# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Construction and Design

Fort Sumter was first built in the wake of the War of 1812, which had highlighted the United States' lack of strong coastal defenses. Named for Revolutionary War general and South Carolina native Thomas Sumter, the fortification was one of nearly 50 forts built as part of the so-called Third System, a coastal defense program implemented by Congress in 1817.

The three-tiered, five-sided fort's coastal placement was designed to allow it to control access to the vital Charleston Harbor. While the island itself was only 2.4 acres in size, the fort was built to accommodate a garrison of 650 soldiers and 135 artillery pieces.

Did you know? There were no casualties during the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War. The only Union deaths came during the evacuation: One soldier was killed and another mortally wounded in an accidental explosion during a planned 100-gun salute.

Construction of Fort Sumter first began in 1829 in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, on a manmade island built from thousands of tons of granite. Building ground to a halt in the 1830s amid a dispute over ownership of the stretch of the harbor, and did not resume until 1841. Like many Third System fortifications, Fort Sumter proved a costly endeavor, and construction slowed again in 1859 due to lack of funding. By 1860 the island and the outer fortifications were complete, but the fort's interior and armaments remained unfinished.

Fort Moultrie

Construction of Fort Sumter was still underway when South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860. Despite Charleston's position as a major port, at the time only two companies of federal troops guarded the harbor. Commanded by Major Robert Anderson, these companies were stationed at Fort Moultrie, a dilapidated fortification facing the coastline.

Recognizing that Fort Moultrie was vulnerable to a land assault, Anderson elected to abandon it for the more easily defensible Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860. South Carolina militia forces would seize the city's other forts shortly thereafter, leaving Fort Sumter as the lone federal outpost in Charleston.

Battle of Fort Sumter

A standoff ensued until January 9, 1861, when a ship called Star of the West arrived in Charleston with over 200 U.S. troops and supplies intended for Fort Sumter. South Carolina militia batteries fired upon the vessel as it neared Charleston Harbor, forcing it to turn back to sea.

Major Anderson refused repeated calls to abandon Fort Sumter, and by March 1861 there were over 3,000 militia troops besieging his garrison. A number of other U.S. military facilities in the South had already been seized, and Fort Sumter was viewed by many as one of the South's few remaining hurdles to overcome before achieving sovereignty.

With the inauguration of President Abraham Lincoln in March 1861, the situation soon escalated. Knowing that Anderson and his men were running out of supplies, Lincoln announced his intention to send three unarmed ships to relieve Fort Sumter. Having already declared that any attempt to resupply the fort would be seen as an act of aggression, South Carolina militia forces soon scrambled to respond.

Civil War Begins

On April 11, militia commander P.G.T. Beauregard demanded that Anderson surrender the fort, but Anderson again refused. In response Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter shortly after 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. U.S. Captain Abner Doubleday-later famous for the myth that he invented baseball-ordered the first shots in defense of the fort a few hours later. The first shots of the Civil War had been fired.

Beauregard's 19 coastal batteries unleashed a punishing barrage on Fort Sumter, eventually firing an estimated 3,000 shots at the citadel in 34 hours. By Saturday, April 13, cannon fire had broken through the fortress's five-foot-thick brick walls, causing fires inside the post. With his stores of ammunition depleted, Anderson and his Union forces had to surrender the fort shortly after 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

No Union troops had been killed during the bombardment, but two men died the following day in an explosion that occurred during an artillery salute held before the U.S. evacuation. The bombardment of Fort Sumter would play a major part in triggering the Civil War. In the days following the assault, Lincoln issued a call for Union volunteers to quash the rebellion, while more Southern states including Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee cast their lot with the Confederacy.

Beauregard and Du Pont

Following Beauregard's bombardment in 1861, Confederate forces occupied Fort Sumter and used it to marshal a defense of Charleston Harbor. Once it was completed and better armed, Fort Sumter allowed the Confederates to create a valuable hole in the Union blockade of the Atlantic seaboard.

