Chapter 11 Section 3: The War at Home

Stockholders in large corporations saw enormous profits. One industrial manufacturer, the ___, saw its shock multiply in value 1,600 percent between 1914 and 1918. By that time the company was earning a $68 million yearly profit. As a result of the uneven pay between labor and management, increasing work hours, child labor, and dangerously "sped-up" conditions, unions boomed. Union membership climbed from 2.5 million in 1916 to more than ___ in 1919. More than 6,000 strikes broke out during the war months.

DuPont Company; 4 million

In June 1917 Congress passed the ___, and in May 1918 it passed the ___.

Espionage Act; Sedition Act

Under the ___ and ___ Acts a person could be fined up to ___ and sentenced to ___ years in jail for interfering with the war effort or for saying anything disloyal, profane, or abusive about the government or the war effort.

Espionage and Sedition Acts; $10,000; 20

Several factors contributed to the tremendous increase in black migration. What are some?

First, many African Americans sought to escape racial discrimination in the South, which made it hard to make a living and often threatened their lives. Also, a boll weevil infestation, aided by floods and droughts, had ruined much of the South's cotton fields.

To help produce and conserve food, Wilson set up the ___ under ___. Instead of rationing food, he called on people to follow the "gospel of the clean plate." He declared one day a week "meatless," another "sweetless," two days "wheatless," and two other days "porkless." Restaurants removed sugar bowls from the table and served bread only after the first course.

Food Administration; Herbert Hoover

The main targets of these attacks were Americans who had emigrated from other nations, especially those from Germany and Austria-Hungary. The most bitter attacks were directed against the nearly 2 million Americans who had been born in ___, but other foreign-born persons and Americans of German descent suffered as well.

Germany

The greatest effect of the First World War on African Americans' lives was that it accelerated the ___.

Great Migration

What did the War Industries Board do?

The board encouraged companies to use mass-production techniques to increase efficiency. It also urged them to eliminate waste by standardizing products---for instance, by making only 5 colors of typewriter ribbons instead of 150. The WIB set production quotas and allocated raw materials.

George Creel

The head of the Committee on Pubic Information; was a former muckraking journalist; Creel persuaded the nation's artists and advertising agencies to create thousands of paintings, posters, cartoons, and sculptures promoting the war. He recruited some 75,000 men to serve as "Four-Minute Men," who spoke about everything related to the war: the draft, rationing, bond drives, victory gardens, and topics such as "Why We Are Fighting" and "The Meaning of America."

Great Migration

The large-scale movement of hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks to cities in the North.

Committee on Public Information (CPI)

Nation's first propaganda agency that the government set up to popularize the war.

To deal with disputes between management and labor, President Wilson established the ___ in 1918. Workers who refused to obey board decisions could lose their ___ exemptions. "Work or fight," the board told them. However, the board also worked to improve factory conditions. It pushed for an eight-hour workday, promoted safety inspections, and enforced the child labor ban.

National War Labor Board; draft

Americans changed the name of German measles to "___." Hamburger---named after the German city of ___---became "___" or "___," depending on whether you were buying it in a store or eating it in a restaurant. Sauerkraut was renamed "___," and dachshunds turned into "___."

"liberty measles"; Hamburg; "Salisbury steak"; "Liberty sandwich"; "liberty cabbage"; "liberty pups"

The U.S. spent about ___ on the war effort. The government raised about ___ of this amount through taxes, including a ___ (which taxed high incomes at a higher rate than low incomes), a war-profits tax, and higher excise taxes on tobacco, liquor, and luxury goods. It raised the rest through public borrowing by selling "Liberty Loan" and "Victory Loan" bonds.

$35.5 billion; one-third; progressive income tax

In ___, Congress finally passed the ___, granting women the right to vote. In ___ the amendment was ratified by the states.

1919; 19th amendment; 1920

Under the WIB, industrial production in the United States increased by about ___. However, the WIB applied price controls only at the wholesale level. As a result, retail prices soared, and in 1918 they were almost double what they had been before the war. Corporate profits soared as well, especially in such industries as chemicals, meatpacking oil, and steel.

20 percent

Wages in most industries rose during the war years. Hourly wages for blue-collar workers---those in the metal trades, shipbuilding, and meatpacking, for example---rose by about ___. A household's income, however, was largely undercut by rising food prices and housing costs.

20 percent

What was the ruling of Schenck v. United States?

A unanimous court upheld Schenck's conviction, stating that under wartime conditions, the words in the leaflets were not protected by the right to free speech.

Charles Schenck

An official of the U.S. Socialist Party, distributed leaflets that called the draft a "deed against humanity" and compared conscription to slavery, urging conscripts to "assert your rights." Schenck was convicted of sedition and sentenced to prison, but he urged that the conviction, punishment, and even the law itself violated his right to free speech.

___ believed that African-American support for the war would strengthen calls for racial justice.

W.E.B. Du Bois

The main regulatory body was the ___. It was established in ___ and reorganized in ___ under the leadership of ___, a prosperous businessman.

War Industries Board; 1917; 1918; Bernard M. Baruch

Jane Addams

Was active in the peace movement; Addams helped found the Women's Peace Party in 1915 and remained a pacifist even after the United States entered the war

William Monroe Trotter

founder of the Boston Guardian, believed that victims of racism should not support a racist government.

The WIB was not the only federal agency to regulate the economy during the war. The Railroad Administration controlled the railroads, and the Fuel Administration monitored coal supplies and rationed gasoline and heating oil. In addition, many people adopted "___ Sundays" and "___ nights" to conserve fuel. In March 1918, the Fuel Administration introduced another conservation measure: ___-saving time, which had first been proposed by ___ in the 1770s as a way to take advantage of the longer days of summer.

gasless Sundays; lightless; daylight; Benjamin Franklin

In the fall of 1918, the U.S. suffered a home-front crisis when an international flu epidemic affected about ___ of the U.S. population. The effect of the epidemic on the economy was devastating. The epidemic killed about ___ Americans before it disappeared in 1919. Historians believe that the influenza virus killed as many as ___ people worldwide.

one-third; 500,000; 30 million

Racial prejudice against African Americans also existed in the North. The press of new migrants to Northern cities caused ___ and intensified ___.

overcrowding; racial tensions

Homeowners planted "___" in their yards. Schoolchildren spent their after-school hours growing tomatoes and cucumbers in public parks. As a result of these and similar efforts, American food shipments to the Allies tripled. Hoover also set a high government price on wheat and other staples. Farmers responded by putting an additional 40 million acres into production. In the process, they increased their income by almost 30 percent.

victory gardens