USA Flashcards
Right after WW1, Americans were itiinalists because:
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Isolationalism: America saw the others asbeing corrupt, old-fashioned and full of dangerous ideas like Communism
Money: worried about the COST of the League - paying taxes to pay for its organisation, and losing trade if it decided to impose sanctions
American soldiers: 100,000 soldiers dead in WW1, why should American soldiers die keeping peace elsewhere in the world?
German immigrants: Many Americans were immigrants. German immigrants HATED the Treaty of Versailles
Empires: . The ToV hadn’t abolished the British Empires , and many Americans did not want to be part of a Treaty or a League with upheld the British Empire.
What was The Fordney-McCumber Act, 1922? Two principles:
‘Scientific tariff’: this linked tariffs to the wages in the country of export. (If wages in, say Italy, were very low, then Italian goods were given a proportionately higher tariff. Caused a decrease in international trade.)
‘American Selling Price’: this linked tariffs to the price of American goods, not to the cost of production. (A German company might produce a chemical for $60, but if the selling price in America was $80, and the US tariff was 50%, the tariff would be $40. This meant that foreign imports were ALWAYS more expensive than American-produced goods)
(The Fordney-McCumber Act established the highest tariffs in history with an average of 40%.)
What were the immigration laws ?
1) 1917: Immigration Law –> required immigrants to read English + banned all immigration from Asia + charged an immigration fee of $8
2) 1921: Emergency Quota Act –> stated that the number of immigrants from ‘the eastern hemisphere’ every year could not be more than 3% of the number already in America in 1910
3) 1924: Reed-Johnson Act –> limit from eastern hemisphere reduced to 2% of those already in America in 1890; the South and the East of Europe were only allowed to send 20,000 immigrants per year, and non-Europeans only 4,000.
What was the Sacco and Vanzetti case?
-two immigrants from Italy who were anarchists (didn’t believe in gov.) found guilty of armed robbery and murder (and executed in 1927)
-defence produced 107 witnesses that they were elsewhere at the time, and in 1925 the actual murderer came forward and gave himself up … the jury did not believe the defence witnesses because they were all Italian immigrants
