History of the United States of 1918 to 1945
The howling Twenties
Consequences of the First World War
In 1918, the United States leaves reinforced war. Located in the camp of the winners, the country did not undergo the dramatic destruction of part of Europe and the human losses are limited. It even acquired a military scale of first order. The maritime trade exploded and New York supplanted London in the financial businesses. The majority of the European countries are involved in debt: the Americans claim the refunding of the ten billion dollars lent. However the American Sénat refuses to take part in the Société of the Nations and thus joins again with inclinations of the Isolationnisme.As in Europe, years 1919-1920 are difficult in the United States: it is necessary to reconvert the saving in war and to face the Inflation. The end of the official State intervention set up in 1917 and the rise of the trade unionism cause many strikes in all the country. In 1919, one counts 4,1 million strikers who claim better wages and a reduction of the working time. They often degenerate in a violent way and of the confrontations take place in several big cities, as with Boston. The year 1920 is remembered by many anarchistic attacks : the political officials are touched, like the mayor of Seattle, at which a bomb explodes. The offices of the Morgan bank are puffed up by an attack which makes 38 dead and 200 wounded. The authorities take measures of repression against the American anarchists but also Communists and Socialists. Some are imprisoned, the other constrained ones to exile itself. The public opinion amalgamates the foreigners and “the Reds”. It is in this tense atmosphere that the anarchists of Italian origin are carried out Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in 1921.
Economic prosperity
During the Years 1920, the United States knows one boom badly distributed: in agriculture the wages and the prices fall. In same time, new industries (radio, Cinema, Automobile and Chemistry) are flourishing grace a constant consumption. The air transport air settles primarily in the states of the West, California at the head. The first large American airline companies develop: (TWA, American Airlines, United Airlines). Charles Lindbergh is the first pilot to cross the Atlantic Ocean during a flight as a recluse and without stopover, connecting New York to Paris the 20 and May 21st 1927, in 33h 30mn, on board sound Avion, the Spirit off Saint Louis . Modernity and confidence in the future are incarnated by the tendency Art Déco in the skyscrapers of New York: (Chrysler Building, Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center.All the areas do not benefit from this economic advancement: the standard of living in the rural areas falls incredibly behind that of the urban areas and peripherals. As of 1920, the majority of the Americans lives downtown. Those know very important improvements in the city planning and of housing. The boom felt in the increase in the level of the appropriations like in the stockmarkets, which reach dangerously high and speculative levels.
In 1919, manufacture, the sale, the import and the export of alcohol are prohibited by a amendment the Constitution of the United States in order to attack various social problems and of health (the Volstead Act ). The Prohibition ends in 1933 by another modification of the Constitution; she is generally regarded as a failure: the alcohol consumption did not lower in an important way, whereas the organized crime was reinforced with it. However, it was about the first amendment to the Constitution controlling the social activity directly. The 18th Amendment thus represents the growing capacity of the State at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Great Depression
The stock exchange Crash of the October 29th 1929 and the depression which followed were discussed many times, often under ideological angles.
Causes
A too great inequality of the purchasing powers could be the dominating factor about it. Whereas the industrial production and agricultural increases, the proportion of the profits going to the potential farmers, workmen and other consumers is too much weak to create a market sufficient for the goods which they produce. Even in 1929, after nearly one decade of economic growth, more half of the American home live close to or under the threshold to subsistence: they are too poor to take share with the great boom of the consumption of the Twenties, to buy cars, houses and other goods which the industrialized economy produced, the too poor to even treat to food and housing minima. As long as the companies extend their arsenal of production (factories, warehouses, heavy equipment and other investments), the economy is flourishing. At the end of the Twenties, however, the investments created more spaces of production than necessary, and the factories produce more than the consumers cannot buy.The economy of the nation started to show signs of bad health several months before October 1929. Stocks of products of all types were three times more important than one year before (indication which the public did not buy the products as quickly as in the past); other indicators - industrial production, prices of large, freight) were with the fall.
