USA 1919–1941

USA 1919–1941 is one of eight National Studies options in Section II. You answer one 25-mark extended response (one of two alternatives), about 1,000 words in roughly 45 minutes. The syllabus key features are: industrialisation; consumerism; the Great Depression; racism; changes in society; conservatism; American capitalism; government intervention; and foreign policy and isolationism.

• Survey: the USA after World War I and 1920s politics — the consequences of the war, Republican economic policy, the long-term causes of the Depression, and reactions to the 1929 Crash.
• Focus of study: the Depression and its impact (on workers, women, farmers and African Americans; the Hoover and Roosevelt responses; an assessment of the New Deal); US society 1919–1941 (urbanisation and industrialisation, military mobilisation and war production 1939–1941, consumerism and entertainment, and social tensions — immigration restriction, fundamentalism, Prohibition, crime, racial conflict, anti-communism and anti-unionism); US foreign policy 1919–1941 and the domestic pressures on it.

• Consequences of the war: the USA emerged as the world's leading creditor and economic power. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations (1919–20).
• 1919: strikes (Seattle, Boston police, steel), anarchist bombings and the Red Scare — the Palmer Raids (1919–20) and deportations of radicals.
• Racial conflict: the Red Summer of 1919 (riots in Chicago and other cities) and the Tulsa massacre (1921).

• Presidents: Harding (1921–23; the Teapot Dome scandal), Coolidge (1923–29), Hoover (1929–33).
• Policy: laissez-faire; Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's tax cuts; high tariffs (Fordney–McCumber, 1922); light regulation.
• Industrialisation and consumerism: Ford's assembly line and the Model T; registered motor vehicles rose from about 8 million (1920) to over 23 million (1929); electrification; radios, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners; advertising and hire purchase; the radio (KDKA, 1920), Hollywood and jazz.
• Urbanisation: by 1920 more Americans lived in cities than in the countryside.
• Women: the vote (19th Amendment, 1920); the ‘flapper’; more women in office work, but most women's lives changed less than the image suggested.

Who missed out

• Farmers: a slump from 1920, as wartime demand ended.
• ‘Sick’ industries: coal and textiles.
• Inequality: the richest 5% received about a third of personal income by 1929.
• Minorities: African American sharecroppers, Native Americans (the 1928 Meriam Report), Mexican American farm workers.
• Unions: membership fell; employers used injunctions and company unions (anti-unionism).

Many tensions reflected a conflict between rural, Protestant, ‘old stock’ America and a modern, urban, diverse America.

Causes

1. Overproduction and underconsumption — industry and farms produced more than people could buy; unequal incomes.
2. Speculation — buying shares on the margin; the Wall Street Crash (Black Thursday 24 October, Black Tuesday 29 October 1929).
3. Weak banks — over 9,000 failed between 1930 and 1933.
4. International — war debts, the end of US loans, the Smoot–Hawley Tariff (1930) and retaliation.
5. Policy — laissez-faire and tight money.

Impact

• Workers: unemployment about 25% (around 13 million) by 1933; Hoovervilles, breadlines, transients.
• Farmers: prices collapsed; foreclosures; the Dust Bowl on the southern Plains; migration of ‘Okies’ to California.
• Women: pressure to leave paid work; heavier household burdens; but women's jobs in clerical and service work held up better than men's industrial jobs.
• African Americans: ‘last hired, first fired’; sharecroppers evicted; discrimination in relief.
• Mexican Americans: ‘repatriation’ of hundreds of thousands, including US citizens.
• Native Americans: deep poverty on reservations; the Indian Reorganization Act (1934) ended the breaking-up (allotment) of reservation land.

Hoover's response

Voluntarism and limited federal action: the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (1932) lent to banks and railways; the Hoover Dam was begun; but he resisted direct federal relief. The Bonus Army was driven from Washington by troops (July 1932). Roosevelt won the 1932 election in a landslide.

• First New Deal (1933–34): the bank holiday and Emergency Banking Act; the Hundred Days; the CCC, FERA, CWA, PWA; the AAA; the NIRA; the TVA; the FDIC and SEC; fireside chats.
• Second New Deal (1935–38): the WPA; the Social Security Act (1935); the Wagner Act (1935); higher taxes on the wealthy; the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938).
• Opposition: the Supreme Court (Schechter 1935, Butler 1936) and the failed court-packing plan (1937); the American Liberty League; Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Dr Townsend.
• The ‘Roosevelt recession’ (1937–38) sent unemployment back towards 19%; it was still about 14–15% in 1940.

Assessing the New Deal — use the ‘three Rs’:

• Relief: strong — millions of jobs and a permanent safety net.
• Recovery: weak — full employment came only with war production.
• Reform: lasting — banking, labour rights, Social Security, a bigger federal role.

Interpretations: William Leuchtenburg's ‘half-way revolution’; New Left critics (Barton Bernstein) who say it saved capitalism and changed little for the poor; conservatives who say it expanded government too far.

After war began in Europe, defence spending rose sharply. Roosevelt called the USA the ‘arsenal of democracy’ (December 1940). The first peacetime draft (September 1940), aircraft and shipbuilding programs and Lend-Lease orders cut unemployment. In June 1941 Executive Order 8802 banned discrimination in defence industries after A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington.

1. 1919–1920: rejection of Versailles and the League (Article 10).
2. The 1920s — independent internationalism: the Washington Conference (1921–22), the Dawes (1924) and Young (1929) Plans, the Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928), high tariffs.
3. 1933–1937: the Good Neighbor Policy; recognition of the USSR (1933); the Nye Committee (1934–36); the Neutrality Acts (1935, 1936, 1937); the ‘Quarantine’ speech (October 1937).
4. 1939–1941: cash and carry (November 1939); destroyers-for-bases (September 1940); Lend-Lease (March 1941); the America First Committee; the Atlantic Charter (August 1941); the freezing of Japanese assets and the oil embargo (July–August 1941); Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941); Germany declared war on the USA (11 December).

Worked example (not a bank question). _‘Assess the impact of consumerism and mass entertainment on American society in the 1920s.’_

1. Thesis: consumerism and mass culture created a more national, urban culture, but they also sharpened the divide between modern and traditional America.
2. Paragraph 1: cars, suburbs and a new way of life.
3. Paragraph 2: radio, cinema and jazz creating a national culture.
4. Paragraph 3: effects on women and young people.
5. Paragraph 4: the reaction — fundamentalism, Prohibition, the Klan.
6. Conclusion: a clear judgement on the extent of impact.

• Saying the Crash alone caused the Depression.
• Listing alphabet agencies without assessing them.
• Calling the USA completely ‘isolationist’ — it was engaged economically and diplomatically.
• Ignoring groups beyond white urban Americans: farmers, African Americans, women, Mexican Americans, Native Americans.
• Mixing up Hoover's and Roosevelt's policies.

• Section II is marked on a sustained, logical and cohesive response, detailed, accurate and relevant historical knowledge, historical terms and concepts and, where relevant, historical interpretations. Naming historians can strengthen an argument but is not required.
• Key terms: laissez-faire, consumerism, hire purchase, margin buying, nativism, fundamentalism, Prohibition, rugged individualism, New Deal, relief–recovery–reform, isolationism, neutrality.
• Prepare flexible paragraphs on the 1920s economy, social tensions, the Depression's impact, the New Deal and foreign policy.

• Civil Rights in the USA 1945–1968 continues the story of African American activism, from Randolph's 1941 campaign onwards.
• The core helps you compare democratic and dictatorial responses to the Depression.
• Japan 1904–1937 explains the Japanese side of US–Japan tension.