Chapter 21 A Turbulent Decade 21-1: Postwar Troubles

Demobilization the shift from a wartime to a peacetime footing Four million soldiers returned to civilian life Women were urged to give up jobs to make room for returning veterans. The same patriotism which induced women to enter industry during the war should induce them to vacate their positions, - NY Labor Federation Women were forced out by men Women work force fell in 1920 to what it was in 1910 Demand for goods out-spaced supply Prices soared until cost of goods and services in 1920 was about twice that of 1914 1920-1921 Recession struct and prices fell Demobilization was a factor government canceled more than $2 Billion in war contracts Factories cut back production and laid off workers 1921 10% of labor force were unemployed Farm crisis benefited from wartime markets Dep. Of Agriculture, wheat dropped from 2.16 to less than a dollar American farms lost ownership of their land 1919 unions called more than 3600 strikes First strike

1. January 1919 2. 35,000 shipyard workers 3. Seattle, Washington 4. Demanded higher wages and shorter workday 5. Within two weeks, 110 local unions voted to join the workers in a general strike 6. Began on February 6, 10 am. 7. 60,000 workers left their job. Seattle newspapers blamed immigrants calling them muddle-headed foreigners and riffraff from europe intent on terrorizing the community

Mayor Ole Hanson the strike as the work of Bolsheviks and called in troops to prevent unrest public pressure = no more strike The Boston Strike

1. September 1919 2. Boston Police formed a union to seek better pay and working conditions 3. Edwin Curtis refused to recognize the union fired 19 officers for engaging in union activities 4. 75% of police went on strike 5. Journalist William Allen White described strike 6. Governor Calvin Coolidge called in state militia to restore order 7. Newspapers denounced strikes as agents of Lenin and the strike as a Bolshevist nightmare 8. Curtis hired unemployed veterans The Steel Strike 1. September 1919 2. 365,000 steelworkers 3. Demanded recognition of their union and protesting low wages and long working hours. 4. Almost shut down the steel industry 5. Portrayed foreign workers as radicals and called on loyal Americans to return to work 6. Bosses brought in African Americans and Mexicans as replacement workers and hired armed thugs to attack the strikers 7. Strikers were jailed, beaten, or shot 8. January 9, 1920 canceled the strike Red Scare A period of anti-Communist hysteria Communists controlled many women's organizations Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Walter Lippmann Journalist The Palmer Raids

1. 1919 2. Rash of bomb scares 3. April, alert postal clerks discovered 36 bombs in the mail addressed to such prominent citizens as John D. Rockefeller, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Postmaster General Albert Burleson

4. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's house was damaged, died in blast 5. newspapers called a few free treatments in the electric chair. 6. Palmer launched an anti-Red crusade