WWI on the American Homefront

HUSH Unit 2

Financing the War• Liberty Bonds

raised $20 billion• Loaned $10 billion

to Allies• Boy and Girl

Scouts sold bonds

Regulating the Economy Back Home

• Industries converted to war goods• The War Industries Board was created

• regulated production; controlled raw materials, production, and prices

• The War Trade Board was created• punished firms dealing with enemy

• The National War Labor Board was created• settled labor disputes

Changing Wasteful Habits• Food Administration

under Herbert Hoover • Price controls• Rationing

• Hoover chose voluntary restraint and efficiency• appealed to women

• Daylight saving time was instituted to save fuel needed to produce artificial light

Patriotism…or Jingoism??• Fear of foreigners led

to• Nativism• Fear of espionage and

secret agents• Feared sabotage of

transportation and communications

• “Hate the Hun” hostility toward Germans

• Lynching of Robert Prager, a German-American

"They stripped him of his clothes, bound him with cloth made from an American flag and lynched him in front of a crowd of some 500 or more people – all of whom cheered the effort on.

A Loss of American Civil Liberties??

• Espionage Act 1917• Made it illegal to interfere with the

draft• Sedition Act: 1918

• Made it illegal to interfere with the draft and to obstruct the sale of Liberty Bonds or discuss anything disloyal about the American government, the Constitution, or the army and navy

• 1,000 convictions• Socialist Eugene Debs sentenced to

10 years for speaking against the war

Political Radicals• Industrial Workers of

the World (IWW)• goal of overthrowing

capitalism

• Vigilantes lynched and horse-whipped radicals

Social Changes• The War cut off the

flow of immigrants from Europe

• Women, African Americans, and Mexican Americans recruited by industry

• Great Migration: 500,000 African Americans went North

Prohibition• The 18th Amendment

was ratified in 1919 • Made it illegal to

manufacture, sell, or transport alcoholic beverages

• Caused the onslaught of illegal alcohol in the 1920’s by “Bootleggers”