America [individual assignment]
AMERICA
The United States
The United States, for the most part, was uninjured in the war and wanted to implement a lasting and just peace.
The U.S. President, Woodrow Wilson, wanted the USA to lead the League of Nations, but he did not receive Congress’ approval. The League was created without the United States.
During the 1920s, American culture and economy flourished. The wealth of the USA doubled within a decade, and a great many Americans were granted access to a consumer culture. The idea of consumerism took hold.
All three of the era’s presidents—Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover—pursued pro-business policies and surrounded themselves with like-minded advisors. Government regulatory agencies (such as the Federal Trade Commission) more often assisted business than regulated it. Labour Unions striking for higher wages and safer work conditions in the steel, coal, and railroad industries were suppressed by federal troops. The Supreme Court overturned a minimum wage law for women and nullified child labour restrictions.
The pro-business atmosphere of the era led to a temporary decline in the popularity of labour unions; membership levels dropped throughout the decade. Also contributing to this drop were the efforts of businesses to woo workers with pension plans, opportunities for profit sharing, and company parties and other events designed to foster a communal spirit at work. Businessmen hoped that, if they offered some such benefits, they could dissuade workers from organizing and demanding even more. Such practices were often referred to as welfare capitalism.
There was conflict called Prohibition that was restriction of alcohol. A lot of the impetus came from a Protestant atmosphere that saw alcohol as being the root of evil and excess. The new 18th Amendment of the American Constitution banned and forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of alcoholic liquids. The ban led to a loss of tax revenue and various criminal activities. Eventually even the main proponents of Prohibition realized it wasn’t working.
For the first time in American history, more people were living in cities than in the country.
Women also became more equal members of society. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution passed granting women the right to vote. Women were working in factories and even starting to hold white-collar jobs, such as secretarial work.
In 1929, the economy of the U.S. took such a huge hit that suicide statistics rose to an unprecedented number; that time was known as the Great Depression, the darkest ten years in the U.S. economy. The most common belief is that it all started right after the 1929 crash of the stock market – remembered as Black Tuesday. During the roaring 20s, rural Americans moved into the cities because of sudden boom in the industrial sector. However, while the cities did become more prosperous, this also led to overproduction on the agricultural side.
Other theorists point out that the cause was low income and employment coupled with a banking crisis in which nearly a third of banks disappeared. The problem was, in such a volatile economy, if one bank happened to go broke, it created a chain reaction; sort of like dominoes running into one another.
The whole trend of American policy since President Wilson failed to get his countrymen to join the League of Nations had been back towards a self-absorbed isolation which was, of course, suited to traditional ideas. Americans who had gone to Europe as soldiers did not want to repeat the experience.
Several years after the Black Tuesday, people started feeling the effects. Consumer spending drastically declined, which caused industrial production to go down as well, and this resulted in the laying off of hundreds of thousands of workers. By 1933, the Great Depression was at its peak; almost 15 million Americans were unemployed, and almost half of the country’s banking institutions had permanently closed shop. It was a very dark time in America. Hundreds of people showed up at bread lines and soup kitchens in the once wealthy cities. Ironically, farmers in the rural areas could not even afford to harvest their crops, which meant they had to let all that good food rot in their fields while millions of people were starving.
New President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected in 1932 (confined to a wheel chair), started working on immediately after taking his oath of office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt started working on healing the U.S. economy.
First, he announced a four-day “bank holiday” that forced all the banks to temporarily close so that Congress would have enough time to pass legislation that would help them recover. During this time, the United States had no idea that it was in for a big dose of government intervention.
Roosevelt was by far one of the greatest presidents that the nation had ever had. He was elected president four times, and served three of his terms. To top it off, he was able to get the nation through the Depression and World War II while being confined to a wheel chair.
He is most famous, however, for his economic solution to the Great Depression, which became known as the New Deal. FDR’s New Deal was essentially made up of three major components: 1) direct relief, 2) economic recovery, and 3) financial reform.
Relief (unemployment relief with insurance; to help people cope with depression) was very much needed for the American people at this time, because a lot of them were living in poverty or in need of some type of assistance. Millions were poured into public works.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was created in order to build dams in the Tennessee River valley area. Dams are an inexpensive method of achieving hydroelectric power and provided very stable irrigation for the area. The TVA was the first public competition among private power industries.
Thus American politics reflected the same pressures towards collectivism which affected other countries in the twentieth century.
The next component was that of economic recovery (to help end the depression). It involved making efforts to up the prices of farm goods that were entirely too low. Roosevelt also thought to increase foreign trade, stimulate the buying and selling of goods.
The third component of the New Deal was the financial reform (to prevent future economic problems). Bank depositors were provided with security and protection from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was founded to serve as a guard dog for the stock market and prevent financial crisis.
The New Deal brought the most important extension of the power of the Federal authorities over American society and the states that had ever occurred in peacetime and it has proved irreversible.
The Latin America
During the interwar years, Latin America coped as before with Western economic imperialism—the United Fruit Company was merely the best known of the many corporations that influenced politics there—and the diplomatic weakness that came with being part of the U.S. sphere of influence.
The Cuban-American Treaty of 1903 authorized the United States to intervene in Cuba’s foreign policy (and gave it the option, still active, to lease the Guantanamo naval base). The Americans also occupied Haiti in 1915 to protect U.S. sugar companies, established a long-term military presence in Panama after opening the Panama Canal in 1914, and invaded northern Mexico in 1916.
Latin American economies modernized unevenly during these years, largely because it remained advantageous for economic elites and foreign investors to continue plantation monoculture and the extraction of a handful of raw materials, rather than industrializing or diversifying. Also, after 1929, the Great Depression devastated Latin American economies by wiping out international demand for nearly half their exports.
Nor did the region escape its long tradition of authoritarian rule, a trend made worse by the Depression.
Questions for experts
1. What were the most significant events in the region? Why have you chosen them?
2. What factors influenced on the development of the given countries and regions?
3. What distinguishes the Americas from other regions and countries considered in this topic? (Before answering read about other region in the topic 12).