1. America as a World Power

By the turn of the 20th century, Amercan expensionists had much reason for satisfaction. After decadets of imagining the glories of an empire, they now had one with its farthest limits almost 10,000 miles apart. In the climax of their efforts, the war with Spain, William McKinley had proved to be somewhat unwilling leader, who had to be reassured from time to time that this was the thing to do. Then, in the fall of 1901, soon after the start of the secound term, he was shot by an assassin. His death catapulted into office a young man whose vigor and imagination complemented the aspiration of a global minded Congressional leadership. Theodore Roosevelt, only 43 when he became President, was perfectly suited to the prevailing mood of the times.

One of the new President’s earliest concerns was hemispheric defense. Along with thousends of country men, he had read with mounting frustration the newspaper accounts of the long, boyler-straining voyage made in 1898 by the battleship Oregon. Stationed on the West Coast, the vessel had to steam around Cape Horn to reach Cuba during the Spanish-American War. The battleship could get faster to Cuba on a cannal across the Isthmuts of Panama, but the American participation in such a canal project had been blocked during the 19th century by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. This treaty was signed with Great Britain and now that the Americans sought to escape from their treaty obligations, and in 1901, by the Hay-Pauncfote Treaty, the British renounced joint canal rights. In 1903, the American State Department drew up the Hay-Herran Treaty with Columbia, owner of the isthmain proprety, thus preparing the way for the canal. 1.1 The pacific interests

The Spanish-American war initiated to save the downtrodden Cubans, had also spread American intervention across the Pacific to the very shores of China and Japan. With the occupation of the Philippines, Guam, Samoa and Hawaii, the Far East was brought sharply into the American public’s view. In 1894, when Japan went to war with China over rights in Korea and scoresd a surprisingly quick triumph, it was the signal for a new scramble for power in China by several European countries. Demanding and obtaining many concessions, they carved China into “spheres of influence” , by which they controlled much of her economy. Fearing the effects of this foreign domination, in 1899 the United States took the leadin prompting an open-door policy-one that would give all nations an equal right to China’s trade.

Secretary of State John Hay sent out open-door notes, urging the program upon Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Japan and Italy. All agreed to the terms he proposed.

In 1900, some of Chinese people rebelled against their government’s policy of trading with foreign countries. A secret society known as the Boxers staged an uprising against the foreigners, killed a number of them and laid siege to the embassies in Peking the Chinese capital. In the spring of 1900 the governments of the “foreign devils”put together an expeditionary force to rescue their beleaguered nationals where 5,000 American troops participated. Hay, fearing that other powers may use the disturbance as an excuse to reassert their control, again called for the open door. This time the

proclaimed United States support for China in preventing outsiders from infringing on her teritory.

As the American State Departmnent played out its hand in the open-door game, Japan watched the Chinese mainland with mounting concern. The Japanese were alarmed by Russian expansion into Manchuria and Korea, and in February, 1904 Japan and Russia went to war. The Japan navy quickly destroyed Russia’s Asiatic squadrons. After this the Japanese secretly asked Rosevelt to referee their proposed peace talks. They realized that if the war went on, the greater Russian strength might wear down their ability to resist.

1.2 Dollar diplomacy

William Howard Taft, who suceeded Rosevelt in 1909, carried forward the idea of American responsibility in both the Caraiben and the Orient by somewhat different means. Taft’s Secretary of State, Philander Knox, described it as a “spirited foreign policy” but it quickly became known as “dollar diplomacy”. It went beyond protecting American investments abroad and actively encouraged the use of private financial resources in underdeveloped countries and the use of military force to guard those investments.

Taft’s policy left no doub that whenever dollars were needed for investment south of the border, their safety would be guaranteed by troops. It was out-and-out financial imperialism, imposed upon weaker nations under the guise of hemispheric stability.Americans found a fertile field in the Far East: China, in 1909, Straight and Knox agreed to the entrence of the rival American financiers headed by J. P. Morgan. The international board was to control the road, and the profits would be used to pay back the loan. After a time the United States government finally withdrew its plan. If Knox’s blundering did nothing else but it helped demonstrate to his countrymen some of the difficulties that could come from financial imperialism. It gave fuller meaning of the statement of Taft’s sucessor, Woodrow Wilson, who later remarked “It is a very perlious thing to determine the foreign policy of a nation in terms of material intrests.”

