diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'smith')
| -rw-r--r-- | smith/06_progressive_era | 150 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | smith/07_great_war | 178 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | smith/08_reactionary_20s | 144 |
3 files changed, 472 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/smith/06_progressive_era b/smith/06_progressive_era new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9619aa7 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/06_progressive_era @@ -0,0 +1,150 @@ +The Progressive Era +- T. Roosevelt leads +Questions: +What were the main motives of progressive reformers? +What were the specific goals of progressive reformers? +What contribution did T. Roosevelt make to the progressive movement? How +did his successors Taft and Wilson differ? + +Political innovation +- Change in pres. leadership + +Middle class: disruptive crisis of democracy + - Child labor + - Industrial poverty + - Contaminated food, miserable conditions, poor pay + - Churches, charity, individuals, and expanded government + +- Widening gap between rich and poor in Gilded Age +- Poor farmfolk in cities + +Progressives are liberals championing capitalism who wanted to reform it +Christian Mormonists who want: + - Gov (state, local, federal) to handle urban-industrial growth +- Not a single party, supported by both parties (Rep & Dem) + Urban and rural, populist and socialist + Laborers and organizers, every profession + White and black + +Make government more efficient and business more honest. +Social sciences from universities should be used to legislate: + - Sometimes hypocritical + - White supremacy, ignoring racial issues + - "Those who know better" + - Better regulation for trusts, more efficient gov +Layoffs from 1893 +- Rise of populist movement +- Progressive response +- Both agree that laissez-faire failed America + +Progressive period establishes: +- Secret ballot +- Direct election of senators +- FDA +- Women's suffrage +- Income tax + +National Association for Women's Action (NAWA) and Women's Christian +Temperance Union (WCTU): + - Society is a macrocosm of the home + - Alcohol at the center of many problems: vice, crime, prostitution + - Temperance = Prohibition + - Carrie Nation, member of progressive movement + - Inspired by evangelical protestantism + - Smashed saloons throughout the Great Plains + - "Men are nicotine-soaked, beer-besmirched, + whiskey-greased, red-eyed devils" + - Arrested 30 times for violence + +Muckrakers reveal abuses +Jacob Riis: "How the Other Half Lives" +T. Roosevelt used muckrakers to raise support for his policies. +1900s: Mclure's magazine raised public knowledge about complex issues: + - Corrupt political machines + - Exposed working poor conditions +Lincoln Steffens's "Shame of the Cities" + - Attacked idea of businessmen as heroes + - Monopolies, politics corrupted by them (bosses, etc) +David Philips's "Treason of the Senate" (Cosmopolitan article) + - 27 senators represented special interest groups, not the people + - 17th amendment directly elects senators +Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" + - Capitalism is an exploitative system (socialist) + - Attacked greed, proposed collective means + - Packingtown, Chicago slum, had spoiled meat, rodents + - "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident hit its stomach" + - Helped move forward FDA + +- Progressivism most dynamic social and political force in the nation + +Leon Czolgosz, claiming to be part of socialist/anarchist/pro-people +movement, assassinates William McKinley. +- T. Roosevelt takes over at 42 + +TR + - Very charismatic + - Motto is old African proverb: "speak softly and carry a big stick" + - Man of action; use existing infrastructure; problems can be solved + - Born into wealth, wife Alice, mother died from typhoid. + - Built up body, became rancher, moved back to become police + chief cracking down on political corruption + - Asst Sec of Navy in Spanish-American war + - Presidency is a bully pulpit + - Platform for delivering moralism + - NY Republican bosses wanted TR out. + - Roosevelt "believed in power." + - Believed presidents should set national agenda + - Imperialist + - Progressivist + - Conservationist: designated 1000s of national parks/forests + +Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 +- Accompanied by many other strikes at the time +- Laborers protest cartels +- Companies refused to deal with union + - schools, factories running out of coal, and public opinion turns + - TR used military intervention as a threat to force mediation + +TR as a trustbuster: +- Black and white, good and bad ideas +- Liked competition, so disliked trusts/monopolies + +TR as an imperialist: +- Presidential, military force +- Wants to build canal in Colombian state of Panama + - Colombia wants more money + - US promises $10M to Panamanian revolters that would have gone to + Colombia + - Uses US military