1. Chapter 22 – A Turbulent Decade
Section 1 – Postwar Troubles

2. Demobilization Return of 4.5 million soldiers
Unemployment rises, wages fall
Wartime shortages
High Prices
Women forced out of jobs
Government cancels $2 billion in military contracts
12% of labor force unemployed
Farm crisis
Cotton
35 cents per pound
down to 16 cents per pound

3. Labor Strife 1919 Seattle General Strike Boston Police Strike
3,600 work stoppages
4 million workers
Seattle General Strike
60,000 workers left jobs to participate
21 community kitchens fed strikers
Fear of Bolshevik Revolution
“Revolution doesn’t need violence.
The General Strike is of itself
a weapon of revolution.”
Boston Police Strike
Officers unionized
Not recognized by Edwin Curtis
Police Commissioner
75% went on strike
Calvin Coolidge – Governor
State militia called in
“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.

4. Strife Continued Steel Strike United Mine Workers Strike
365,000 steelworkers in western Pa
“Loyal Americans” – Return to work
Companies hired thugs,&police to intimidate
strikers who were jailed, beaten, or shot
Companies brought in
African Americans
Mexicans
Union leaders call off strike
United Mine Workers Strike
400,000 coal miners
Demanded 50% pay increase
5 day, 6 hour work week
John L. Lewis
President UMW
Wilson condemns strike
14 % wage increase

5. The Red Scare Red Scare Bolshevik Revolution Marxists in America
Period of anticommunist hysteria during 1919 and 1920
Bolshevik Revolution
1917 Russia
Vladimir Lenin
Communist International
Overthrow capitalism and free enterprise
Marxists in America
Eugene Debs
Socialist Party 1901
Ran for President 5 times from 1900 to 1920
1912 – 900,000 votes
Agents = Reds
Immigrants
New York State Assembly
Elected socialist members expelled

6. The Palmer Raids Bomb scares in 1919
Antiradical fears
April
36 bombs in the mail
John D. Rockefeller
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (Supreme Court)
Postmaster General Albert Burleson
A. Mitchell Palmer (Attorney General)
House bombed by anarchist
Launches anticommunist crusade
J. Edgar Hoover
Future head of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Series of Raids
Arrested thousands of suspected radicals in 33 cities nationwide

7. Sacco and Vanzetti Anarchists
Batolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco
Sacco – shoemaker
Vanzetti – peddled fish from a pushcart
Charged with murder of paymaster
Shoe factory in Boston
Judge Webster Thayer
Strong dislike of radicals
Sentences the men to death
Executed – August 23, 1927
“This man (Vanzetti), although he may not actually have committed the crime attributed to him, is nevertheless morally guilty, because he is an enemy of our existing institutions… The defendant’s ideals are associated with crime.”
Drew worldwide attention
Protests
New York, Paris