The first Union assault on occupied Fort Sumter came in April 1863, when Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Du Pont attempted a naval attack on Charleston. Commander of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Du Pont arrived in Charleston with a fleet of nine ironclad warships, seven of which were updated versions of the famed U.S.S. Monitor.

While Du Pont had hoped to recapture Fort Sumter-by then a symbol of the Confederate rebellion-his attack was poorly coordinated and met with unfavorable weather conditions. In collaboration with Fort Sumter, Confederate batteries commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard hammered the ironclad fleet with artillery fire, and underwater mines posed a constant threat to the ships' hulls.

Outgunned and unable to properly maneuver in heavy currents, Du Pont's fleet eventually withdrew from the harbor after taking over 500 hits by Confederate guns. Only one Union soldier was killed during the battle, but one of the ironclads, Keokuk, sank the next day.

Five Confederates were killed during the attack, but the damage to Fort Sumter was soon repaired and its defenses improved. Confederate soldiers even managed to salvage one of Keokuk 's 11-inch Dahlgren guns and mount it on the fortress.
READ MORE: 7 Important Civil War Battles
Fort Wagner

In July 1863, Union troops laid siege to Fort Wagner, a valuable post on Morris Island near the mouth of Charleston Harbor. After being met with heavy fire from Fort Sumter, Union General Quincy Adams Gillmore turned his guns on the fort and unleashed a devastating seven-day bombardment.

On September 8, a force of nearly 400 Union troops attempted to land at Fort Sumter and capture the post by force. Union Rear Admiral John Dahlgren mistakenly believed the fort was manned by a skeleton crew, but the landing party was met by over 300 Confederate infantry, who easily repulsed the assault.

Following the failed infantry attack, Union forces on Morris Island recommenced their bombing campaign on Fort Sumter. Over the next 15 months, Union artillery effectively leveled Fort Sumter, eventually firing nearly 50,000 projectiles at the fort between September 1863 and February 1865. Despite suffering over 300 casualties from the Union bombardments, the beleaguered Confederate garrison managed to retain control of the fort until February 1865.

Only when Union General William T. Sherman was poised to capture Charleston did the Confederates finally evacuate. Union forces would reclaim Fort Sumter on February 22, 1865. Robert A. Anderson and Abner Doubleday, the two commanding officers from the original siege of Fort Sumter, would both return to the fortress on April 14, 1865, for a flag-raising ceremony.

Fort Sumter National Monument

After the Civil War, the derelict Fort Sumter was rebuilt and partially redesigned. It would see little use during the 1870s and 1880s and was eventually reduced to serving as a lighthouse station for Charleston Harbor. With the start of the Spanish-American War (1898), the fortress was rearmed and once again used as a coastal defense installation. It would later see service during both World War I and World War II.

In 1948, Fort Sumter was decommissioned as a military post and turned over to the National Park Service as a National Historic Site and part of Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park. Tours are now available, attracting more than 750,000 visitors every year.

Sources

Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie: History & Culture. National Park Service.
Fort Sumter. American Battlefield Trust.
Fort Sumter: The Civil War Begins. Smithsonian Magazine.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fort Sumter: Civil War, Battle & Location | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fort Sumter is an island fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, and is most famous for being the site of the first battle of the Civil War.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Emancipation Proclamation - Definition, Dates & Summary

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Issued after the Union victory at Antietam on September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation carried moral and strategic implications for the ongoing Civil War. While it did not free a single enslaved person, it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nat…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Battle of Gettysburg: The Civil War in Four Minutes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wade-Davis Bill: Wade-Davis Bill, (1864), unsuccessful attempt by Radical Republicans and others in the U.S. Congress to set Reconstruction policy before the end of the Civil War. The bill, sponsored by senators Benjamin F. Wade and Henry W. Davis, provided for the appointment of provisional military governors in

# data[].attributes.headline
Plessy vs. Ferguson/End of Reconstruction 

# data[].attributes.subject
Plessy vs. Ferguson/End of Reconstruction 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Plessy v. Ferguson: Background and Context

After the Compromise of 1877 led to the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, Democrats consolidated control of state legislatures throughout the region, effectively marking the end of Reconstruction.

