Thanks in part to the GI Bill, 8 million young people learned a trade or attended college after the war, and bonuses for United States veterans totalled more then $2 billion.
The war slightly improved the distribution of earnings. This was not because the rich were getting poorer, but because more workers were regularly employed and receiving pay for overtime. The average wages of workers employed full-time in manufacturing rose from $28 per week in 1940 to $48 in 1944. Consequently, the share of income owned by the richest 5 % declined from 23.7 to 16.8%. The United States remained a country with great variations in wealth. However, World War Two did much to hasten one of the major trends of American society: the development of a large middle class. “It was the only time in modern American history that income distribution improved”.
During World War Two American farmers made huge gains. Unlike the depression era, with its dust bowls and floods, the early forties experienced excellent weather. Farmers also benefited from an assured market in feeding the military services and from new planting methods and agricultural machinery. Crop production increased by 50% and farm income rose to 200% until the government imposed limits on agricultural prices. Before the end of the war many farmers had paid off their mortgages. Lands once ravaged by drought and soil erosion were now becoming the ‘bread basket of the world’.
World War Two led to an increase of living standards. During the early war years Americans had an exceptional amount of money. Yet there was very little for them to spend their money on. There was also a general improvement in diet and health care and this caused life expectancy to increase by three years to sixty-six. “However, poor teeth, and eyes, symptoms of malnutrition, still caused more then 50% of young men in some regions to fail preinduction physicals.”
War promoted feelings of unity and patriotism among the American people. ‘World War Two was the most popular war in British history. Outraged by the attack on pearl harbour, fearful of Hitler’s conquest of Europe, people everywhere wanted to do what they could’. Citizens undertook scrap collections, tin cans, paper, and metal junk and used shoes. Old tyres and floor mats were gathered on the assumption that Japan would control all rubber resources, and housewives brought jars of fat to butcher shops so that the glycerine extracted could be used in making bullets. To deal with the shortage of vegetables, lawns were used to grow produce. A call for civilian defence workers yielded 12 million volunteers. 5 million young men volunteered for military service and more then 100 thousand nurses joined the WACS, WAVES and SPARS, the women’s branches of the army, navy and coast guard. Other American’s brought war bonds and worked overtime in shipyards and aircraft plants. It was sincerely a people’s war.
World War two created profound changes in American society. During the hard times of the Great Depression people generally could rely on each other as neighbours, friends and relatives. At first, World war Two reinforced this unity, bringing people together emotionally, but then moving them apart geographically. Many American’s found themselves dislocated in strange surroundings. Young soldiers who had known little temptations as children and adolescents returned on leave with drinking problems or venereal diseases. A few GI’s had to be committed to mental hospitals as the result of the unbearable conditions they experienced in the field.
The thought of loosing a close friend or family member also affected American anxieties. In retrospect we can see that American casualties in World War Two were relatively small compared to European countries. Some 400,000 died in battle, another 670,000 were wounded. In Europe the war preyed upon civilians and soldiers alike, some 35 million lost their lives; an estimated 20 million Russians, 5 million Germans, 1.5 million Yugoslavs, and 6 million Jews throughout Central and Eastern Europe. America still felt the great loss it had experienced and the early death of so many young American’s weighed upon the nation’s conscience.
For many Americans relationships with friends and neighbours became a casualty of the war. The early forties in the United States saw one of the greatest migrations in American history. 11 million young service men and women were uprooted and sent to every part of the globe and civilian populations moved to war industry locations. This huge demographic proved to be the beginning of a long trend. Considerable population gains occurred in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Michigan and Florida, and particularly the state, on or near the pacific coast. In California the increase amounted to over 1 million new inhabitants or 14.5% from 1941-44.
Rural states, especially in the Midwest, experienced high losses. So did New York, where more then ½ million people left to relocate in areas of greater war activity. For the majority of Americans who migrated during the war years, few returned to their original areas after the war.
In the early forties the American family experienced intense changes unknown since the Civil War. With fathers in the armed services, children were raised by mothers alone. Many teenagers drifted into juvenile delinquency. Fathers overseas and mothers having day jobs led to a new generation of ‘latch key’ children. Children were often left to fend for themselves.