assistance to stop Colombian reinforcements +- Panamanian canal vital to US defense +- US "would not tolerate instability in South America" + Roosevelt corollary to Monroe Doctrine + US would exercise "international police power" to enforce stability + Exercised in Dominican Republic + +TR chooses not to run for third term. +William Howard Taft - 1908 + Handpicked successor of TR + - sedentary, calm, cautious + - Conflicted with TR, ending their friendship and making TR rival + - Gifford Pinchot (chief of National Forest Service) fired and + replaced with Richard Ballinger who sold public land in West, + Alaska to businesses + - Pushed TR out of the party, and Republicans become party of + big business + - TR runs against Taft for 1912 nomination + - The election is a four person race: Taft, TR, Woodrow Wilson, + Eugene Debs (socialist, not a major player) + - Taft wins Rep. nomination + - Roosevelt runs under Bull Moose (progressive Rep.) party. + - Woodrow Wilson nominated by Dems as progressive with + conservative social values +- Woodrow Wilson: "New Freedom" = Small government, states rights + - Vague on how it would handle big business +- Roosevelt: "New Nationalism" = Strong fed. gov. to regulate private + greed --- prohibit child labor, 8-hour workday, women's suffrage + - Shot in Milwaukee in chest; assassin says no-one should serve 3 + terms + - Bullet slowed by eyeglass case and speech. + - TR still gives the speech for 90 minutes +- Wilson wins the election under progressivism diff --git a/smith/07_great_war b/smith/07_great_war new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ebc4e0 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/07_great_war @@ -0,0 +1,178 @@ +Woodrow Wilson - 1912, The Great War + +Atlantic Ocean allowed US to be isolationist, but +- expanding world trade +- US extranational interventions +- Increasingly powerful navies +Began to threaten US. + +First three years of Great War: +- Wilson maintains neutrality +- But supplying more food and supplies to GB & France +- German submarine attacks American ship, provoking congress + +- Segregated army +- African-Americans moved urban and north for jobs, racism reasons + +When war interrupted, Wilson shifted his focus from internal +progressivism to int'l affairs. Believed God was calling him to shape +the world landscape. + +Questions: +What caused the Great War? +Why did the US join the conflict? +How did the adm of Pres. Wilson mobilize the war effort? +How did Wilson promote his plans for a peaceful postwar world order? +What were its consequences domestically and abroad? + +Great War +- Wilson had a personally difficult time handling the war: his wife died +- Causes (instabilities) + - Imperial competition + - Hypernationalism + - Ethnic hatred, racism + - Alliance system: Central, Allies + - Gets everyone involved +- "Jingoism run mad" + - German system was dangerous to world order (recently organized) + - Powerful enough to challenge GB supremacy and attack old + enemies, France and Russia. + - Austro-Hungarian Empire: unstable combination of 11 ethnicities + - Wanted to oppress nearby Bosnia (Slavic) +- Archduke Francis Ferdinand assassinated by Serbian nationalist + - Wanted to go to war, even though ultimatums were resolved. + - Used Russian forces to provoke AH. +- GB enters war at attack of Belgium. + - One of the five global empires +- Charles Schwab, pres. of Bethlehem Steel, an arms merchant + - Secures order from GB for arms + - 8x revenues +- British propaganda + - JP Morgan lent millions to GB. + - Helps get US involved "in thought and in deed" + +1894, Gen. Alfred von Schlieffen designed plan for Germany + - Defeat France in 4 weeks by taking Paris + - Go through Belgium + - Then, 2 weeks before Russia is prepared, attack + - Wanted to avoid two-front war + - By November, Germany, France in a war of attrition + +Trench Warfare +- Cold, atrocious conditions: surrounded by dead bodies, starve, PTSD + - Modern Warfare: machine guns, tanks, submarines, tear gas + chem + +- U-Boats/Submarines by Germany around GB coast + - Germany dangerous to ships because GB flew false flags + - US/Wilson wanted to keep shipping to all combatants (neutrality) + - Lusitania attacked by Germany, killing 1260 people in May + - American newspapers denounced Germany + - Small group of Americans demand forceful response + - Wilson responds with only "a next sinking will be considered + act of aggression" + + - Germany sinks *Arabic* ship with 2 Americans (also GB) in August + - ``Arabic Pledge'': Germany promises to end unrestricted submarines + - Mar 1916: Sussex (France) sunk with many American passengers + - May 1916: Germany agrees not to attack merchant & passenger ships + without warning + - This means that a German violation forces America + - Germany is starving GB population, and GB Germany. + - Interventionist v. Isolationist + - Interventionists mostly war profiteers in NE/midwest + +Jan 1917: Wilson's Congressional Speech + ``Covenant