Southern Black people saw the promise of equality under the law embodied by the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment to the Constitution receding quickly, and a return to disenfranchisement and other disadvantages as white supremacy reasserted itself across the South.

As historian C. Vann Woodward pointed out in a 1964 article about Plessy v. Ferguson, white and Black Southerners mixed relatively freely until the 1880s, when state legislatures passed the first laws requiring railroads to provide separate cars for "Negro" or "colored" passengers.

Florida became the first state to mandate segregated railroad cars in 1887, followed in quick succession by Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana and other states by the end of the century.

Black Resistance to Segregation

As Southern Black people witnessed with horror the dawn of the Jim Crow era, members of the Black community in New Orleans decided to mount a resistance.

At the heart of the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson was a law passed in Louisiana in 1890 "providing for separate railway carriages for the white and colored races." It stipulated that all passenger railways had to provide these separate cars, which should be equal in facilities.

Homer Adolph Plessy, who agreed to be the plaintiff in the case aimed at testing the law's constitutionality, was of mixed race; he described himself as "seven-eighths Caucasian and one-eighth African blood."

On June 7, 1892, Plessy bought a ticket on a train from New Orleans bound for Covington, Louisiana, and took a vacant seat in a whites-only car. After refusing to leave the car at the conductor's insistence, he was arrested and jailed.

Convicted by a New Orleans court of violating the 1890 law, Plessy filed a petition against the presiding judge, Hon. John H. Ferguson, claiming that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Supreme Court Ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson

Over the next few years, segregation and Black disenfranchisement picked up pace in the South, and was more than tolerated by the North. Congress defeated a bill that would have given federal protection to elections in 1892, and nullified a number of Reconstruction laws on the books.

Then, on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Plessy v. Ferguson. In declaring separate-but-equal facilities constitutional on intrastate railroads, the Court ruled that the protections of 14th Amendment applied only to political and civil rights (like voting and jury service), not "social rights" (sitting in the railroad car of your choice).

In its ruling, the Court denied that segregated railroad cars for Black people were necessarily inferior. "We consider the underlying fallacy of [Plessy's] argument," Justice Henry Brown wrote, "to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it."

John Marshall Harlan's Dissent

Alone in the minority was Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slaveholder from Kentucky. Harlan had opposed emancipation and civil rights for freed slaves during the Reconstruction era-but changed his position due to his outrage over the actions of white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

Harlan argued in his dissent that segregation ran counter to the constitutional principle of equality under the law: "The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution," he wrote. "It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

Plessy v. Ferguson Significance

The Plessy v. Ferguson verdict enshrined the doctrine of "separate but equal" as a constitutional justification for segregation, ensuring the survival of the Jim Crow South for the next half-century.

Intrastate railroads were among many segregated public facilities the verdict sanctioned; others included buses, hotels, theaters, swimming pools and schools. By the time of the 1899 case Cummings v. Board of Education, even Harlan appeared to agree that segregated public schools did not violate the Constitution.

It would not be until the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, at the dawn of the civil rights movement, that the majority of the Supreme Court would essentially concur with Harlan's opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson..

Writing the majority opinion in that 1954 case, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that "the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place" in public education, calling segregated schools "inherently unequal," and declaring that the plaintiffs in the Brown case were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Sources

C. Vann Woodward, " Plessy v. Ferguson: The Birth of Jim Crow," American Heritage (Volume 15, Issue 3: April 1964).
Landmark Cases: Plessy v. Ferguson, PBS: The Supreme Court - The First Hundred Years.
Louis Menand, "Brown v. Board of Education and the Limits of Law," The New Yorker (February 12, 2001).
Today in History - May 18: Plessy v. Ferguson, Library of Congress.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate But Equal Doctrine | HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
California Gold Rush, rapid influx of fortune seekers in California that began after gold was found at Sutter's Mill in early 1848 and reached its peak in 1852. According to estimates, more than 300,000 people came to the territory during the Gold Rush.