2. The City Goes Modern

Between the years 1850 and 1900, the percentage of Americans living in cities rose from 15 to 40 and during this time, the few existing American cities were a hephazard sprawl of building conveniently located near a port or a river. Imediatly beyond such primitive “urban areas” was the countryside. Typically, the city’s streets were few, unpaved, unlighted, and extremly dirty; and the buildings were generally low, as there were neither the means nor the need to build them higher. Slowly changes began to take place. They did not occur in the same pattern everywhere, but as the number of people incrased it became necessary for the city to supply decent water, transportation, fire and police protection, recreation and-for certain groups- hosting. It was late in the century when electricity and steel came into general use, and with them came the characteristic features of our modern cities- the skyscrapers, the various kinds of modern transportation, population congestion, and rapid tempo of multitudinous vocations and avocations.

3. Twentieth Century America

The first two decades of the 20th centry saw enormous changes in American life. The years that bridge the gap were a tumult of cultural, material and scientific innovations- partially caused by World War I. Ass with all such periods, what happened was so far reaching that few if any of those who witnessed it were aware of the consequances.

By 1900, the nation had “sloved” the indian problem, had recognized that the political power of the agrarian West was no longer a threat to the political power of the industrial North-east, and had emerged as a world power after winnig its “splendid little war” with Spain. Between 1900 and 1920 such western states as Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and North Dakota doubled their population, demonstrating the finality with which the frontier was closed. And in the same period, the nation’s population grew from 76 million to 106 million as theresult of natural increase and an enormous immigration. Earlier periods also had shown grest spurts of physical growth, but this onewas particulary because of cultural revolution acompanying it.

In 1900,about three-fifths of America still lived in the country or in vilages. During the preciding few decades, there had been a steady move toward the cities, but dispite this trend, the rural population stood at something over 45 million compared to roughly 30 million city dewllers. The census of 1920 showed that in the first time in American history, urban population exceded rural population. One of the reasons for the shift, especially in the 1910-20 period, was the tendency of new imigrants to stay in the ports they first came to.

The rise of the cities, the growth of factories, and emergence of the white-collar class was acompanied by a steady decline in the importance of agriculture. Manufactrung gradually replaced it as America’s leading industry. This did not mean, however, the agriculture was to disappear. On the contrary, more factories meant more machines, and mechanization in time led to larger farms operated by fewer people. Industrial and scientific progress also made agriculture more efficent as farmers learned how to make their land yield larger crops. Eventually population than ever before – were producing more food than the nation could consume. Industrial America was faced with surplus crops – a problem that had not exsisted when the country was largely agricultural.

3.1. “The Four Hundred”

America had been founded on a tradition of social equality for all its citizens. During the firs century of the nations history, this ideal was largly realized. There were exceptions of course. For exemple plantation owners were an upper class in the pre-Civil War South. Their wealth and their social position were destroyed in the war. In the 20 th

century, a new upper class apeared in the North.In closing decades of the 19th century, great fortunes had been built in real estate,

railroads, steel and oil. Members of these newly rich families soon formed a financial aristocracy. New York became the capital of social empire, dominated by the Morgans, Vanderbilts, the Harrimans and the Astors, to name a few. During the late 1890s when

the brilliant dinners and balls of this group began to attract international attention, someone observed that Mrs. William Astor’s private ballroom could hold only 400. Someone else said there were only about that number of people prominent enough to be invited. Soon New York society was being calld the Four Hundred. Millions read about their activities, thousends wonderd how they, too, could become members. The new aristocracy was the last group of Americans to declar its independence from Great Britain and Europe too. It was ironic that a nation emerging as a world power had social leaders who had to look abroad for reassurance. 3.2. Rising America

With the pass of the time America evolved, but it had lacks which asked for slovation. Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant, made the public aware of the overcrowded slums with his book How the other half lives. This expose and the writings of other muckrakers ultimatly prodded some municipalities into initiating improvement programs. There were other persons Lillian Wald, Jane Addams, Agnes Nestor, Emma Goldman carried out crusades to better working conditons for women, child labor conditions and other important causes.

Another symbol of changing America was the automobile. The transformation of the “horseless carriage” from a rich man’s toy into a low – priced, simple – to – operate vechicle gave millions a new mobility. The improvement of the internal-combustion engine during the years 1900-20 not only revolutionized but also provided mechanization for the farmers.

The airplane was strictly a 20th century invention. Samuel P. Langley’s unsuccessful attempts to fly in 1903 were followed only a few days later by Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.