The US economy also suffers from a serious lack of diversification. Prosperity is excessively dependant on some basic industries, primarily construction and the car; in end of the year 20, these industries are declining. Between 1926 and 1929, the construction costs fall of 11 billion dollars to less than 9 billion. The sales of cars start to fall later, but in the first nine months of 1929, they decline of more than one third. Once these two crucial industries start to weaken, the other sectors are not enough strong to absorb the lack.
The low level of reliable economic information us suggests that construction and housing stagnate starting from 1926, joining the decline of the Agriculture, the mine, and the Pétrole. In all these industries, the overproduction benefits the prices and downwards. The wages do not go up rather quickly to make it possible to the consumers to buy all the new residences and domestic products available. The foreign trade is restricted by a Protectionnisme growing in the industrialized world. The stock exchange Crack withdraws all confidence remaining with the consumers, and more important, at the financial institutions. Those are extremely reticent to invest. Also, the economy sinks in a very serious depression, known by the Americans like the “Grande Depression”.
Great Depression
It is marked by extreme levels of unemployment (24% in 1932,13 million people in Sous-emploi), negligible investments, and prices and wages in freefall. The first demonstrations take place (New York, March 1930) and the communist influence grows among the victims of the crisis. Hoovervilles are the most stripped camps sheltering. In June 1932, 20.000 War veterans walk on the federal capital to claim their war pensions.In answer to the depression, the Congress and the Administration Hoover start a rather isolationist customs policy and by decrees tries to maintain the prices for the farmers, and of launching a program of great public works, thinking that the federal government was to maintain the level of employment. These efforts are without precedents, but the Depression in rightly: price indexes, profits, production, and unemployment worsen.
The New Deal
With million unemployed person, the political agitation and dissatisfaction increased much in the hard-working classes. The government of the United States answers it without sympathy in a repressive way, which could well have started a rising Socialiste, but the president Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected in 1932, introduced several measurements to come to assistance of the poor and the unemployed persons. It equips these measurements skilfully, while refusing to qualify them socialist , refusing even to admit that they could the being. It also contributes to the future stability of the economy by instituting new regulations for the businesses, and in particular the bank. In the twenty last years, the historians decreased the qualification of “revolutionist” of measurements of the Roosevelt Administration, seeing an obvious result of the Hoover Administration rather there. In spite of (or because of) these new measurements, the economic improvement is very slow. The blackest point of the Great Depression is reached in 1933, but the economy still shows very few improvements towards the end of the decade, and remains poor until its in-depth replanning with the entry in the Second world war. The GNP goes back to its level of 1929, but the level of unemployment remains above 15%.
In the the Thirties, the area of the large plains to the the United States was touched by the Dust Bowl: during the Great depression, part of the Middle West, agricultural heart of the United States, was devastated by the dryness and terrible storms of dust which could last several days. These storms destroyed all harvests, stripped the fields of their ground, replacing it by dust, buried dwellings and farm equipment and threw thousands of farmers on the roads, in direction of the west. One thinks that approximately 3 million people thus migrated, in particular towards the California. The most touched farmers were originating in the Oklahoma (approximately 15% of the population of the state) and in the Arkansas. They respectively took the names of Okies and Arkies . John Steinbeck, in his novel Grapes of anger , described in a poignant way this period of the American history.
Second world war
The isolationist feeling in America ebbed, but the United States first of all refuses to enter in war, limiting itself to provide out of weapons and equipment the the United Kingdom, the China and the Soviet Union. The American feeling changes completely at the time of the sudden attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor. The United States unites then quickly with alliance soviéto-British against the Japan, the fascistic Italy and the Germany Nazi, which form the alliance of the Axe.Even with the American participation, nearly four years are necessary to overcome Germany and Japan (with the use of the atomic bomb with Hiroshima and Nagasaki). American engagement in the war was vital to prevent the victory of the Axis, but certain historians estimate however that it is the raising of the Soviet Union which made it fold, not entire certainly, since it entered in war against Japan only on August 8th, but the Germany Nazi suffered enormously from the Russian push. The Soviet Union has in addition undergoes the most important losses.
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