In 1848 John Sutter was having a water-powered sawmill built along the American River in Coloma, California, approximately 50 miles (80 km) east of present-day Sacramento. On January 24 his carpenter, James W. Marshall, found flakes of gold in a streambed. Sutter and Marshall agreed to become partners and tried to keep their find a secret. News of the discovery, however, soon spread, and they were besieged by thousands of fortune seekers. (With his property overrun and his goods and livestock stolen or destroyed, Sutter was bankrupt by 1852.) From the East, prospectors sailed around Cape Horn or risked disease hiking across the Isthmus of Panama. The hardiest took the 2,000-mile (3,220-km) overland route, on which cholera proved a far greater killer than the Native Americans. By August 1848, 4,000 gold miners were in the area, and within a year about 80,000 "forty-niners" (as the fortune seekers of 1849 were called) had arrived at the California goldfields. By 1853 their numbers had grown to 250,000. Although it was estimated that some $2 billion in gold was extracted, few of the prospectors struck it rich. The work was hard, prices were high, and living conditions were primitive.

In what was a typical pattern, the Gold Rush slackened as the most-workable deposits were exhausted and organized capital and machinery replaced the efforts of individual miner-adventurers with more efficient and businesslike operations. Likewise, the lawless and violent mining camps gave way to permanent settlements with organized government and law enforcement. Those settlements that lacked other viable economic activities soon became ghost towns after the gold was exhausted. The California Gold Rush peaked in 1852, and by the end of the decade, it was over.

The Gold Rush had a profound impact on California, dramatically changing its demographics. Before the discovery of gold, the territory's population was approximately 160,000, the vast majority of whom were Native Americans. By about 1855, more than 300,000 people had arrived. Most were Americans, though a number of settlers also came from China, Europe, and South America. The massive influx gave rise to numerous cities and towns, with San Francisco gaining particular prominence. The Gold Rush was credited with hastening statehood for California in 1850.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
California Gold Rush | Definition, History, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Overview of the California Gold Rush, the rapid influx of fortune seekers in California that began after gold was found at Sutter's Mill on the American River in early 1848. The Gold Rush reached its peak in 1852. According to estimates, more than 300,000 people came to the territory during the Gold Rush.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Memories of Migration - The Navajo Long Walk

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
View larger

WOUNDED KNEE MASSACRE

On December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota, a tangle of events resulted in the deaths of more than 250, and possibly as many as 300, Native Americans. These people were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat. A substantial number were women and children. Most of the victims were members of the Miniconjou band of the Lakota Sioux who had been intercepted by military forces after they fled their reservation in South Dakota for refuge in the Badlands.

The story begins in October 1890, when Daniel F. Royer arrived at Pine Ridge Agency, home of the Oglala Lakotas, to assume responsibility as agent. His selection as agent could not have been worse: he knew nothing about Native Americans and was irrationally fearful of them, and from the time of his arrival the dispatches he sent back to Washington were peppered with warnings of an outbreak similar to the one in Minnesota in 1862 in which hundreds of settlers were killed by Santee Sioux. Royer's appointment was also ill timed. In 1890 drought replaced the bountiful rainfall of the 1880s, resulting in crop failures and economic depression. On their reservations, Native Americans were forced into dependence on the federal government for food and clothing. When Royer took over as agent, there was widespread anxiety among the Oglalas regarding the adequacy of government provisions.

A year earlier, the Ghost Dance had appeared on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Born from the vision of a Paiute named Wovoka (aka Jack Wilson), the Ghost Dance blended the messianic account of Christianity with traditional Native beliefs. This new religion told of the return of the Messiah to relieve the suffering of Native Americans and promised that if they would live righteous lives and perform the Ghost Dance in the prescribed manner, the European American invaders would vanish, the bison would return, and the living and the dead would be reunited in an Edenic world. But in Royer's paranoid mind the Ghost Dance was a war dance that threatened imminent bloodshed. His dispatches to Washington urged that troops be sent to protect citizens from war.

In mid-November 1890 President Benjamin Harrison responded to the fears of an Indian outbreak by ordering troops into the area. Regular troops were sent from Fort Robinson, Nebraska, and on November 18, 1890, the Second Nebraska Infantry left Fort Omaha in two special trains. On the train was also a cadre of newspaper reporters. From that point on, the crisis at Pine Ridge was a significant news item in newspapers across the country and around the world.

