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45 Cards in this Set
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Agricultural Adjustment Act AAA
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The early New Deal's principal means of trying to solve the farm problem of overproduction and low prices (which had existed since ca. 1919), the AAA (established in 1933) sought to control and reduce production of basic commodities such as wheat, corn, cotton, and milk in an effort to raise prices and provide the farmers with parity or buying power equal to other sectors of the economy as measured (initially) by the buying power of the period 1909-1914. To do this, the government granted subsidies to farmers in return for not planting crops. This did raise farm prices, but it is also significant because, rather than being revolutionary or anti-capitalistic (an accusation often made about the New Deal), the AAA policy used the orthodox economics of supply and demand to raise prices, disregarding the distribution and social justice problems of the poor having too little to eat or wear. The policy also suggests that the early New Dealers did not intend to have the government be permanently involved because the subsidy was a pay-as-you-go program and was paid for by a processing tax (such as milling flour) which was passed on to the consumer (who often could not afford to pay in the 1930s) thereby taking money out of the economy almost as fast as it flowed in and countering the objective of reversing the deflationary conditions. This policy also favored larger farm operations and forced poor farmers and tenants off the land, often causing more human suffering while prices rose but also undermining sharecropping in the South. Many in the midwest went to California; blacks in the South began to move to cities. The Supreme Court declared the AAA unconstitutional in U.S. v. Butler (1936), but Congress restored it in 1938.
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Allied Powers
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The name generally used for Great Britain, France, and Russia during World War I (which prior to WWI were known as the Triple Entente), and, to be more precise, the name adopted (as World War I progressed) for the twenty-one nations (including the U.S. after 1917) which gradually joined with Great Britain, France, and Russia to win the war. Their adversaries in World War I (the Empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Turks) had been known as the Triple Alliance, but especially after 1917 became known as the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary being located in Central Europe). The Allied Powers were important because they won the war, but the term is also significant as an indicator of ethnocentrism (the belief that one's own culture and ethnic group is more important than others and is central to existence, so things must be defined according to it). Hence, after the U.S. entered World War I on the side of the Triple Entente (but as an associate power, not an official member of the alliance which would be contrary to U.S. traditions of isolationism and exceptionalism), those powers had to be the Allies and the allies of the Triple Alliance could not be the Allies.
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anthracite coal strike
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Strike by United Mine Workers in 1902 in Pennsylvania to protest low wages, long hours, and unsafe working conditions which was settled as the result of Theodore Roosevelt's intervention which forced the mine owners to accept arbitration. This is significant because it shows Roosevelt's attitudes toward economic issues and because it shows the owners' attitudes toward their businesses and labor. After the arbitration commission granted the workers a 10% raise, a 9-hour day, and a board of conciliation (but no union recognition) to help negotiate future disputes, many people saw Roosevelt as pro-labor, but Roosevelt only intended to have the president act as a mediator, balancing the different interests and forces in society to serve the best interest of the society as a whole, while leading the nation as the central figure in the national government. The attitude of the mine owners seemed to require his action because they refused to even talk to the miners, and as winter approached, the lack of coal threatened homes with inadequate heat and the nation with inadequate power. The owners said that God had given them their property and that they knew what was best concerning it. Roosevelt forced them to accept arbitration.
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Bonus Army
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Unemployed World War I veterans who marched on Washington and stayed from May to July 1932 to pressure Congress to vote for immediate payment of the extra compensation which had been promised to them for their wartime service. The bonus bill had been passed in 1924 but was not to pay out until 1945, but people began to propose using it to aid the veterans during the Depression. Congress passed a bill for a loan to veterans in February 1932, but Hoover vetoed it. Democratic Congressmen then proposed an immediate cash payment of the bonus, eliciting the arrival of 15,000 veterans in Washington. After the Senate defeated the measure in June, Hoover encouraged and then ordered the 2,000 veterans who remained to leave. When they resisted, the army under General Douglas MacArthur drove them by force of arms out of Washington. This affair made Hoover look heartless and uncaring, and it contributed to the tendency of people to make Hoover into a scapegoat for the Depression and people's suffering.
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Central Powers
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Austria-Hungary and Germany (and later the Ottoman Empire), the nations that fought against Britain, France, and Russia plus their Allies including the United States in World War I.
