Chapter+23+The+War+and+American+Society

​The Gov't in 1915 federal budget barley exceeded 1 billion dollars and in 1910 the nations entire gross national product had only been 35 billion dollars. To raise enough money for the war the gov't relied on two methods. First, it sold liberty bonds to the public, these appealed to the patriotic part of you. The gov't also made the propoganda for liberty bonds very patriotic or scared the people into buying them. In the end the liberty bonds alone raised 23 billion dollars. The secound method was taxing. The gov't brought in new taxes that raised 10 billion dollars.

Next the Gov't had to organize the economy for wartime needs. Wilsons administration tried two different approaches. In 1916 they established the Council of National Defense and a Vivilian Advisory Commission, which set up local defense councils in every stat and loaclity. The economic mobilization for this plan was to rely on a large-scale dispersal of power to local communities. This plan however was completely unworkable. The secound plan was to split the nation not geographically but instead functionally by organizing a series of planning bodies, each to supervise a specific part of the economy. War boards emerged and took control of each part and generally got the job done. At the center of the effort to rationalize the economy was the War Industries Board, and agency created in July 1917 to coordinate government purchases of military supplies. At first it was a success but it declined badly untill March 1918, when Wilson restructured it and placed it under the control of the Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch. After that the board had more power than any other government agency.After Bernard Baruch was put incharge he pretty much ran the economy that some progressives had long urge for.

The growing link between the public and private sectors extended, although in greatly different forms of labor. The National War Labor Board was established in April 1918 to resolve labor disputes, pressured industry to grant important concessions to workers: an eight-hour work day, the maintenance of mimimal living standards, equal pay for women doing equal work, recognition of the right of unions to organize and bargain collectively. In return however, it insisted that all workers forgo all strikes and that employers not engage in lockouts. Union membership increased by 1.5 million people between 1917 and 1919. The Great War provided workers with important, temporary gains. But it did not stop labor militancy. An example of this would be the Ludlow Massacre. Just before the war started in Ludlow,Colorado, in 1914, workers walked out of coal mines owned by Rockefeller. They were joined by their family and though they were evicted from the company housing the quickly made up tent communities. The state militia was called into the town to protect the mines, but they actually helped the employers to end the strike. Strikebreakers joined by the militia attacked the workers tent communities and when the battle was over 39 people died, 11 of them children.

The war helped produce a remarkable period of economic growth in the United States, a boom that started in 1914. Industrial production soared and manufacturing activity expanded in regions that had previously had relatively little of it. The ship building industrygrew rapidly on the west coast. Employment Increased dramatically and becuase so many men were out fighting the war job opportunities opened up for women,African Americans, Mexicans, and Asians. The most important social change of the war was the years of the Great Migration. When hundreds of thousands of African Americans from the rural South moved into the North.

[] [] [] [] Woodrow Wilson's Progressive Program Chapter 32 The New Feminism  Cult Of Domesticity Child Labor \ Women's Labor  Susan B. Anthony