Unit 7 Princeton Review Pt. 2 Flashcards
(33 cards)
Fourteen Points
Wilson wanted the war treaty to be guided by his Fourteen Points, his plan for world peace delivered to Congress in January of 1918, before the end of the war.
The Fourteen Points called for free trade through lower tariffs and freedom of the seas; a reduction of arms supplies on all sides; and the promotion of self-determination, both in Europe and overseas—in other words, the end of colonialism.
The plan also called for the creation of the League of Nations, a mechanism for international cooperation much like today’s United Nations.
Wilson’s Fourteen Points served as a basis for initial negotiations, but the negotiations soon took a different direction.
Treaty of Versailles
Under the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forced to cede German and colonial territories to the Allies, to disarm, to pay huge reparations, and to admit total fault for the war, despite other nations’ roles in starting it.
Most historians agree that by leaving Germany humiliated and in economic ruin, the Treaty of Versailles helped to set the stage for World War II.
Although much of Wilson’s plan was discarded, the Treaty of Versailles did create the League of Nations.
US REaction to League of Nations
Wilson hoped that the League would ultimately remedy the peace settlement’s many flaws, but when he returned home, a rude surprise awaited him.
According to the Constitution, the president has the power to negotiate treaties with foreign nations, but these treaties are subject to Senate ratification.
This illustrates the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances.
At the center of the conflict was the debate over the League of Nations, particularly Article X of the League’s covenant, which many people believed curtailed America’s ability to act independently in foreign affairs, specifically Congress’s power to declare war.
The Senate split into three groups: Democrats, who sided with Wilson and were willing to accept America’s entrance into the League of Nations; a group of Republicans who were totally opposed to the League and were known as the Irreconcilables; and the Reservationists, a group of Republicans led by Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Wilson’s political nemesis and intellectual rival.
Much has been made of Wilson’s stubbornness and inability to compromise, and in particular, his refusal to accept what were known as the Lodge Reservations.
Ultimately, the Democrats and Irreconcilables joined forces and defeated the treaty, which had been amended to include the changes suggested by Henry Cabot Lodge and the Reservationists.
Thus, the United States was not a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles, nor did it ever join the League of Nations, an international organization envisioned by an American President to maintain world peace.
Post WWI Effects
Weary of war, America was receding into a period of isolationism.
The public wanted less interaction with Europe, not more, as the League would have required. Wilson tried to muster popular support for the treaty.
However, while campaigning, Wilson suffered a major stroke, thereby ending whatever chance the treaty may have had for ratification.
Many people wonder whether the League of Nations would have been more successful in preventing World War II had the United States been a member.
THE JAZZ AGE AND THE GREAT
DEPRESSION (1920–1933)
After World War I, the American economy went through a brief slump and then started to grow rapidly. By 1922, America was hitting new peaks of prosperity every day.
The invention of a practical electric motor was largely responsible for the economic boom; like computers in the 1990s, electric motors became essential to work and home environments, driving industrial machines and household appliances.
With the new prosperity, other industries arose to serve the growing middle class in its search for the trappings of affluence.
Turn to pro-business sentiment
As the age of progressive reform ended, many Americans became more comfortable with the idea of large, successful businesses.
Some of these businesses, such as department stores, offered both convenience and reasonable prices.
Others, such as the automobile industry, offered products that made life more convenient and conferred status on their owners.
The government, which had worked closely with business leaders as part of the war effort, also grew to be more pro- business during the era.
Government regulatory agencies (such as the Federal Trade Commission) more often assisted business than regulated it.
Anti Labor Union/Workers
Labor unions fell further out of public favor, particularly when they struck against industries necessary to keeping industrial America running smoothly.
Unions striking for higher wages and safer work conditions in the steel, coal, and railroad industries were suppressed by federal troops.
The Supreme Court overturned a minimum wage law for women and nullified child labor restrictions.
All three of the era’s presidents—Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover—pursued pro-business policies and surrounded themselves with like-minded advisors.
The pro-business atmosphere of the era led to a temporary decline in the popularity of labor unions; membership levels dropped throughout the decade.
Also contributing to this drop were the efforts of businesses to woo workers with pension plans, opportunities for profit sharing, and company parties and other events designed to foster a communal spirit at work.
Businessmen hoped that, if they offered some such benefits, they could dissuade workers from organizing and demanding even more.
Such practices were often referred to as welfare capitalism.
Warren HArding’s PResidency
Like Grant, Harding had the misfortune of surrounding himself with corrupt advisors; several of his cabinet members wound up in prison.
The most infamous incident of his administration was the Teapot Dome Scandal, in which oil companies bribed the secretary of the interior in order to drill on public lands.
Conservative on economic issues, Harding proved more liberal than his predecessor Wilson on issues of civil liberty.
He supported antilynching laws and tried to help farmers (who were benefiting less from the new economy than were middle- class city dwellers) by providing more money for farm loans. Harding died in office, and Coolidge, his vice president, assumed the presidency.