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city beautiful movement
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nation-wide effort to make cities more attractive and meaningful through the provision of public parks and the construction of museums, libraries, and other institutions. Inspired by the open and clean look of "White City" designed by Daniel H. Burnham for the Chicago World Fair of 1893, the movement promoted the addition of open spaces and parks, but the movement had little direct impact on most working class central cities where housing remained filthy and overcrowded.
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Civilian Conservation Corps
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New Deal agency established in 1933 to put young, unemployed men to work on projects designed to preserve the nation's resources. The men usually worked and lived in camps and had most of their earnings sent directly to their families. The program helped both destitute individuals and the society at large, and it shows that FDR favored traditional values such as the work ethic rather than welfare (direct payment by government). People had to have a job before they received any payment. The work of the CCC provided the infrastructure of the national park system.
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Creel Committee
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This government agency, established by Congress in April 1917 under George Creel and appointed by Wilson, had the purpose of uniting public opinion behind the war effort. The committee proceeded to try to create and shape public opinion by issuing ultra-nationalistic, often hate-filled propaganda, a practice which became known as political warfare. The result was a climate of hatred and fear in the U.S. which did not end with the war but continued into the postwar period when its anti-subversive, nationalistic attitudes were redirected against communists and anarchists, contributing to the Red Scare of 1919-1920.
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Destroyers for Bases
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The exchange of 50 older U.S. ships to Britain in September 1940 for the U.S. right to take 99 year leases on naval and air bases on British territory in the western hemisphere. This is an example of how FDR avoided violating isolationist law and sentiment while providing aid to Britain which was, after June 1940, under dire threat as the only power actively opposing the Axis powers. FDR presented the agreement as a means of strengthening U.S. defenses and making its action outside the western hemisphere unnecessary.
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Federal Housing Administration
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Government agency created in 1934 to increase loans for construction or repair of houses, insure home mortgages, reduce down payments, and increase the length of home mortgage loans. This was part of the Early New Deal effort to encourage the construction industry and the banks to increase housing construction as a means of restoring business activity, providing jobs, and building houses for the common man.
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fireside chats
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F.D. Roosevelt's radio broadcasts which were designed to explain his programs to the American people and which reveal FDR's ability to appeal to the public and restore public confidence, something which Hoover had been unable to do. They symbolize the fact that the New Deal was a personal creation of FDR and his buoyant, optimistic personality, his ability to use the media to obtain popular support, and his expansion of presidential powers.
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Fourteen Points
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Wilson's peace plan of January 1918 which called for freedom of the seas, equal access to markets and raw materials, self-determination of all peoples, partial settlement of colonial claims, open negotiation of treaties, reduction of arms, and a League of Nations to preserve the peace. The Germans agreed to an armistice in November 1918 on the assumption that the Treaty of Versailles would be based on this plan, but for the most part it was not, leading to claims of betrayal in Germany.
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Gifford Pinchot
(1865-1946) |
Conservationist and political leader who, as the first professionally trained forester in the U.S., became the first head of the U.S. Forest Service when Theodore Roosevelt created the agency in 1905. Pinchot, having been educated in the scientific management of forests in Europe, had a utilitarian philosophy about the environment and agreed with TR's belief in the need for governmental regulation of the natural environment so it would benefit
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Good Neighbor Policy
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U.S. policy toward Latin America initiated by Herbert Hoover but identified with FDR who expanded it, it reversed the Progressive Era's policy of intervention in Latin America and sought both good relations as the international situation became more unstable and dangerous in the 1930s and continued U.S. influence in Latin America by means other than force. The policy manifested itself in the removal of U.S. troops from Latin American countries, the Clark Memorandum which argued that the Roosevelt Corollary misinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine, and an agreement under FDR that no nation had the right to intervene in the affairs of another. U.S. influence continued through loans, the activities of the Export-Import Bank, the presence of American businesses in Latin America, and the rise to power of pro-U.S. dictators.
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Harlem Renaissance
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flowering of black culture centered in Harlem in New York City in the 1920s. It emphasized black pride, what it meant to be black in America, and the ideal of cultural diversity (as expressed in Alain Locke's The New Negro in 1925) which would end prejudice and recognize the value of different cultures existing side-by-side as a result of the "talented tenth" (W.E.B. Du Bois' term) of the white and black populations reaching out to each other and promoting mutual respect. Most whites, however, saw the Harlem Renaissance not in terms of equality but entertainment, and when the prosperity of the 1920s faded, so did the ideals of equality and respect.
