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THE HOME FRONT

THE HOME FRONT. The government’s role. Before the war the government played a small role in the day to day lives of Americans It regulated industrial and agricultural products. Attempted to manipulate the public’s opinion (propaganda). Mobilization at home. Mobilization Economic Emotional

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THE HOME FRONT

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  1. THE HOME FRONT

  2. The government’s role • Before the war the government played a small role in the day to day lives of Americans • It regulated industrial and agricultural products. • Attempted to manipulate the public’s opinion (propaganda)

  3. Mobilization at home. Mobilization • Economic • Emotional • Troops

  4. America Mobilizes for War • US Army was originally a fraction of the size of European armies. • Wilson encouraged Americans to volunteer and pushed congress to pass “Selective Services Act” • Passed in 1917 • Authorized a draft of young men for military service in Europe. • 9.6 million registered for the draft and were assigned a number. • Gov’t held a “great national lottery” to decide the order in which the draftees would be called into service. • Over course of war 24 million registered 2.8 actually drafted. 4 million total served including volunteers.

  5. America Mobilizes for War • Wilson also worked to shift the economy to wartime production • Council of National Defense • Created to oversee different agencies. • Food production, coal, petroleum distribution, and railway use. • Government determined what crops grew and how supplies moved around on nation’s trains.

  6. War Industries Board (WIB) • Bernard Baruch • WIB regulated all industries engaged in war effort. • System of free enterprise was curtailed to fulfill the nations need for war materials.

  7. To keep workers working…

  8. What did factories produce? • Women's blouse factories made signal flags • Radiator manufacturers made guns • Automobile factories made airplane engines • Piano companies made airplane wings.

  9. Committee on Public information (CPI) • Had to convince Americans that war was a just cause • Distributed 75 million pamphlets • Millions of posters that dramatized the needs of America and its allies • Stressed cruelty of Germans

  10. Propaganda: Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information (CPI). What do these posters say about Germany?

  11. Does propaganda exist in the 21st century? WASHINGTON (CNN) --The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq. http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq.fries/

  12. The Home Front • Censorship • Not told about high death toll • Romanticized the battlefields “soldiers have died a beautiful death, in noble battle, we shall rediscover poetry…epic and chivalrous”

  13. The Home Front • Impossible to hide death • Women in mourning • Badly wounded soldiers returned home • Opposition began to emerge

  14. Opposition to the war • German Americans and Irish Americans opposed the allies • Sometimes treated with prejudice • Draft created controversy • Some refused and often court-martialed and imprisoned. • 12% of men who received draft notices didn’t respond.

  15. Conscientious Objectors • Moral or religious beliefs forbid them to fight in wars. • Exempted from combat • “any well recognized religious sect or organization… whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war.

  16. Women Work for Peace • Many American women opposed the war. • Jeanette Rankin, first women to serve in the US House of Representative voted against declaration of war. • Jane Addams- Women’s Peace Party

  17. Government cracks down on dissent • Espionage Act • Ban treasonable or seditious newspapers, magazines, or printed materials from the mail. • Limited freedom of Speech further with the Sedition Act • Unlawful to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language.”

  18. Women Embrace New Opportunities • Many women moved into the workforce for the first time. • Women filled jobs that were vacated by men who had gone to fight. • By their efforts during the war women convinced President Wilson to support their suffrage demands. • 1919 right to vote.

  19. African-American • Presented new opportunities to African-Americans • “If this is our country this is our war” • Movement from the rural South to the industrial North • Great Migration • Escape the violent racism of the south • Others desired better jobs • “I beg you, my brother, to leave the benighted land . . . Get out of the South… Come north then, all you folks, both good and bad… The Defender says come”

  20. Push from the South by… • Jim Crow Segregation laws • Lynching and other racial violence • Low-paying jobs as sharecroppers or servants • Ruined cotton crops due to weevil infestation • Pulled to the North by… • Economic prosperity in northern cities • Job openings due to reduced immigration • Aid from African Americans in the North

  21. Mexican Americans Move North • Some of the same reasons African-Americans moved north • Many settled in the West working on large farms. • Barrios- Hispanic neighborhoods.

  22. Schenck V. United States 1919

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