in other states come districts were "wet" and others "dry". For the campaigners, however, this was not enough. Often alcohol could flow from a wet to a dry area and people could travel to those states where alcohol was still legal. They therefore began to campaign for a nation-wide Prohibition through the National Prohibition Party.
The Prohibition Party functioned as a full-fledged organization, offering candidates for offices at the national, state, and local levels. It reached the peak of its influence in 1884, when in New York State the Prohibition Party presidential candidate polled enough votes to insure that the Democrat, Grover Cleveland, carried the state and the Electoral College. The party reached the peak of its vote in 1888 and 1892 at just over 2 per cent of the popular vote total.
The Prohibition Party suffered from internal divisions. One faction favoured the "narrow gauge" approach, with the party stating its position on the liquor issue and ignoring other issues. A second faction favoured a "broad gauge" approach, offering positions on a full range of national issues in an attempt to build a larger coalition in support of dry candidates.
The campaign began to get influential supporters. Big businessmen believed that workers would be more reliable if they did not drink and congressmen have their support to gain votes in rural areas.
Those who campaigned saw alcohol as a moral danger, particularly in the cities that were centres of large immigrant populations. Many new immigrants were Catholics from southern and eastern Europe bringing with them different languages and cultures to the older immigrant WASP populations. Life in cities such as New York was changing fast and many rural areas saw these changes as a threat to their traditional way of life. Higher crime rates in cities were also blamed on alcohol. When the USA entered WW1 in 1917, prejudice also turned against the brewers of alcohol, many of whom were German. To drink alcohol they argued was unpatriotic.
Many temperance organisations were middle class women's groups, motivated by a desire to "reform" what they saw as the bad habits of the working class and drunkards from their own weakness. Women, they argued were most affected by drink when husbands spent wages in the bars and saloon and came home drunk.
Other arguments were that drink was a waste of grain for food, it caused a drop in the efficiency of workers and therefore less was produced in factories and on farms and that alcohol led to death on the roads.
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