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Hoovervilles
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Shantytowns which grew up on the edges of large cities during the early years of the Great Depression and whose names indicate how President Hoover was blamed for people's suffering. Ironically, Hoover had done more than any previous president to try to end the depression, but he did not believe in direct government aid and his efforts had not succeeded.
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Huey Long
(1893-1935) |
Louisiana populist politician and demagogue who criticized the New Deal and developed a "Share the Wealth" program which called for the confiscation of fortunes over $5 million and a 100% tax on income above $1 million to order to provide a minimum annual income of $2 to $3 thousand for everyone. He fought for the interests of the poor--black and white, but he was raffish and as governor and then senator, he ruled Louisiana with the absolute and arbitrary control of a dictator. He was preparing to run for president in 1936 when he was assassinated in September 1935.
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installment buying
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The concept of buying on time using credit. Developed in 1915 and used extensively in the 1920s, this system of payment allowed the customer to pay a small amount down at the time of purchase and then make subsequent payments at intervals until the item is paid off. In the 1920s this contributed to the development of the consumer goods revolution in which consumer goods (such as autos) replaced capital goods (such as steel) as the primary product of industry, and it allowed people to have immediate gratification and engage in personal deficit financing, behavior which the traditionalists in society said was contributing to the ruin of the U.S. and its character. It is an example of how the twenties were characterized by a clash of cultures--pitting the young, urban modernists against the older, more rural traditionalists.
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Kellogg-Briand Pact
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Multinational treaty of 1928 which outlawed war and was eventually signed by 62 nations, including the U.S. This is an example of the inclination of the U.S. in the 1920s to engage in escapism and seek easy answers to complex problems while avoiding the hard issues of international relations. The U.S. refused to join the League of Nations, but it signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact because it allowed the U.S. to act as a moral leader of the world (advocating peace) and simultaneously avoid any responsibility if the peace was broken (retaining its isolationism). When Japan broke the pact in 1931, the U.S. condemned Japan as immoral but took no other action.
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Lusitania
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British passenger liner sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German submarine on May 7, 1915 with great loss of life, including 124 Americans. This caused a swift rise in anti-German sentiment in the U.S. despite the fact that the Germans had declared a war zone around the British Isles and issued public warnings and that the ship carried ammunition and Canadian troops. This was a sign that the German submarine warfare could push the U.S. into World War I.
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Manhattan Project
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The secret project organized by the U.S. government in 1942 to manufacture an atomic bomb before the Germans did. It involved over 120,000 people working in 37 factories and laboratories in 19 states at an expense of over $2 billion. The first successful detonation of an atomic device occurred on July 16, 1945 at White Sands, New Mexico. President Truman then ordered the two remaining bombs to be dropped on Japan. This was the beginning of the age of nuclear weapons, feelings of increased insecurity for many, and doubts among many scientists such as Robert Oppenheimer who recalled the lines from the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."
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Margaret Sanger
(1883-1966) |
A public health nurse and leader of the birth control movement, she founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 which became Planned Parenthood in 1942. As a result of her efforts to provide birth control information to the immigrant and urban poor in New York City beginning about 1910, moralists and religious leaders criticized her for distributing obscene literature and for advocating "race suicide" and charged her with criminal activity under the Comstock Act of 1873. That act, advocated by "purity" crusader Anthony Comstock, made the distribution of birth control information through the mail a crime, and in 1914, after being charged, she fled the country. She returned and in 1916 opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. Her efforts began to have marked success only in the 1920s and 1930s when middle class women were attracted to the movement. Then in 1936 a federal court in U.S. v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries struck down all federal restrictions on the dissemination of contraceptive information. Sanger continued to work for the movement, thereby giving all women, not simply the poor with whom she started, an opportunity to control their own bodies and have more wide-ranging, fuller lives. Family planning and more freedom for women also led to smaller families, an expansion of the middle class as families became more prosperous and better educated, and more challenges (such as women working and divorce) to traditional ideas of family and marriage.