Strains and stresses between adolescents and the family head because of depression conditions were further exaggerated during the war years. New found jobs further loosened the ties of authority; family moves into new areas and sometimes into entirely new cultures hastened the process.
Single women were affected by the changing standards that were intensified during the war period. While prostitution flourished in big cities and seaports, 1940’s morality forbade ‘good’ women from sleeping around or living with a man. Many felt pressured into marrying a soldier they had only known for a short time, weddings often took place on a 2-day pass followed by a honeymoon in a hotel. Some women whose lovers or fiancés had been overseas for years suddenly found themselves pregnant, community outcasts. Homes for unwed mothers grew to a thriving business.
For the majority of women, however, the war brought fantastic opportunities. Across the country day-care centres opened, enabling mothers to work outside the home. Liberated from domestic labour, women began to experience much more then they ever had before.
The 6 million women who joined the war plants and the 100,000 or so who entered the armed services did so for a variety of reasons; to flee from a boring job, out of patriotic spirit, to improve their economic situation, because their men were serving, or sometimes because of family difficulties. To a woman who had previously been a waitress or domestic servant, defence work offered noticeably better pay and more challenging tasks, and to a black woman and the daughters of recent immigrants such work provided excellent opportunities. But to educated middle class women who wanted rewards proportionate with their abilities, military service and factory work could be frustrating.
Conventional job classifications relegated women to the monotony of clerical work or the assembly line. Although federal policy stated that women should be paid the same as men for doing the same job, the policy was seldom implemented.
When the war was over women faced a cruel dilemma. Those who now appreciated a new sense of independence or had families relying on a paycheck were reluctant to give up jobs. But they did feel they should step aside so that men would have work. Thus the same nationalistic duty that drove women into the work force later forced them to withdraw and make way for returning heroes.
Wartime developments had many other effects on the population. Homosexuals for instance, began for the first time to develop their own institutions when they found significant numbers of other gay people in large military camps and defence plants.
The war also affected the experiences of black people. Some of the gains they made were largely symbolic. “In 1943 the first black person joined the American Bar Association; in 1944 the first black was admitted to a presidential press conference.” Other changes were vitally important. The number of blacks who held jobs in the federal government increased from 50,000 in 1939 to 200,000 six years later. However life for black people in the southern states continued to be harsh. Black people went without proper medical care and rarely went to hospital. Their mortality rate was twice that of whites; their average life span was 12 years less. They were poorly educated. Blacks suffered all sorts of physical intimidation, abuse and violence and were without legal recourse. Blacks played no role in southern law enforcement.
Many of the trends and changes of the war carried over into the post war years. For example the World War Two female worker proudly wore her trousers after the war, and continued as an important part of the armed services. Her varied wartime experiences and employment were vital in bringing her to new independence and to closer sexual and economic equality with the American male.
Above all, the war prompted anxieties about the future. Having survived ten years of depression, Americans entered the 1940’s already searching for security. With regular employment, they seemed to have at last found it. But could it survive? Many felt certain that depression would recur, that hard earned gains would be wiped out, that the status of other groups would rise at the expense of their own. However, war created the need for national unity and the sharing of wartime prosperity brought about a sharing of national purpose. Energies and efforts stimulated by the war recovered, restored and even heightened the sense of American national confidence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bedts RF. Recent American History. 1933 Through World War Two. The Dorsey press. Illinois. (1973).
Diggins JP. The Proud Decades. America in War and Peace, 1941-1960. W.W. Norton and Company. New York. (1973).
Gluck SB. Rosie the Riveter. Women, The War and Social Change. Twayne Publishers. Boston. (1987).
Hartmann SM. American Women in the 1940s. The Home Front and Beyond. Twayne Publishers. Boston. (1982).
Patterson JT. America Since 1941. A History. Harcourt Brace Publishers. Fort Worth. (1989).
Diggins JP, 1988. The Proud Decades. America in War and peace, 1941-1960. W.W. Norton and Company. P18.
Patterson JT, 1989. America since 1941. A History. Harcourt Brace and Company. P 21
Patterson JT, 1989. America since 1941. A History. Harcourt Brace and Company. P23
Bedts RF, 1973. Recent American History. 1933 Through World War Two. The Dorsey Press. P323