The trains unloaded their travelers at Rushville, Nebraska, on November 20, 1890, and from there the troops and reporters made their way to Pine Ridge Agency, where they all soon discovered that there was no crisis to be found. Soon a regular fare of rumors and lies began to appear in the national press, fed by merchants who wanted to keep the reporters, and their expense accounts, engaged in the economically strained communities south of the Pine Ridge Reservation. These fantastic stories fed a growing national anxiety about impending war. They also appeared on the reservations, where Lakotas who had been educated in the nation's Indian schools read the reports of troop activities and the rumors of outbreak to other members of their community. In this manner, the press became an important factor in stoking the anxiety both on and off the reservation.

By mid-December 1890 the combination of news reports, governmental reports (particularly those of the panic-stricken Royer), and Ghost Dancing had every nerve in the region on edge. The Lakotas polarized into political camps commonly referred to in the press as "hostiles" and "friendlies," a distinction between those who were opposed and those who were reconciled to reservation life. The Ghost Dancers were generally assigned to the "hostiles" camp. On December 15, 1890, the Hunkpapa holy man and Ghost Dance leader, Sitting Bull, was killed at Standing Rock Agency. Sitting Bull's death was seen by many as the fate that awaited all who failed to accept reservation life. To the south, at Cheyenne River Agency, the Miniconjou Lakotas grew nervous. Their leader, Big Foot, was also engaged in the Ghost Dance, and though not considered a major threat, he was under close observation by the military. In an attempt to quiet the Miniconjous, the military asked a local squatter named John Dunn to persuade them to acquiesce to the military's wishes that they stay in their own village on the reservation. Dunn's tactics are inexplicable: he is reported to have told the Miniconjous that the military planned to take their men prisoner and deport them to an island in the Atlantic Ocean. He apparently advised them to take sanctuary on Pine Ridge Reservation.

On December 23, the Miniconjous left their village in the dead of night and fled south toward the Badlands. Big Foot soon contracted pneumonia, which slowed the escape. Nonetheless, the tribe managed to avoid the military pursuit for five days. But on December 28, the Seventh Cavalry intercepted the ailing Big Foot and his people and ordered them into confinement on Wounded Knee Creek. On the morning of December 29, Col. James W. Forsyth convened a council with the Miniconjous. He demanded that they surrender all their firearms and told them that they would be relocated to a new camp. The order to a new camp was interpreted by the Miniconjous as exile, probably to Indian Territory, a prospect that they found intolerable.

While these discussions proceeded in the Lakota camp, a number of Indians began singing Ghost Dance songs, with some rising to throw handfuls of dirt in the air. The troops who surrounded them perceived the singing and dirt throwing as signals to attack, and at this tense moment the fuse was lit. A man named Black Coyote (sometimes called Black Fox) refused to surrender his rifle to a soldier. The two began wrestling over the gun, and in the struggle it discharged. Immediately the nervous troops began firing, while the Miniconjous retrieved their weapons and returned fire. The military's rifle fire was complemented with cannon rounds from Hotchkiss guns, whose accuracy and exploding shells were formidable. The outnumbered and outgunned Lakotas fled, and for several hours intermittent gunfire continued, with the military in pursuit. Bodies were found as far away as three miles from the camp. Firing ceased, and by midafternoon the troops had gathered up their dead and wounded, as well as Lakota wounded, and returned to Pine Ridge Agency. The fear of a reprisal attack kept troops and civilians entrenched at the agency until January 3, 1891, when a military-escorted civilian burial party proceeded to the site of the massacre. There they buried 146 Lakotas in a single mass grave. Other dead were accounted for later, bringing the total to more than 250 Lakotas; the Seventh Cavalry lost twenty-five men.

Photographers accompanied the burial detail and made a total of sixteen photographs. A snowstorm that occurred shortly after the massacre added a cold and grim edge to the scene of carnage. The photographs sold well and, together with news stories, carried the story of the massacre at Wounded Knee worldwide. Soon the event developed a meaning that transcended the reality of the tragic loss of life, and Wounded Knee became, and remains, the symbol of the inhumanity of U.S. government policy toward Native Americans.

