Labor Strife in the Post WWI Era Seattle General Strike

1. Labor Strife in the Post WWI Era Seattle General Strike

2. Seattle General Strike of 1919 • 25,500 shipyard workers began a strike in Seattle. • Metal Trades Council was seeking to maintain $1 an hour for its skilled workers. • Feb. 6, 1919, most union men and women walked off their jobs. • Seattle mayor Ole Hanson used troops to crush the strike and became a national hero except among union workers.

3. Labor Unrest after WWI • Other major strikes occurred in the Steel and Coal industries. • Boston Police Strike caused upheaval in Massachusetts until Governor Calvin Coolidge called in the National Guard; fame gained him Vice-Presidential nomination in 1920.

4. Boston Police Strike • September 1919 Boston Police wanted higher pay. The Commissioner fired 19 men for trying to organize a union. • When strike began riots broke out, citizens were afraid because they had no protection. • Governor Coolidge said the strike was a threat to public safety and broke it up by sending in the National Guard.

5. Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts

6. Red Scare • The Russian government was overthrown in 1917 by Lenin and the Bolsheviks or Reds. • Americans feared the spread of communist ideas to America by immigrants. • terrorists incidents increased their anxiety; these attacks included bombings.

7. Red Scare • One bomb exploded in New York City and killed 38 people and injured 100. • Attorney General Palmer seized more than 6000 people and deported about 550. • None of these investigations uncovered a plot to overthrow the government.

8. Literary Digest, 7/5/19. political cartoon on Red Scare http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/redscare/HTMLCODE/CHRON/RS017.HTM

9. Attorney General Palmer

10. Immigration Restriction • Immigration Act of 1921 • 3% quota for each nationality • 1910 census used as the base • National Origins Act of 1924 • 2% quota created tighter limits • 1890 census used as the base to limit numbers of “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

11. Immigrant family at Ellis Island

12. National Origin Acts, 1924, 1929 • Acts established by Congress that put severe limits on new immigration. • Limited # of immigrants to 150,000 per year by 1929. • Favored immigrants from Great Britain; attempt to preserved demographic “status quo” by limiting “undesirable” groups. • Foreign born % went from 13% to 4.7% in 50 years.

13. Margaret Sanger http://www.ms.edu/course/mc/112/1920s/Sanger/index.html

14. Margaret Sanger • Younger generation of the 1920s was more open about sex. • Contraception question for poor married women. (few had knowledge of or access to birth control). • Concerned about impoverished women and number of children they had.

15. Margaret Sanger • Published pamphlets about birth control to inform women. • By distributing these she disobeyed the Comstock Act of 1873. • Constantly in trouble with the law. • 1921- founded American Birth Control League.

16. Margaret Sanger • 1923- founded a research center. • By 1930’s her works were no longer considered as radical. • Not until the 1960’s did the Supreme Court issue a ruling citing the right to privacy as a Constitutional foundation for allowing the use of contraceptives.

17. The League of Women Voters http://pppl.tblc.lib .fl.us/league/ ABOUT.HTML

18. League of Women Voters • founded in 1920 at Chicago convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association at the time of the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. • “Winning the vote is only an opening wedge...but to learn to use it is a bigger task.” Carrie Chapman Catt, Founder of the League of Women Voters.

19. League of Women Voters • League members began attending and observing city council, county commission, and school board meetings on a regular basis. • League eventually established local chapters in all 50 states with tens of thousands of members http://www.lwv.org/feats.html

20. Alice Paul, Women’s Rights Leader http://lonestar.texas.net/~efdietz/stamps/apaul.htm

21. Alice Paul • Ph.D. from U Penn in social work • One of the first American leaders of the equal rights movement for women. • dynamic, fanatical, and militant person. • 1913 founded National Women’s Party.

22. Alice Paul • campaigned for equal rights amendment • the Party’s goals:disarmament, an end to child labor, and liberalized birth control laws. • supported protective legislation governing the hours and working conditions of women.