Calvin Coolidge’s Presidency
When Coolidge ran for the presidency in 1924, he turned the election into a debate on the economy by running on the slogan “Coolidge prosperity.”
Coolidge won easily and, following his mandate, continued Harding’s conservative economic policies.
He also pushed for lower income-tax rates.
Automobiles
No consumer product better typified the new spirit of the nation than the automobile.
At first, automobiles were expensive conveniences, affordable only to the extremely wealthy; then, Henry Ford perfected the assembly line and mass production, which lowered the cost of automobiles.
By the end of the decade, most middle-class families could afford a car.
The automobile allowed those who worked in the cities to move farther away from city centers, thus giving birth to the suburbs, which, in turn, transformed the automobile from a convenience to a necessity.
The impact of the automobile on the 1920s was tremendous, forcing areas to quickly develop roadways and the means of policing traffic.
In 1929, with the population topping 100 million in the most recent census, more than 23 million automobiles were registered in the United States.
Radio
The radio followed automobiles in changing the nation’s culture.
Ten million families owned radios, and in cities it was not unusual for several families to gather at the home of a radio owner and settle in for the evening.
As more houses gained access to electric power, household appliance sales boomed as well.
Advertising industry
As more houses gained access to electric power, household appliance sales boomed as well.
The advertising industry grew up during the decade to hype all these new products.
Although advertisements from that era look pretty goofy to us now, they were quite effective at convincing people to buy stuff they did not really need
Women entered workforce
All this consumerism required money, and as single-earner households often couldn’t afford to “keep up with the Joneses,” more women entered the working world.
While the vast majority of married women continued to stay at home, more than ever—about 15 percent—entered the work force.
Women continued, as they had in the past, to work in predominantly female-dominated professions (often called “pink collar jobs”), such as school teaching or office- assistant work, and to earn much less than men.
Modern Women, Rebellion, Flappers
Despite the persistence of traditional roles for women, a new image of American women emerged and became a symbol of the Roaring Twenties—the flapper.
World War I, the allure of the “big city,” the right to vote, and new attitudes brought about by the ideas of Sigmund Freud (whose ideas were just beginning to circulate in the United States during the 1920s) opened up a whole new world for this new generation of emancipated women.
They discarded the corset, layers of petticoats and long, dark dresses worn by their Victorian grandmothers, in favor of waistless dresses worn above the knee (shocking!), flesh-colored silk stockings (brought back from Paris), cute little hats, strings of long beads, a wrist full of bracelets, and ruby-red lips.
Many flappers risked ruining their reputation by smoking cigarettes; drinking in public (despite Prohibition); and dancing the tango, the lindy, and the shimmy.
Popular Culture - Entertainment
The rapid modernization of American society was reflected in the way it entertained itself.
Movies grew tremendously popular during the decade, reflecting back at the nation its idealized self-image; on movie screens, young, independent-minded, gorgeous heroes and heroines defied all odds to succeed in romance and—at the same time— strike it rich.
Sports grew more popular as well, especially baseball, whose greatest player of the era, Babe Ruth, was idolized by millions.
In literature, America gained international prominence through such world-class authors as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and playwright Eugene O’Neill.
Ironically, many of these writers moved to Europe, where they chronicled their alienation from the modern era, which explains why they came to be known as the lost generation.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writings reflected disillusionment with the opulence and excess of the 1920s.
The Great Gatsby, one of his most famous works, depicted an outsider’s views of the lavish lifestyle of New York City’s elite.
Ernest Hemingway’s experiences in World War I are reflected in many of his books, like A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises.
Hemingway’s realistic portrayal of war expressed his disillusionment with World War I, which is similar to many other Lost Generation writers.
Harlem Renaissance
In the largest Black neighborhood of New York City, theaters, cultural clubs, and newspapers sprang up
W. E. B. Du Bois opened writers’ centers, and his prominence helped draw attention to Harlem’s cultural movement.
Among the great figures of the Harlem Renaissance were the poets Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Another major Black cultural development was the popularization of jazz.
Because jazz featured improvisation and free-spiritedness, it came to be seen as emblematic of the era (which is how the decade came to be known as the Jazz Age).
Probably the most popular and most gifted of the era’s jazz musicians was trumpeter Louis Armstrong.
Reactionary Backlash and Nativism
Not all Americans were excited about the rapid transition into the modern age, and the 1920s were also a time of considerable reactionary backlash and renewed nativism.
Most prominently, the Ku Klux Klan grew to more than 5 million members and widened its targets, attacking Blacks, Jews, urbanites, and anyone whose behavior deviated from the Klan’s narrowly defined code of acceptable Christian behavior.
Anti-immigration groups grew in strength as well, targeting the growing number of southern and Eastern European immigrants.