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Mucrackers
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Writers who, during the Progressive Era, exposed corruption and scandal in U.S. politics, society, and economy in articles published in new, widely-circulating, weekly magazines such as McClures and Colliers which needed exciting, hard-hitting material. Modifying the scandal mongering of yellow journalism into a mission for reform, these journalists, essayists, and novelists treated nothing as sacred and were dubbed muckrakers in 1906 by Theodore Roosevelt because they reminded him of the stereotypical characters in John Bunyan's Christian allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, who were always looking down at the bad in life and never looked up to see the good. The name stuck, but they saw themselves as fighting for the good. Some of the most prominent were Ray Stannard Baker, David Graham Phillips, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, and by raising public consciousness and moral outrage, they helped bring reforms such as the Pure Food and Drug Act, new forms of city government, the Federal Reserve System, and the 17th Amendment.
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Munich Conference
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Meeting of the leaders of France, Great Britain, Germany, and Italy in September 1938 which provided one of the most cited lessons of World War II for foreign policy--appeasement. Hitler had set off a crisis when he demanded that, under the principle of self-determination, the portion of Czechoslovakia which had a majority of German-speaking people (Sudentenland) should be allowed to join Germany. The British (Neville Chamberlain) and the French (Edouard Daladier) agreed to allow Germany to annex the Sudentenland of Czechoslovakia in return for Hitler's assurance that he had no more territorial ambitions. The West wanted peace so badly that when Chamberlain returned home and announced he had achieved "peace in our time," he was treated as a hero. This agreement became a notorious failure when in March 1939 Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France then announced that if he attacked Poland, they would declare war. World War II in Europe began in September 1939 when Gemany invaded Poland.
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Neutrality Act's
(1930's) |
Measures passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 which reveal the isolationism of the 1930s. They were designed to prevent U.S. entry into another major war by making illegal the various kinds of activities which contributed to U.S. entry into World War I. The acts banned arms shipments to belligerents, prohibited Americans from traveling on belligerent vessels, banned carrying arms on U.S. vessels (all in 1935), prohibited making loans to belligerents (1936), made non-military items available to belligerents only on a cash-and-carry basis (1937). The act of 1939, passed after World War II began, allowed sales of munitions on a cash-and-carry basis thereby aiding Britain and France. Based on the assumption that U.S. participation in World War I had been a grave mistake and that the U.S. should pursue an unilateral, "American First" policy, these acts show the overwhelming desire on the part of the U.S. (and the rest of the West) to avoid another war at almost any cost. Hence, these acts did not distinguish between aggressors and those attacked or opposing aggression. That meant they encouraged the aggressors. But isolationist sentiment and the belief in the ability of the U.S. to simply withdraw from international affairs was strong. Accordingly, these acts also surrendered neutral rights, for which the U.S. had in part gone to war in 1917, in return for the possibility of simply being left alone--that surrender, rather than giving the U.S. the advantage, gave the initiative in policy to the aggressors. The aggressors gained time and strength, and as a result, the war, when it came, probably lasted longer.
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New Freedom
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Woodrow Wilson's platform and philosophy in the campaign of 1912 which emphasized restoring freedoms by using government to end the need for government, principally by reopening competition and promoting moral behavior (so people would do the right thing without governmental involvement). Wilson's objectives were conservative and in tune with states rights values of his native South. Wilson, in contrast to his main rival in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, thought monopolies should be destroyed, not regulated, and did not call for social justice legislation because, as a moralist, Wilson believed that poverty or social degradation were signs of the individual's moral weakness, not a matter of social circumstances over which the individual had little control and could not easily escape. After being elected in 1912, Wilson put the New Freedom into effect with legislation such as the Underwood Tariff, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, and the Federal Reserve Act. The New Freedom is significant as a backward-looking version of Progressivism, revealing that Progressivism included most of the political spectrum and had contradictory characteristics. Wilson, after 1914, began to accept aspects of the New Nationalism in legislation.
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New Nationalism
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Theodore Roosevelt's platform and philosophy in the campaign of 1912 which argued that a strong national government was needed to regulate big businesss in the interest of the nation as a whole and to protect the rights of the people. As the name suggests, it was a response to the growing sense that the U.S.'s problems as a society were national problems which needed to be dealt with through national policy and, hence, through the federal government and strong executive leadership. More specifically, the New Nationalism accepted big business (trusts and monopolies) but called for government regulation so that big business would operate morally and for the benefit of the nation as a whole, for conservation of natural resources so they would serve the society as a whole, for social justice legislation so that all would benefit from economic growth and progress, and for woman suffrage. Roosevelt lost the election to Wilson and his New Freedom, but the Wilson administration seemed to adopt much of the New Nationalism. The New Nationalism and the New Freedom set the groundwork of much liberal legislation in the 20th century.