Inventors and engineers of 19th century had bequeated a magnificent heritage to 20th-century America. Thomas Eddison’s electric light was a part of everyday life by 1900, but it was in the next few years that the uses of power was multiplied many times over. The new form of illumination was used not only in the home and in buisness offices but also in street lightning advertising signs, and a device called the motion - picture projector. Electric motive power, first used in trolley cars, offerd steam its first real competition on the railroads.

The transmission if information with the aid of electricity provided another means of saving time for a nation that put a premium on efficiency. Late in 1901, Guliemo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraph, stood on Newfoundland’s shores and received a message from the British Isles.

4. World War I and the Twenties

A little more than a year after Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, an event took place in Europe that was not only to destroy the uneasy peace there, but eventually to involve an isolationist America in a conflict from which it would emerge the leading power in the world. The naions of Europe were split into two major groups, between which a balance of power existed.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francsis Ferdinand of Austria was assassined while visiting Serbia. At first it appeared to be another Balkan crisis that might pass without major disturbance, but a month later, Austria severed relations with Serbia, a move that proceded war by only a few days. Germany stood back of Austrua’s actions, while Russia stepped forward to defend its small Balkan friend. Despite frantic effprts by would-be peacemakers to localizate the war, it speard rapidly, involving next France and Belgium and soon Great Britain. As the world looked on, Europe almost overnight erupted into war.American relations wih European nations were at the time generally friendly, especially with Great Britain. But Wilson quickly called upon his countryman to take no sides and to be “impartial in tought as well as action”. American government soon began to show symphaty for the Allies (as the Entente governments came to be called) in their struggle against the Central Powers.

Friendship and neutrality are hard to combine in war time. As the war went on, American involvment depended. Walter Hines Page, United Sates ambassador to London, was outspoken in his belief that America should enter the war against Germany. When Wilson tried yo tone him down, Page become uncooperative to the point of giving the British information he should have kept secret.

British liner Lusitania in February, 1915, was surprised to see the American flag run up as the vessel aproached the irish coast. When the United States remonstrated, the British argued that the Germans ought to stop any ships whose identity they doubted.Despite a German apology, and the revelation that the Lusitania carried military supplies and 4,200 cases of cartridges, the incident had a profund effect on both the American people and the administration. Continued sinking kept public anger high. In the spring of 1916, the French steamer Sussex was torpeded, injuring some ofher American passengers. For nine months the Germans kept the “Sussex pledge”, not to sink any unarmed ship without warning.Apparently satisfied Wilson ran for re-election in 1916, with “He kept us out of war” best slogan. Wilson’s desire to be neutral was further weakend when, late in February, he learned that the German foreign secretary, the same month that three American ships were atacked without warning and sunk. Wilson decided to ask Congress to recognize that a state of war existed between the States and Germany. On April 6, 1917, the resolution had passed both hauses. Wilson signed it and America’s neutrality ended. Wilson the peaceful, Wilson the idealist was now a war President.

4.1. War in the Air

When World War I began in 1914, France had a relatively large airforce – 260 planes – and 191 trained pilots. Germany had a mere 46 planes, England only 29. Non of these were armed, and it was assumed that they would be used solely for observation. Soon however the rival pilots took to firing pistols and rifles at one another as they passed in the air. Then the Frenchmen Roland Garros put metal deflectors on his propeller so he could use a forward – firing machine gun without splintering the propeller. Next, a Dutchman named Anthony Fokker, who was working for Germany, invented a synchronizing gear that permited a machine gun to fire only when the

propeller was not in the way, and a truly efficient system of making war in the air had been found. Planes could now strafe enemy troops and shot down enemy aircraft to prevent observation.

4.2. The Business of Farming

By the 1920 the American farmer had become something of a businessman himself. The aged old figure of the honest plowman following the endless single furrow had given way to that of an agricultural technician operating expensive gasoline – driven machinery; the day of the small farmer was rapidly passing. Now powerful tractors pulled multiple plows in the springtime and complicated, costly wheat combines in the fall.When the decade began, the prospects for American agriculture had seemed bright. Wartime prices had been high – artificially high. But un the next few years, American markets in Europe dwindled as that batterd continenet recovered from the effects of the war and was once more able to feed its own population.