See also NATIVE AMERICANS: Sitting Bull / RELIGION: Ghost Dance.

John E. Carter Nebraska State Historical Society

Jensen, Richard E., R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter. Eyewitness at Wounded Knee. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Mooney, James. The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1896.

Utley, Robert. The Last Days of the Sioux Nation. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1963.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
View larger On December 29, 1890, on Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota, a tangle of events resulted in the deaths of more than 250, and possibly as many as 300, Native Americans. These people were guilty of no crime and were not engaged in combat.

# data[].attributes.body
Ft. Sumter: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/fort-sumter
Emancipation Proclamation: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/emancipation-proclamation
Battle of Gettysburg:
https://youtu.be/7ALyq3seK2g
Appomattox Courthouse: https://www.nps.gov/apco/learn/news/images/Rocco-Surrender-Painting-600-dpi-web.jpg

# data[].attributes.body
Ten Percent Plan: https://youtu.be/O1kPEht_d60
Wade-Davis Bill: https://www.britannica.com/event/Wade-Davis-Bill
13th, 14th, & 15th Amendment: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiSuonPmMDeAhVI04MKHaYeAcwQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.historyonthenet.com%2Fcivil-war-amendments%2F&psig=AOvVaw3Jhd7sJ-fizKDsH1ELsyVW&ust=1541608120866162
Plessy vs. Ferguson/End of Reconstruction: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson

# data[].attributes.body
Gold Rush: https://www.britannica.com/topic/California-Gold-Rush
Homestead & Morrill Acts: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UmvYdCXd6uE/hqdefault.jpg
The Long Walk: https://youtu.be/YUq17gP-OLs
Massacre at Wounded Knee: http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.war.056

# data[].attributes.headline
The Second Industrial Revolution (Bessemer Process)

# data[].attributes.subject
The Second Industrial Revolution (Bessemer Process)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Gilded Age was marked by increased mechanization in manufacturing. Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient ways to create products. Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production process and improve efficiency. Frederick Winslow Taylor observed that the use of more advanced machinery could improve efficiency in steel production by requiring workers to make fewer motions in less time. His redesign increased the speed of factory machines and the productivity of factories while undercutting the need for skilled labor. Factories became an assemblage of unskilled laborers performing simple and repetitive tasks under the direction of skilled foremen and engineers. Machine shops, comprised of highly skilled workers and engineers, grew rapidly. The number of unskilled and skilled workers increased as their wage rates grew. Engineering colleges were established to feed the enormous demand for expertise.

Railroad Companies and Management

Railroads gave rise to the development of modern management techniques, such as the use of clear chains of command, statistical reporting, and complex bureaucratic systems. Railroad companies systematized the roles of middle managers and set up explicit career tracks. They hired young men at age 18-21 and promoted them internally until a man reached the status of locomotive engineer, conductor, or station agent at age 40 or so. Career tracks were offered to skilled blue-collar workers and white-collar managers, starting in railroads and expanding into finance, manufacturing, and trade. Together with rapid growth of small business, a new middle class was rapidly growing, especially in northern cities. Extensive national networks for transportation and communication were created. The corporation became the dominant form of business organization, and a managerial revolution transformed business operations. By the beginning of the 1900s, the United States had the highest per capita income and industrial production in the world, with per capita incomes double those of Germany and France, and 50 percent higher than those of Britain.

Bell's telephone transmitter (microphone) consisted of a double electromagnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle. A funnel-shaped mouthpiece directed the voice sounds upon the membrane, and as it vibrated, the soft iron "armature" induced corresponding currents in the coils of the electromagnet. After traversing the wire, these currents passed through the receiver, which consisted of an electromagnet in a tubular metal can that had one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron. When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this electromagnet, the disc vibrated, thereby creating sound waves in the air.