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Nye Committee
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Special Senate committee that in 1934 investigated U.S. entry into World War I and concluded that those who had profited most from the war maneuvered the U.S. to enter for their own benefit. Although the evidence was not as clearcut as the conclusions suggested, the committee, under its chairman Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, determined that these "merchants of death" and the munitions industry in particular were guilty of misleading the U.S. and using war for their own gain. The committee and its conclusions were both a result of and a stimulus for isolationism in the U.S. and the argument that legal action should be taken to prevent U.S. entry into another war for such reasons. Because of disillusionment and cynicism brought by the war and the Great Depression, people were primed to believe the worst and react in an extreme fashion. The results included the Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937. See Neutrality Acts.
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Reconstruction Finance Corporation
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A federal corporation established by Congress in January 1932 as part of Herbert Hoover's Twelve Point Program (December 1931) to fight the depression, principally by increasing the money supply. Modeled on the War Finance Corporation of World War I, the RFC was capitalized at $500 billion and authorized to loan money to banks, railroads, building and loan companies, insurance companies, states, and municipalities so that those entities could make more money available to businesses and potential borrowers. This program corresponded to Hoover's philosophy of voluntary cooperation and his idea that government should only help businesses help themselves. The RFC and Hoover's whole approach proved inadequate in part because it was based on the theory of Monetary Policy which says that the government should limit itself to regulating the money supply. The problem with this theory is that an increase in the money supply will not counteract deflationary pressures unless someone takes a risk, borrows the money, and spends it. In the 1930s, few people were willing to borrow and therefore the money remained unspent and the economy depressed. The alternative theory, Fiscal Policy (developed and advocated by John Maynard Keynes in 1936), argues that if the private sector will not borrow and spend, then the government should and must in order to end depressions, even to prevent depressions. Such government spending ended the Great Depression when the U.S. entered World War II and began spending on the military (after being unwilling to spend similarly on the unemployed and poor).
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Rosie the Riveter
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Popular song during World War II which was part of the government's program to encourage women to accept jobs in war industries as their patriotic duty. These were jobs which women were supposed to hold only temporarily and then return to their traditional roles, but "Rosie" became a symbol of women successfully working jobs which they had never held earlier, for higher wages than they had generally earned earlier and therefore a rejection of traditional gender roles. "Rosie" also represented the increase in the number of women in the workforce, up from 24% in 1941 to 36% in 1945. As is true of most wars, World War II had unexpected consequences including opening up opportunities within the U.S. for women and minorities.
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Rural Electrification Administration
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Government agency set up in May 1935 by FDR through executive order to bring electrical power to the rural areas of the U.S. previously unserved by private utilities because of the unprofitability of serving a relatively few people over a large area. Congress then passed the Rural Electrification Act providing the R.E.A. the authority to loan money to states and to farm cooperatives to erect generating plants and wires to distribute electricity to isolated rural areas. By 1945, 1 million homes had been electrified, but 7 million remained unserved. The R.E.A. is an example of how the federal government under the New Deal promoted the well being of the society as a whole and undertook projects which were not profitable to private industry and therefore were likely to remain undone without government action.
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Sacco-Vanzetti Case
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Case in which two Italian aliens and self-proclaimed anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were arrested in 1920 and convicted and sentenced to death in 1921 for a robbery and murder in Braintree, Massachusetts on scant evidence primarily because of nativist sentiment and the hysteria of the Red Scare. Because their trial seemed patently unfair, it became an international cause celebre, but despite protests at home and abroad, Sacco and Vanzetti were denied a new trial and were executed in 1927. The case is symbolic of the insecurity, intolerance, and reactionary attitudes of many in the U.S. during the 1920s. The case is an example of how Americans, in the name of protecting and preserving liberty, sometimes attack it and deny it to some. Vanzetti, speaking as an anarchist before his execution, said: "Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man, as now we do by an accident."