23. Alice Paul • Main goal: full social equality. • 1938 Alice submitted first version of Equal Rights Amendment to Congress. • “mother” of the amendment. • 1938 founded World Women’s Party. World Book Encyclopedia and Academic American Encyclopedia

24. “Roaring 20s,” Jazz Age • Power Point Project by Mr. Houston’s American History Students to be used for test preparation at Harwich High School. • Sources include websites, Grolier’s Multimedia Encyclopaedia, University of Virginia election maps, and other sources cited in the slides. • http://www.harwich.edu/depts/history/ pp/20s/index.htm

25. D.W Griffith • D.W Griffith is considered the most important innovator in motion picture history. • Under his direction the camera was no longer operated from a fixed position, but was moved freely and was used from varying angles, and different distances from the action. Compton’s Encyclopaedia

26. D.W Griffith • He was the first to use film editing, and cross-cutting between separate scenes. • Griffith is also famous for his close-up shot, and his long, panning, and sweeping shots; led technical and artistic movement in film. • Griffith’s greatest film is “The Birth of a Nation” (1915)

27. The Birth of a Nation • Produced in 1915, The Birth of a Nation was Griffith’s most famous film. • Based on Thomas Dixon Jr.’s anti-black play, The Clansman. • It was a controversial, explicitly racist, landmark American film. • The play is still used today as a recruitment piece for Klan membership.

28. The Birth of a Nation http://www. filmsite.org/birt. html

29. D.W Griffith • In his early years he was actually ashamed of being a movie producer because he wanted to be a playwright. • He angered black and white liberals with his controversial theme in “Birth of a Nation.” • Along with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin he founded United Artists, but sold his share in 1933.

30. The end of Griffith’s career • In the end Griffith didn’t have enough money to run large motion pictures. His business then became unsuccessful. • Griffith gave our motion picture industry a whole new perspective. • Without his expertise we would not have films and movies like we do today.

31. Charlie Chaplin • British born (1889-1977). • Silent Film Star, Comic Genius, Producer. • Elevated Silent Film to Art Form in 1920’s. • Poked fun at High Society, yet films had a universal appeal to both rich and poor. • Lived in poverty in England; developed Tramp character in pictures. Colliers Encyclopedia America in 20th cent.

32. Charlie Chaplin • http://us.imdb.com/Title?Modern+Times+(1936)

33. Charlie Chaplin http://us.imdb.com/Title? Great+Dictator,+The+(1940)

34. Charlie Chaplin http://www.silent-movies .com/Gents/ChaplinC Chaplin07.jpg

35. The Jazz Singer • Warner Bros. Production of 1927 • Stared Al Jolson • based on Sampson Raphaelson's 1922 short story, "The Day of Atonement.” • Link to video clip: http://www.jolson.org/

37. The Jazz Singer • The film, a tale of popular music and of intergenerational conflict among Jewish immigrants, was one of the earliest to use synchronous sound (via the Vitaphone system). • www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~nick/e309/texts/jazzsinger/jazzsinger/html

38. The Jazz Singer • only a few scenes with recorded dialogue. • musical score including sources such as Tchaikovsky, traditional Hebrew music and popular ballads. • www.filmsite.org/jazz.html

39. Babe Ruth and the Rise of Professional Sports in the 1920s http://www.baberuth.com/

40. Babe Ruth • The greatest player of all-time and an American legend; Ruth was one of the first five players inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1936. • Symbol of the Rise of Professional Sports and Mass Entertainment

41. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/amex/lindbergh/ Charles Lindbergh

42. CHARLES LINDBERGH • Made the first solo nonstop flight over Atlantic May 20-21, 1927. • this gained him immediate international fame ; “Lucky Lindy” and “Lone Eagle” were his nicknames. • 25,000 dollars was offered to whoever did it first.

43. Henry Ford’s Model T leads the US into the Age of the Automobile

44. Henry Ford • Ford Motor Corp. incorporated in 1903; Model T introduced in 1908. • 1913, introduction of moving assembly line. • 1918, half the cars in America were Model T’s. • The assembly line reduced the time of production per vehicle; also reduced the cost.

45. http://www.hfmgv.org/histories/hf/henry.html

46. Henry Ford • Ford Motor Company became the largest manufacturer in the world. • By 1927 more than 15 million Model T’s had been sold. • GM Corporation eventually took the lead in auto sales.

47. Frederick Winslow Taylor • 1856-1915 • Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. • American engineer and efficiency expert. • Laborer at Midvale Steel Works.

48. Frederick Winslow Taylor • He organized and systemized factory work. • Best known part of his system is the “time and motion” study. • Published scientific management in 1911 and the entire efficiency movement was often called Taylorism.

49. Armory Show of Modern Art in New York, 1913, sample of work by Robert Henri, an organizer

50. Armory Show, 1913 • Photo of Main Gallery • http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/decades/190508.jpg • 1600 works in 69th Regiment Armory, NY • Controversy over “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Marcel Duchamps • Promoted Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Abstract Art, and Ash Can School