World War I
Americans in World War I
Main page: World War I
The United States did not want to enter World War I. they eventually entered the war in 1917 for two reasons. One was that a ship carrying Americans called the Lusitania was blown up by the Germans.The other was the Zimmerman Telegram, a message Germany sent to Mexico about invading the U.S. The United States fought on the side of Britain and France, and the war ended a year later. Wilson worked to create an international organization called the League of Nations. The main goal of the League was preventing war. However, the United States did not join because isolationists rejected the peace treaty. At the end of World War I, a flu pandemic killed millions of people in the U.S. and Europe. After the war, the United States was one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world.
Boom and bust (1919–1939)
The "Roaring Twenties"
Coolidge: “The business of America is business.”
There was a lot of racism in the 1920s. The Ku Klux Klan was powerful once again, and attacked blacks, Catholics, Jews and immigrants. People blamed the war and problems in business on immigrants and labor leaders, whom they said were Bolsheviks (Russian communists).Many people also thought that the United States had lost touch with religion. They dealt with that by changing religion, and some of them by attacking science.
Model-T's were invented by Henry Ford and changed American transportation
The 1920s were an era of boom and prosperity for the United States. Many Americans began buying consumer products, such as Model T Fords and appliances. Advertising became very important to American life. During this time, many African-Americans moved out of the South and into large cities such as New York City, Chicago, St. Louis and Los Angeles.They brought with them jazz music, which is why the 1920s are called the "Jazz Age". The 1920s were also the Prohibition Era after the Eighteenth Amendment passed. During the 1920s, drinking alcohol was illegal, but many Americans drank it anyway. This led to much rum-running and violent crime.
After World War I, the United States had an isolationist foreign policy. That meant it did not want to enter into another global war. It passed laws and treaties that supposedly would end war forever, and refused to sell weapons to its former allies.
In 1921, Warren G. Harding became President. He believed that the best way to make the economy good was for the government to be friendly to big business by cutting taxes and regulating less. While the economy was doing very well under these policies, the gap between how much money the rich had and how much money the poor had was as big as it had ever been. Harding's presidency had several problems. The biggest one was Teapot Dome over oil drilling in the Navy Oil Reserve. Harding died in 1923, and Calvin Coolidge became President. Coolidge believed that the government should keep out of business, just like Harding, and continued many of Harding's policies. Coolidge chose not to run again in 1928 and Herbert Hoover became president.
The Great Depression
The "Dust Bowl" in Oklahoma
See also: Great Depression and New Deal
In 1929, a Great Depression hit the United States. The stock market crashed (lost much of its value). Many banks ran out of money and closed. By 1932, over a quarter of the nation had no jobs, and much of the nation was poor or unemployed. Many people were driven off farms, not only because of the Depression, but also because of a storm known as the "Dust Bowl" and because farmers had not been doing well during the 1920s.
Roosevelt launched the New Deal helping the American economy
President Hoover tried to do something about the Depression, but it did not work. In 1932, he was defeated and Franklin D. Roosevelt became President. He created the New Deal. It was a series of government programs which would give relief (to the people who were hurt by the bad economy), recovery (to make the economy better), and reform (to make sure a depression never happens again).
The New Deal had many programs such as Social Security, the National Recovery Administration (regulated wages), Works Progress Administration (built thousands of roads, schools, government buildings and works of art), the Civilian Conservation Corps (gave young people jobs to help the environment), and Tennessee Valley Authority (built dams and electric lines in the South). These programs put millions of Americans to work, though often at low pay. Many of these programs were started early in Roosevelt's term in a time called the "Hundred Days" or in 1935 in a time called the "Second New Deal". Programs like Social Security grew out of populist movements by people such as Huey Long that were called "Share Our Wealth" and "Ham and Eggs". The New Deal also led to the rise of worker's unions such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
The New Deal is often called the period that "saved capitalism", and stopped America from becoming a Communist or Fascist state. Although the New Deal improved the economy, it did not end the Great Depression. The Great Depression was ended by World War II.
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