Accusations that America’s newcomers were dangerous subversives intensified when two Italian immigrant anarchists, Sacco and Vanzetti, were arrested on charges of murder. (Their trial immediately became a cause célèbre for the political left, as the evidence against them was inconclusive. Nonetheless, they were convicted and executed.)
At the start of the decade, the United States started setting limits and quotas to restrict immigration, Emergency Quota Act of 1924
The Emergency Quota Act of 1924
set immigration quotas based on national origins and discriminated against the “new immigrants” who came from Southern and Eastern Europe. These limits were set to reduce “foreign influence” on the country.
Scopes Monkey Trial
In 1925, Tennessee passed a law forbidding teachers to teach the theory of evolution.
John Thomas Scopes broke that law, and his trial (dubbed the Scopes Monkey Trial) drew national attention, due in part to the two prominent attorneys arguing the case—Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who, you may recall, ran for president in 1896, 1900, and 1908.
The case also captivated the nation because, for many, it encapsulated the debate over whether to stick with tradition or abandon it for progress’s sake.
Prohibition
banned the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages.
The Prohibition movement had its roots in the reform campaigns of the 1830s and remained a mainstay of women’s political agendas until, on the eve of women’s enfranchisement (1917), the Eighteenth Amendment outlawed the American liquor industry.
Many people soon came to resent the government’s intrusion in what they considered a private matter.
Prohibition was further weakened by the effectiveness of organized crime in producing and selling liquor, especially in the cities.
Open warfare between competing gangs and between criminals and law enforcement earned this period the title of the Gangster Era, which inspired many movies and television series. Prohibition was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933.
Start of the Great Depression
In 1928, the Republicans nominated Herbert Hoover. Like Coolidge, Hoover was able to parlay a strong economy into an easy victory.
During his campaign, Hoover predicted that the day would soon come when no American would live in poverty. He turned out to be very wrong.
In October 1929, the bottom fell out of the stock market, and this was one of the reasons for the Great Depression, but not the main reason.
Prices dropped, and no matter how far they dropped, nobody wanted to buy.
Hoover and his advisers underestimated the damage that the stock market crash would eventually cause.
Convinced that the economy was sound, Hoover reassured the public that only stock traders would be hurt because of their irresponsible speculation.
Traders had been allowed to buy on margin, which meant that they might have to put up only 10 or 20 percent of the cost of each stock, allowing them to borrow against future profits that might or might not materialize. Margin buying is a destabilizing practice that was made illegal soon after the crash.
Unfortunately, among those speculators were huge banks and corporations, which suddenly found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy and unable to pay employees or guarantee bank deposits.
Other factors contributed to plunging the nation into a deep depression.
Immediately following World War I, the carnage of the conflict, along with Germany’s disastrous attempts to satisfy its reparations obligations under the Treaty of Versailles, had put Europe’s economy, and much of the rest of the world’s, into a depression.
Domestically, though, manufacturers and farmers had been overproducing for years, creating large inventories.
This led factories to lay off workers and made the farmers’ crops worth much less on the market.
Furthermore, production of new consumer goods was outstripping the public’s ability to buy them.
Supply so exceeded demand for so many goods, that this might be the main underlying cause for the Great Depression, ultimately leading to deflation, unemployment, and business failures.
Finally, government laxity in regulating large businesses had led to the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very few businessmen.
Impacts of Great Depression
When their businesses failed, many people were thrown out of work.
The Depression had a calamitous effect on tens of millions of Americans.
People lost their jobs as their employers went bankrupt or, to avoid bankruptcy, laid off the majority of workers.
People lost their life savings as thousands of banks failed, and many lost their homes when they could not keep up with mortgage payments.
The homeless built shantytowns, sarcastically called Hoovervilles.
In rural areas, farmers struggled to survive as produce prices dropped more than 50 percent.
Furthermore, a prolonged drought afflicted the Great Plains area of the Midwest, turning the region into a giant Dust Bowl.
The situation encouraged agrarian unrest; farmers fought evictions and foreclosures by attacking those who tried to enforce them.
Farmers also conspired to keep prices at farm auctions low and then returned the auctioned property to its original owner.
In addition, they formed the Farmers’ Holiday Association, which organized demonstrations and threatened a nationwide walkout by farmers in order to raise prices.
Hoover’s Response to the Great Depression
At first, Hoover opposed any federal relief efforts because he believed they violated the American ideal of “rugged individualism,” but as the Depression worsened, he initiated a few farm assistance programs and campaigned for federal works projects (such as the Hoover Dam and the Grand Coulee Dam) that would create jobs.
He hoped that raising tariffs would help American business, but the Hawley-Smoot Tariff actually worsened the economy.
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff was the highest protective tariff in U.S. history, and it was enacted during one of the worst economic depressions ever.
After that, Hoover had Congress create the Federal Emergency Relief Administration.
This provided government money to bail out large companies and banks, but only ones big enough to potentially pay the money back later on.
Bonus Expeditionary Force
