1. Section 1: Americans Struggle with Postwar Issues
Chapter 12
Section 1: Americans Struggle with Postwar Issues

2. Postwar Trends Debate over League of Nations had divided America.
Returning soldiers faced unemployment or took jobs away from women/minorities.
Cost of living had doubled.
Nativism, the prejudice against foreign born people, swept the nation.
Isolationism, a policy of pulling away from involvement in World affairs, also grew.

3. Fear of Communism
Many Americans feared Communism, an economic and political system based on single party government ruled by a dictatorship.
In order to equalize wealth and power, communists would put an end to private property, substituting government ownership of factories, railroads and other businesses.

4. The Red Scare
In 1919, revolutionaries in Russia overthrew the czarist regime.
Vladimir I. Lenin and his Bolsheviks established a communist state.
A communist party formed in the U.S.
70,000 radicals joined, including some from the Industrial Workers of the World.
Bombs were mailed to the government and the people were afraid of the communists takeover.

5. The Palmer Raids
Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover, and their agents hunted down communists, socialists, and anarchists.
As they trampled people’s civil rights, hundreds of foreign born radicals were deported without trial.
Palmer Raids fails.

6. Sacco and Vanzetti
Both Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were anarchist immigrants and were arrested and charged with a robbery and murder.
There wasn’t much evidence but were found guilty and were sentenced to death.
Protest soon followed.

7. The Klan Rises Again
As a result of the Red Scare, different groups used anti-communism as an excuse to harass any group unlike themselves.
The KKK was devoted to “100% Americanism”
By 1924, KKK membership reached 4.5 million
KKK members were paid to recruit new members into their world of secret rituals and racial violence

8. The Quota System
Established max amount of people that could enter the U.S. from each foreign country
Reduced the total number of persons to be admitted in any one year to 150,000
Discriminated against people from eastern and southern Europe--mostly Roman Catholics and Jews

9. A Time of Labor Unrest More than 3,000 strikes during 1919
The Boston Police Strike – the Boston police hadn’t been given a raise since WWI and were denied the right to unionize.
Calvin Coolidge is praised for calling out the National Guard to settle it down.
The Steel Mill Strike – workers wanted right to negotiate for shorter working hours/a living wage. 300,000 workers walked off, steel companies hired strikebreakers.

11. Labor Movement Loses Appeal
Union membership dropped because:
Much of the work force were immigrants willing to work in poor conditions
Unions had difficulty organizing immigrants who spoke different languages
Farmers who had migrated to cities were used to relying on themselves
Most unions excluded African Americans