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scientific management
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Frederick W. Taylor's method of organizing industrial production (and, later, such things as offices, personnel, government, etc.) by applying scientific techniques and engineering principles to promote order and efficiency. Taylor, who became an efficiency expert in the late 19th century, began with time and motion studies in the 1880s at Midvale Steel in Philadelphia and became widely known after presenting a paper in 1903. By 1915 he had developed proposals for increasing efficiency and production by having management control all aspects of production including material flow, work traffic, labor specialization. Taylor had two fundamental ideas for obtaining maximum production from workers: 1) separate all thinking from manual labor (management would do all the thinking, planning, etc.) and 2) remove all authority from workers on the shop floor and enforce total obedience to management. Instead of creating better labor relations, these ideas alienated labor. Taylor's disciples, however, created a new era of labor management by creating new professions such as personnel administration and industrial psychology, including Henry L. Gantt's "Gantt Chart" which correlated sound human relations with bonus payments. Scientific management is symbolic of that aspect of Progressivism which emphasized order and efficiency and giving more authority to experts.
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Scopes Trial
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The celebrated case of 1925 in which a Dayton, Tennessee teacher, John T. Scopes, was tried and convicted of teaching evolutionary theory to a high school biology class. It is significant in that it represents both the conservative religious revival known as "fundamentalism" and, more broadly, the rural, conservative counter-attack against the new, modernist, urban culture which seemed to arrive suddenly and completely with the disillusionment at the end of World War I. Although Scopes was found guilty and the teaching of evolution in Tennessee banned, the liberal defense lawyer Clarence Darrow was more effective in presenting the modernist case than the populist politician William Jennings Bryan was in presenting the case against evolution.
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second front
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A front in Western Europe during World War II which was established on D-Day, June 6, 1944 but which Stalin demanded in 1942 to relieve pressure on the Russian army which had begun resisting the Germans on the Eastern Front after the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941. The delay in establishing the second front had military and political consequences. Militarily, it meant that for three years the USSR faced the brunt of the Nazi war machine and began to push it back out of the USSR and eastern Europe before the Allies attacked on D-Day. That meant that the Russians were occupying and in control of eastern and central Europe at the end of World War II. Politically, it meant that the Russians' traditional suspiciousness of the West was reinforced and that the West's' fears of Communist expansion were renewed even though Stalin's demands for a sphere of influence and friendly governments in central Europe were dictated initially more by the nationalist desire to prevent another attack on the USSR through Poland than by the ideological motive of taking over all of Europe for Communism.
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Social Security Act
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New Deal measure passed in 1935 which provided old-age pensions, survivor insurance, and unemployment compensation for industrial workers and aid to dependent children and the handicapped. Part of the second New Deal, this act was designed to help the poverty-stricken elderly and provide them a guaranteed income independent of the economy including the stock market and as a safety net for people falling victim to personal or societal disasters. It is significant for revealing how government became more responsible for the wellbeing of society at large and for actions promoting humane considerations as well as economic considerations such as providing a more equitable distribution of income--thereby making another Great Depression less likely.
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Spanish Civil War
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The successful revolt led by General Francisco Franco against the republican government of Spain which began in 1936 and acted as a precursor to World War II. Franco, who subsequently established a fascist regime in Spain, received support from Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy while Britain, France, and the US refused to become involved for fear the conflict might lead to a wider war. It is significant politically and militarily. Politically, it revealed the rise of isolationist sentiment in the US as Congress broadened the Neutrality Acts so that the US could not legally become involved in overseas incidents which might lead to war. Militarily, Hitler and Mussolini were able to try out their war equipment and some new theories of warfare such as the bombing of civilian targets as a means of undermining public support. This is well represented by the German attack on the city of Guernica, portrayed by Pablo Picasso in his painting of the same name. Such purposeful bombing during World War II generally did not destroy public elan, but it did lead to total warfare in which civilian targets were commonly attacked with enormous destruction even before the dropping of the atomic bombs.
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Tennessee Valley Authority
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Independent public corporation established by Congress in 1933 and empowered to sell electricity and fertilizer and to promote flood control and reclamation in a seven-state area in the southeast. A New Deal agency, the TVA helped restore a measure of economic and social wellbeing to much of the Old South which, since the Civil War, had been the poorest part of the US. It also represents the expanded action by the government and could be seen as revolutionary because it involved government ownership of a business which competed with the private sector, increased the amount of electricity generated, reduced the price of electricity, and played a role in the production of the atomic bomb during World War II. It is representative of the fact that the US, as is true of all nations around the world, has a mixed economy blending capitalism and socialism, a fact which has been ideologically repugnant and therefore largely ignored.