More successful was the Agricultural Marketing Bill, passed in 1929 and signed by Hoover. It established an eight member Federal Farm Board, headed by the secretary of Agruculture, to encourage the development of agricultural cooperatives and to make loans to them. The board tried to buy up surplus wheat and managed, in 1931, to raise the price from 20₵ to 30₵ above the going rate on theworld market. It did the same with the cotton. But when the surpluses became too great to buy up, the programe collapsed, and agricultural prices fell to new lows.

4.3. The Roaring Twenties

Hardly had the Roaring Twenties ended when that flamboyant decade began to take on the aura of legend. Altough the revolution in morals was its most sensational manifestation, other forces contributed equally to its special quality.

It was, for one thing, an age of unabashed materialism. Enormous paper profits were made not only by the large stock speculators but by the smallest investors; “playing the market” became a national pastime. By puttung up a nominal sum, one could “buy on margin” – that is, hold stocks for only a small precentage of their total value. Thus the mechanic, the storekeeper, the salesman, and anyone else in the middle-income groups could partcipate with the dream of parlaying his down payment into big money. The extent to which the “little people” played the market encouraged the formation of huge industrial and comercial empires, some of which, unfortunatly, were supertoted by watered stock. When the market broke late in 1929, the whole structure tumbled like a house of cards. Instead of wiping out only a comparatively few professional gamblers, the crash ruined thousends of amateur “investors”, many of whom had mortaged everything they owned.

But as the market spiral ever upward, and the boom continued unabated, few concerned themselves with any unhappy thoughts that the worst might happen. The easy-come easy-go philosophy induced millions to fill their homes with every convenience available, and in answer to the demand, manufacturers turned out a mounting volume of radios , refrigerators, irons, toasters, vacuum cleaners and washing machines.

Enormous sums of money were also spent on entertainment – and in the 1920s there was no dearth of amusements. The jazz band with its wild, syncopated rhytms became as much a symbol of the era as the stock market, and in sedate ballrooms and speakasies, in college fraternity houses and country clubs, millions danced to the rage of the moment – the fox trot. The lame duck, the grizzly bear, the black bottom, or, most famous of all, the Charleston. In the big cities, more lavish entertainment could be found in the theater “spectacles” staged by such enterprising showmen as Florentz Ziegfield and Earl Carrol, who found it hugely profitable to “glorify” the American girl.Off all popular art forms, however, the movies captured the fancy of the public most vividly. Not only were they still novetly, but Hollywood producers managed to gauge with remarkable success the tempo of the times. Americans wanted something daring and bizarre, and that is what they got.

5. Depression and a New Deal

On October 24, 1929, the paper-thin prosperity that had dominated most of the ‘20s began a process of rapid, demoralizing disintegration as the stock marekt crash triggered a general economic retrenchment.Americans had witnessed financial recessions before – some symptomatic of deep economic maladjusments and others merely surface disturbances. The cueses of America’s economic shakiness during the ‘20s was the increasing complexity of her industrial organisation. Urbanization, a trend well estabilished before World War I, shot ahead. The day of the commuter was at hand as muncipial transportation systems and the rapidly growing number of automobiles made possible employment at greater distances from home. What had been cities grew into huge, sprawling urban areas – conglomerations of municipalities fused together. As the concentration of people grew, there was a mounting danger of serious economic dislocations. Business cycles showed a tendency to higher peaks and deeper valleys. The typical worker found himself more and more dependent upon the great industrial machine.

5.1. Relief and Reform

The frist three nonths of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration was a period of new directions, innovations and experimentation formulated largely by his “brain trust”. This corps of intellectual advisers included such men as Raymond Moley, recruited from Columbia University, where he had been a ptofessor of public lawn, Rexford G. Tugwell, from an economics professorship at Columbia, and Adolf A. Berle, Jr., who advised part time while teaching (also at Columbia) and practising law. Within a year “pump – priming” efforts showed results but gave no indication as whether the American economy was making a genuin recovery or a merely responding temporarily. All that was sure was that things were happening, and that there was spotty improvement. By 1934 Southern farmers had enough ready cash to double the volume of their business with mail-order houses. They were replacing worn-out machinery and buying enough other items to increase Southern retail figures generally by as much as 60%.

5.2. The new Deal: An afterwview

Roosevelts efforts to bloster the economy and to reinvigorate social planning shaped an epoch in the nation’s history. His administration reexamined the functions of government, and put into practice earlier progressive notions that the federal government’s role should be much broader than that of merely exercising police duties. In the narrowest sense, the New Deal was an immediate and drastic attempt to answer pressing economic and social problems, but behind it lay a desire to establish long-range reforms. In any fair attempt to assess Roosevelt’s efforts, both must ne taken into consideration.