of Cooperative Peace'' (League of Nations + - Wants to end the war + - Peace without victory (no reparations) + - open diplomacy: no secret treaties or alliances + - freedom of the seas + - self-determination + +1917, Germany to unrestrict submarine use to block GB, FR supplies + - Germans deeply underestimated US force + - Zimmerman Telegram: secret German telegram asks Mexico to atk US + - Incensed American opinion + - America declares war, landing troops in Jun 1917 + - Other motives + - British propaganda + - Wilsonian Idealism: use WWI to make the world safe for + democracy and avoid future conflict + - But the US needed to join the war for negotiation power + - Corporate monetary concerns + +Selective Service Act + - 18--45yo could be drafted + - 2m drafted and 2m volunteered + - 18th amendment (prohibition) passed in 1918 --- wartime motives + - Grain not to beer but to army + - Sober factory workers for industrialists + - Some moralistic concerns + +The Great War ended a sense of laissez-faire government + - National Railroad Administration coordinates companies, workers, + routes + - National War Labor Board improves labor conditions + - Equal wages for women "in wartime industries" + - Minimum wage + - Wants to keep the supply chain coming (total war) + - Ends after war + - Liberty/war bonds + - Espionage and Sedition Acts + - Espionage: don't interfere with recruitment or encourage + "disloyalty" + - Obstruction or aiding enemy is 20 years' jailtime + - Banned critical journals/magazines + - Sedition Act: prohibited abusive, profane, negative gov't + speech + - Anti-free speech militia worked illegally for Attorney General + +Committe on Public Information (CPI) + - Trying to sell the American people on Wilson's war effort + - Recruited people working in arts, advertising, media + - 4 minute men: 4 minute speechers on why the US fights, portray the + Germans as "blood-thirsty huns" + +NAWSA w/ Carrie Chapman Catt +- Work inside the old system +- Women are more virtuous so would improve the political culture +- State-by-state strategy proves ineffective + +NWP w/ Alice Paul +- More radical suffragists: inspired by British suffrage movement +- Wanted federal suffrage amendment +- Picketed the White House + - Arrested/imprisoned for obstructing traffic +- Hunger strikes, willing to suffer for human rights + - Makes Woodrow Wilson look bad, so he begrudgingly supports in Fall + 1918 as "a war measure" + - 19th amendment ratified in 1920 + +America helps win the war +- Mar 1918: Germans launch massive offensive in France +- July 1918: Allies mobilize counter forces +- Fall 1918: Meuse-Argonne Offensive + - Largest and bloodiest battle for the American Expedition Forces + - Allies have bigger numbers and win, pushing back German front +- Armistice on Nov 11, 1918 + +Wilson's 14 points: Working towards League of Nations +Treate of Versailles +- David Lloyd George -- Brit prime minister +- Clemenceau -- France +- Orlando -- Italian +- Wilson, with an exclusively Dem party, attends negotiations + - Gets none of what he wants + - No disarmament + - No elimination of trade barriers + - No open diplomacy or peace w/o victory + - And couldn't join League of Nations because senate Repub blocked +- Germany, Russia not in attendance + - Article 231, War Guilt Clause, requires $33BB German reparations + - Also military costs + +Longlasting results +- American Military manpower accelerates +- National Security State develops +- Economic Change/profit: America #1 creditor nation (private financier) +- Still internal conflict in America diff --git a/smith/08_reactionary_20s b/smith/08_reactionary_20s new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c59a553 --- /dev/null +++ b/smith/08_reactionary_20s @@ -0,0 +1,144 @@ +Republican party fragmenting +Small-town America feared changes in cities: +- Secular modernism eroding conservative Christianity +- Red Scare, immigrants + +An age of "disillusionment": +- Crime pervaded society +- Corrupt politics +- Nativism, Racism + +Americans questioned new technologies and big government from WWI. + +Questions: +How did the "Red Scare" shape American poltiical culture after WWI? +How did nativism influence immigration laws? +Why did the KKK resurge during the 1920s? +How did the "Scopes Trial" reflect broader cultural changes between + Christian Fundamentalists and Modernists? +How did Americans respond to Prohibition? +What was "The Crime of the Century"? + +The war caused a loss of faith in institutions and government +- "What was it all for?" +- Progressivism curtailed by fear that government infringes on rights +- Postwar layoffs (~9million people) --> postwar depression in 1920-21 + +Bolshevik revolution happened during WWI +- Communist/Leninist state developing (single party system) +- Americans scared of labor unionizers, radicals of potential revolution +- Dynamite bombs mailed to prominent politicians, businessmen. + - Justice Department claimed this was a radical