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The Jungle
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Socialist novel written by Upton Sinclair which described unsanitary conditions in the meat-packing industry so graphically that it inspired the passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Sinclair had written the novel to arouse the public to act in favor of the workers and thereby inspire political reform which would bring social justice to them. Instead, he inspired two consumer protection acts: the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. This was another modification of "buyer beware" laissez faire capitalism which potentially meant doing anything for a profit. Roosevelt said the revelations threatened U.S. exports of meat.
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The Man Nobody Knows
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Book written in 1925 by Bruce Barton, a leading advertising executive, which portrayed Jesus as a supersalesman and "founder of modern business" who had "picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks. . .and forged them into an organization that conquered the world." Barton implied if businessmen copied Jesus, they could become successful. The book is indicative of how advertising became a big business in the twenties--as producers needed to create demand for the new consumer products and did this by making alluring images and delivering psychologically appealing messages. The book seems to turn a life dedicated to spirituality and saving souls into an advertisement for materialism and making money.
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Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
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Fire in a sweatshop in March 1911 in New York City in which 146 garment workers died. Although the owners were acquitted, it inspired legislation to mandate safer factory conditions and stimulated the formation of labor organizations such as the Women's Trade Union League and the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union. It represents the dangers and exploitation which often accompany unregulated industry and made the point of Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams that recent immigrants and the poor suffered and failed to become wealthy not because of moral terpitude but because of conditions beyond their control.
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Washington Conference
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Conference on naval disarmament held in Washington, D.C. from November 1921 to February 1922 which was one of the most successful arms control agreements in the 20th century. It produced three treaties which corresponded to the three goals of the conference. The Five Power Treaty set tonnage ratios among the five major naval powers (UK, US, Japan, France, Italy), reduced the amount of tonnage in capital ships countries could have, established a ten year holiday on building battleships, and stopped the naval armaments race. In the Nine Power Treaty, the conference participants all agreed not to fortify their holdings in the Pacific and eastern Asia and to abide by the Open Door in China. In the Four Power Treaty, the UK, US, France, and Japan replaced the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902 and agreed to respect each other's territories in the Pacific and eastern Asia and cooperate in the face of aggression. This left Japan as the most powerful nation in eastern Asia and seemed to confirm the idea of the great powers taking responsibility for different parts of the world, but it also caused frustration in Japan because Japan was not given equal naval strength to the UK and the US.
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Works Progress Administration
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The major work relief program of the Second New Deal. Begun in 1935, it employed about 3 million people a year on useful projects from capital construction to the arts. It was reflective of the Second New Deal's goal of helping people and employed people with particular talents or training such as dramatists, actors, historians, painters, and others in the area of their expertise rather than as unskilled labor. The WPA produced many public works such as buildings, roads, parks, and bridges but it also produced some valuable artistic and academic work which might not have been done otherwise. As a result of the latter endeavors, it was not as popular with business and conservative interests who criticized it as wasteful. It is representative of the fact that there things of value which do not produce a profit and which may therefore need some governmental support.
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Yalta
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The February 1945 meeting of Churchill, F.D. Roosevelt, and Stalin on the Crimea in present-day Ukraine to discuss the course of the war in its final days and the problems of the peace settlement which have been the subject of much controversy in the postwar era. The agreement included a reassertion of the policy of unconditional surrender of Germany, the demilitarization and denazification of Germany, the division of Germany into four zones, the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan, and some territorial agreements. Later, critics of the Roosevelt Administration accused FDR of surrendering the control of eastern Europe to the USSR at Yalta. FDR did seek to obtain continued cooperation of the USSR in the postwar by being friendly and conciliatory with Stalin, but FDR and Churchill only compromised with Stalin. They did not give Stalin anything which he did not already control or could control. The control of Eastern Europe was decided not by FDR at Yalta but by the position of the armies as the war drew to a close.
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Zimmerman Telegram
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German message of February 1917, intercepted and deciphered by the British, offering Mexico the territory it had lost to the U.S. in 1848 in return for joining the Central Powers against the US if the US should enter World War I. When this was transmitted to and published in the US, it brought a public demand for war, and while Wilson continued to resist war until April 1917, the telegram was one of the factors which finally brought US entry into World War I.
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