The New Deal, often referred to as a revolution, was revolutionary only in that what it did was rapid. The attempted changes grew out of ideas long familiar to American reformers. Both labor and agriculture had tried for more than half a century to gain a larger part of the national income. Nineteenth- century Agrarians and early 20th-century Progressives had fought for many a change that came to pass after March, 1933. To conservative minds, these devolepments were both radical and dangerous, but before a decade had passed, a good many people who had feared such changes were obliged to admit that the innovations were here to stay. As time went on, the new departure aperead to be less a threat to tradition than was at first supposed.When Roosevelt came to office, the nation was faced by an agricultural problem that was still serious several decades later. Critics say his attempts to slove it failed, and they have some justification. Any failure was not, however, from the lack of effort. The New Dealers atacked the agricultural depression with sincerity, vigor and boldness. They tried to save furthur disintegration and decay a sector upon which much of the nation’s economiv health depended. Its even harder to evaluate the contrubution of the New Deal to an improvement in economic conditions. By January, 1939, Roosevelt was ready to announce the conclusion ofhis reform efforts under the New Deal. He told the Congress that he wanted no more than a continuation of deficit spending until economic recovery assured. He asked for no new reform legislation. By now, the president was deeply concerned about the power of totalitarian governments abroad and the threat they posed to international peace. Before the year was out a new World War would be under way. World conditions, which had been a contributing factor to the depression, would revitalizate the American economy at teribble price. And with this resurgence would come an end to further innovations in Roosevelt’s unprecedented domestic policies. The New Deal, absorbed into the economics and politics of the country, had, in effect, come to an end. 6. World War II, Background for War

Americans were so engrossed in a major battle for economic survival during the 1930s that many of them found it hard to realizate that Europe, once so remote, so safely distant, was now coming dangerously near.

The pricipal cause for alarm was the power politics of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the Japanese military. Mussolini had came to power in Italy in 1922, and for a time, many Americans were disposed to regard him well, as a man who brought order, who “made the trains run on time”. Then in 1935, he picked a quarrel with

Ethiopia, a primitive kingdom whose armed forces used spears and muzzle-loading rifles, and the world waited to see what the League of Nations would do about the agression. Altough the United States invoked an arms enbargo and the league imposed economic sanctions, Italy was not to be put off. France was particular afraid that the pressure would drive Mussolini closer to Hitler. In a six- month campaign, Italy completed its conquest.

Japanese generals and admirals who had been making and breaking governments in their homland since 1900 atacked and occupied Manchuria in 1931 and followed up the gain with a drive into China in 1933.

In Germany, Adolf Hitler, an Australian who had been corporal in the German army in World War I, had been attempting to seize power with his National Socialist Party since 1923. By 1933 a combination of Hitler’s great oratorical ability, wide unemploymentand the business community’s fear of the German Communist Party enebled him to emerge as chancellor and soon thereafter as legal dictator. When war-hero President Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934, Hitler became der Fuhrer (the leader) and quickly rearmed Germany despite the Treaty of Versailles.Hitler’s moves were a great concern. His policy of violent antisemitism was cause for alarm through out the Jewish community in the United States. His effective assistence to rebel General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War , beginning in 1936, was proof of his growing power. In the same year he remilitarized Rhineland, against the advice of his own generals. France and Britain did nothing. Screaming that the German people wanted “guns instead of butter”, he annexed Austria in 1938, chipped the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and than took over the whole of that unhappy country in March, 1939. In September, 1938, Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had gone to Munich, acquiesced in the Czechoslovakian seizure, and returned to London to announce: “I belive it is peace in our time.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Maxim Litinov worked hard for an alliance between his own country, Britain and France against Hitler, but the French and English could not bring themselves to become partners with the Communists. Then, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin made his own non – aggression treaty with Hitler. Coming up with too late too late, Chamberlain made a unilateral guarantee to protect Poland, Hitler’s next target. Hitler calculated that he could defeat Poland before England could act, and on September 1, 1939, struck with tanks and infantry, and Stuka dive bombers. Russia promptly atacked from the east, and before the month was out, a brave Polish army, wich contained such anachronisms as lancer cavalry, collapsed. As Hitler had foreseen, the British and French declared war, but did little but sit behind France’s impregnable Maginot Line.