The first long-distance telephone call was made on August 10, 1876, by Bell from the family homestead in Brantford, Ontario, to his assistant located in Paris, Ontario, some 10 miles away. In June 1876, Bell exhibited a telephone prototype at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

The telephone was instrumental to modernization and labor. It aided in the development of suburbs and the separation of homes and businesses, but also became the reason for the separation between women occupying the private sphere and men in the public sphere. This would continue to isolate women and the home.

Women were regarded as the most frequent users of the telephone. As a means of liberation, it enabled women to work in the telecommunications sector as receptionists and operators. The autonomy was celebrated as women were able to develop new relationships and nurture preexisting ones in their private lives. Social relations are essential to the access and usage of telephone networks.

The Lightbulb

Thomas Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and was the first institution set up for the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation. Most of the inventions produced there were legally attributed to Edison, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction.

Edison did not invent the first electric lightbulb, but rather the first commercially practical incandescent light. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others such as Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer, William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan, and Heinrich Göbel had developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps. These early bulbs had an extremely short life, were expensive to produce, or drew a high electric current, making them difficult to produce on a large commercial scale.

By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application. He was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting lightbulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

Electric lighting in factories greatly improved working conditions, eliminating the heat and pollution caused by gas lighting, and reducing the fire hazard to the extent that the cost of electricity for lighting often was offset by the reduction in fire insurance premiums. Electric light was much brighter than that of oil or gas lamps, and there was no soot. Although early electricity was very expensive compared to today, it was far cheaper and more convenient than oil or gas lighting.

Electricity

In 1831 and 1832, Michael Faraday discovered the operating principle of electromagnetic generators. The principle, later called "Faraday's Law," is that an electromotive force is generated in an electrical conductor that is subjected to a varying magnetic flux, as for example, in a wire moving through a magnetic field.

The improvements in electrical-generation technology increased the efficiency and reliability greatly in the nineteenth century. The first magnetos only converted a few percent of mechanical energy to electricity. By the end of the nineteenth century, the highest efficiencies were more than 90 percent.

In the early days of commercial electric power, transmission of electric power at the same voltage as used by lighting and mechanical loads restricted the distance between generating plant and consumers. In 1882, generation was with direct current (DC), which could not easily be increased in voltage for long-distance transmission. Different classes of loads (for example, lighting, fixed motors, and traction/railway systems) required different voltages, and so used different generators and circuits.

Due to this specialization of lines and because transmission was inefficient for low-voltage high-current circuits, generators needed to be near their loads. It seemed, at the time, that the industry would develop into what is now known as a "distributed generation system," with large numbers of small generators located near their loads.

The transmission of electric power with alternate current (AC) became possible in 1881 after Lucien Gaulard and John Dixon Gibbs built what they called the "secondary generator," an early transformer provided with 1:1 turn ratio and open magnetic circuit.

The "War of Currents"

Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits by establishing mass-production systems and obtaining intellectual-property rights. George Westinghouse became an adversary of Edison when he promoted the direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

The problem with DC was that power plants could only deliver DC electricity economically to customers within about one and a half miles (about 2.4 km) from the generating station, so that it only was suitable for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with only marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent the adoption of the AC system.

The war against AC involved Edison in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using AC) as an attempt to portray AC as having greater lethal potential than DC. Edison continued to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC. On one of the more notable occasions, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.

AC eventually replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems.

Lochner's appeal was based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides the following: "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a series of cases starting with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals. Although this interpretation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial one, it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the nineteenth century. Lochner argued that the right to freely contract was one of the rights encompassed by substantive due process.

By a five to four vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an, "unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract." Seven years earlier, the Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the Due Process Clause protected the right to contract in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897). Justice Rufus Peckham wrote for the majority, while Justices John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., filed dissents.

Justice Harlan's dissent argued that the Court gave insufficient weight to the state's argument that the law was a valid health measure addressing a legitimate state interest. Justice Holmes's famous dissent criticized the decision for discarding sound constitutional interpretation in favor of personal beliefs. Although it was only three paragraphs long, Holmes's dissent is well remembered and often quoted. In it, Holmes accused the majority of judicial activism, claiming that the case was, "decided upon an economic theory which a large part of the country does not entertain." He also attacked the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment protected the unbridled liberty of contract, writing that, "[t]he Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer 's Social Statics. " This was a reference to a book in which Spencer advocated a strict laissez-faire economic philosophy.