attempt to takeover + - But it was actually an anarchist organization + +Jan 2, 1920 +- Justice Department arrests, without warrants, 1600 anarchists, aliens +- Detained without bail and didn't allow to contact employers +- Justified with guilt by association +- Although peaks here, persists throughout 1920s + +Italian and Mexican Immigrants +- 1/2 of white men and 1/3 of white women were immigrants + - Had more radical ideas about labor organization + - Nativism wanted to exclude foreign radicals + - Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 + - Limits to 3% of population of each country + - Immigration Act of 1924 + - Ceiling of 2% of population on other countries + - Banned Asian immigrants + - Wanted to keep out Jews, Italians, Turks, Russians + - And wanted to favor Brit, French, German + HL Mencken criticizes Act for treating new immigrants as + domestic enemies despite their benefit to America + - Didn't convince nativist Calvin Coolidge + "America must be kept for Americans" + - No quotas for Western hemisphere + - Wanted Cuban/Mexican/Latin cheap labor + +- Sackel and Vans-Eddy's "Crime" + - Arrested with pistols, lied to police + - But people gave them alibis + - Italian immigrants and labor organizers + - Criticized for stealing from a shoe factory and killing guards + - Electrified 6 years after arrest, still claiming innocence + - Debated guilt + +"The Birth of a Nation," shown at White House endorsed by W. Wilson + - Most popular movie due to the endorsement + - Rewrote Southern history portraying Klansmen as heroes and slaves + as unscrupulous collaborators. + - Surgeon in Atlanta founds new KKK. Only allowed "natives" (white + Anglo-Sax non-alien) to join. + - Sponsored baseball teams, beauty pageants, frats + - Preached hatred against Blacks, atheists, prostitutes, + immigrants, Jews + - 40% of members were in three midwestern states + - Most clan members were farmers but also attracted pillars of + community: teachers, doctors, accountants + - David C Stevenson, grand Dragon of Indiana bought off state and + local politicians with merch sales and Klan donations + - Kidnapped, raped, and mutilated a 29yo woman on his staffu + - When not pardoned, implicates the polits he bribed + - Klan membership dwindles to 100K mostly southerners + - And anti-Klan laws are passed + - Fun fact: Fred C Trump, DJT's father, detained at a rally + +Fundamentalism and The "Scopes-Monkey" Trial +- Fundamentalism = Radical Protestantism + - Anti-Modernist Sect. Modernism is integration of science w/ Christ + - Literal belief in the Bible + - Williams Jennings Bryan, "the Great Commoner", uses fundamentalism + as a popular talking point + - Passed state laws banning teaching of Darwinian evolution. + - These laws only passed in the South + - Tennessee state legislature bans teaching of evolution + - In Dayton, John Scopes becomes a test case to raise publicity + for the depressed Daytonian economy. + - William Jennings Bryan called as an expert witness in biblical + interpretation + - Darrow quizzes Bryan on various biblical stories, asking + him if he "really believes" in, for ex., Eve being Adam's + rib + - Conflict erupted between Darrow and Bryan. + - Scopes is declared guilty but fine not counted + +Prohibition and Al Capone +- Temperance became a test of American patriotism + - Brewers were discriminated against for being German + - Many wanted to police African-Americans & foreign-born + - Initially cut drinking in half + - But quickly, floating saloon boats and bootleggers circumvented + - 700 million gallons of home-brewed beer, bathtub gin, and + stockpiling work around the law. + - These liquors were dangerous + - Very few Americans respected it + - Pres. Warren G Harding served bootleg liquor in White House + - Skyrocketing alcohol imprisonments + - Increased income for organized crime (Al Capone) + - Al Capone scarred by man in bar, "Scarface" + - $60 million dollars in revenues + - Hundreds of unsolved murders + - Soup kitchen, good tipper, hero to many + - Convicted on charges of tax evasion. Dies behind bars + +"Crime of the Century" +Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb +- Intelligent and wealthy +- Homosexual partners +- Engaged in petty crimes: robberies, +- Believed they were exempt from the law and want to commit a "perfect + crime" of murder + - Kill Bobby Franks + - Send ransom to Franks + - Dump body of boy in marsh; it's discovered + - Leopold's special glasses left next to the boy and the ransom + typewrite style corresponds to his typewriter + - Both confess and blame eachother but also blame Nietzche's + "superman theory" (some people above the law). +- Viewed as a feature of breakdown in American morals +- Clarence Darrow defends Leopold and Loeb + - Has them plead guilty + - Uses Freud's theory: senseless acts of aggression led by desires + out of their control + - Trauma as young boys and basically mentally ill + - Saves them from death sentence and gets them life |