Chapter 22 - Cultural Conflict, Bubble, and Bust Flashcards
1
Q
welfare capitalism
A
- system of labor relations that stressed management’s responsibility for employee’s well-being
- Henry Ford pioneered this system before WWI, paying $5 per day. Also offered a profit-sharing plan to employees who met standards of its Social Department
- General Electric and U.S. Steel provided health insurance and old-age pensions (when government unemployment compensation and S.S. didn’t exist)
- Chicago’s Western Electric Company built athletic facilities and selectively offered paid vacations
- Though offered benefits to workers, welfare capitalism had serious limitations
2
Q
Adkins v. Children’s Hospital
A
- Voided minimum wage for women workers in District of Columbia, reversing many of the gains that had been achieved through the ground-breaking decision in Muller v. Oregon
- Such decisions (w/ anti Union campaigns) caused labor union membership to fall from 5.1 million (1920) to 3.6 million (1929)
3
Q
Red Scare
A
- Anticommunist hysteria that swept the U.S., first after WWI, and led to a series of government raids on alleged subversives and a suppression of civil liberties
- April 1919, postal workers discovered and defused 34 mail bombs addressed to government officials
- June, bomb detonated outside Washington town house of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer –> used incident to fan public fears
- Natives scares of immigrants/ communits
4
Q
Palmer Raids
A
•Series of raids led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer on radical organizations that peaked in January 1920, when federal agents arrested 6,000 citizens and aliens and denied them access to legal counsel
5
Q
Sheppard-Towner Federal Maternity and Infancy Act
A
- (1921) First federally funded healthcare legislation that provided federal funds for medical clinics, prenatal education programs, and visiting nurses
- Opponents warned that act would lead to socialized medicine, but it improved healthcare for the poor and significantly lowered infant mortality rates
- Marked the first time Congress designated federal funds for the states to encourage them to administer a social welfare program
6
Q
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
A
- Organization founded by women activists in 1919; its members denounced imperialism, stressed the human suffering caused by militarism, and proposed social justice measures
- Members included Jane Addams
- Came under fierce attack during Red Scare because organization included socialist women in its ranks
- Had difficulty gaining access to positions inside the Republican and Democratic parties
- Politicians took women votes for granted, so new reforms failed to gain support
7
Q
associated state
A
- System of voluntary business cooperation with government. The Commerce Department helped create 2,000 trade associations representing companies in almost every major industry
- Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover hoped he could achieve what progressives had sought through governmental regulation
- Meant giving corporate leaders greater policy making power
8
Q
Teapot Domes
A
Nickname for scandal in which Interior Secretary Albert Fall accepted $300,000 in bribes for leasing oil reserves on public land in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. It was part of a larger pattern of corruption that marred Warren G. Harding’s presidency
•FYI: Harding died of a sudden heart-attack in August 1923
9
Q
dollar diplomacy
A
- Policy emphasizing the connection between America’s economic and political interests overseas. Business would gain from diplomatic efforts in its behalf, while the strengthened American economic presence overseas would give added leverage to American diplomacy
- Term coined in 1924 by Samuel Guy Inman, a Disciples of Christ missionary who toured U.S. - occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic
- Usually manged to get loans repaid, securing bankers’ profits, but loans often ended up in pockets of elites; U.S. policies failed to build broad-based prosperity overseas
10
Q
prohibition
A
- Ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol that went into effect in January, 1920 with the 18th amendment. Prohibition was repealed in 1933
- Wartime anti-German prejudice was a major spur
- Many citizens decided it was unpatriotic to drink beer since breweries were owned by German Americans
- Congress limited brewers’ and distillers’ use of barley and other scarce grains = consumption declined
- Culminated with Congress’s passage of 18th amendment in 1917
- Prohibited “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors”
- Many ignored law in urban areas, going to illegal drinking sites (speakeasies)
- Profits from secret clubs enriched gangsters like Chicago’s Al Capone and New York’s Jack Diamond
- Difficulties of enforcing prohibition contributed to its repeal in 1933
11
Q
American Civil Liberties Union
A
- Organization formed during the Red Scare to protect free speech rights
- Challenged the law’s constitutionality
- Intervened in trial of John T. Scopes, high school biology teacher who taught theory of evolution to his class and faced a jail sentence for doing so
- Attracted national attention because Clarence Darrow (famous criminal lawyer) defended Scopes while William Jennings Bryan (3-time Democratic presidential candidate) spoke for prosecution
12
Q
Scopes Trial
A
- 1925 trail of John Scopes, biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating his state’s ban on teaching evolution. Trial created a nationwide media frenzy and came to be seen as a showdown between urban and rural values
- Jury deemed him guilty, but Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned Scopes’s conviction
13
Q
Nation Origins Act
A
- 1924 law limiting annual immigration from each country to no more than 2% of that nationality’s percentage of the U.S. population as it had stood in 1890. Law severely limited immigration, especially from Southern and Easter Europe
- Small numbers of Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russians, and other Southern and Eastern European immigrants arrived before 1890, law drastically limited immigration from those places
- New laws permitted unrestricted immigration from Western Hemisphere
- Latin Americans arrived in increasing numbers, finding jobs that had gone to other immigrants before exclusion
14
Q
Ku Klux Klan
A
- Secret society that first undertook violence against African Americans in South after the Civil War, but was reborn in 1915 to fight the perceived threats posed by African Americans, immigrants, radicals, feminists, Catholics, and Jews
- Wielded serious political power
- Some Klansmen cooperated with members of the Anti-Saloon League to enforce prohibition laws through threats and violent attack
- Henry Ford was part of the KKK
15
Q
Harlem Renaissance
A
- Flourishing of African American artists, writers, intellectuals, and social leaders in the 1920s, centered in the neighborhoods of Harlem, NYC
- Zora neale Hurston, believed African American culture could be understood without heavy emphasis on the impact of white oppression. Hurston’s stories and novels sought to articulate what it meant “to be a Negro and an American”