The term "laissez-faire" refers to an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies. The term is part of a larger French phrase and literally translates to "let (it/them) do," but in this context, usually means to "let go." Laissez-faire, a product of the Enlightenment, was, "conceived as the way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural system, a system unhindered by the restrictions of government." In a similar vein, Adam Smith viewed the economy as a natural system and the market as an organic part of that system. Smith saw laissez-faire as a moral program, and the market its instrument to ensure men the rights of natural law. By extension, free markets become a reflection of the natural system of liberty.

Lochner v. New York was one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to what is known as the "Lochner Era." During the Lochner Era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating progressive federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working conditions during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Thus, this era could be characterized as laissez-faire. The Lochner era often is considered to have ended with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), in which the Supreme Court took a much broader view of the government's power to regulate economic activities.

Robber Barons and the Captains of Industry

The term "robber baron" was applied to powerful nineteenth-century industrialists who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. On the other hand, "captains of industry" were business leaders whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributed positively to the country in some way.

Robber Barons

"Robber baron" is a derogatory term used for some powerful nineteenth-century American businessmen. By the 1890s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who were viewed as having used questionable practices to amass their wealth. These "questionable practices" usually included a perception that they offered their products at extremely low prices as to pay their workers very poorly and buying out the competitors that couldn't keep up. Once there was no competition, the businessmen would hike prices far above the original level. It combines the notions of criminality ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy ("baron").

The term derives from the medieval German lords who legally charged tolls on ships traversing the Rhine without adding anything of value. U.S. political and economic commentator Matthew Josephson popularized the term during the Great Depression in a 1934 book by the same title. He attributed the phrase to an 1880 antimonopoly pamphlet about railroad magnates. Josephson alleged that like the German antecedents, American big businessmen amassed huge fortunes immorally, unethically, and unjustly. The theme was popular during the Great Depression, a time of public scorn for the abuses of big business.

Captains of Industry

Robber barons were contrasted with "captains of industry," a term originally used in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution describing a business leader whose means of amassing a personal fortune contributes positively to the country in some way. This might have been through increased productivity, expansion of markets, providing more jobs, or acts of philanthropy. Some nineteenth-century industrialists who were called "captains of industry" overlap with those called "robber barons," however. These include people such as J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller. The positive term was coined by Thomas Carlyle in his 1843 book, Past and Present.

John Davison Rockefeller was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was the founder of the Standard Oil Company, which dominated the oil industry and was the first great U.S. business trust. Rockefeller revolutionized the petroleum industry and defined the structure of modern philanthropy. In 1870, he founded the Standard Oil Company and aggressively ran it until he officially retired in 1897. As kerosene and gasoline grew in importance, Rockefeller's wealth soared, and he became the world's richest man and first American worth more than a billion dollars. Adjusting for inflation, he is often regarded as the richest person in American history.

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the most important philanthropists of his era. With the fortune he made from the steel industry, he built Carnegie Hall; later he turned to philanthropy and interests in education, founding the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. Carnegie gave most of his money to establish many libraries, schools, and universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries, as well as to establish a pension fund for former employees. He often is regarded as the second-richest man in history after John D. Rockefeller.

John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker, and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892, Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Company, he merged in 1901 with the Carnegie Steel Company and several other steel and iron businesses, including Consolidated Steel and Wire Company, to form the United States Steel Corporation. At the height of Morgan's career during the early 1900s, he and his partners had financial investments in many large corporations and were accused by critics of controlling the nation's high finance. He directed the banking coalition that stopped the Panic of 1907. He was the leading financier of the Progressive Era, and his dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform American business.

Trusts and Antitrust Laws

During the late nineteenth century, hundreds of small short-line railroads were being bought up and consolidated into giant systems. Separate laws and policies emerged regarding railroads and financial concerns such as banks and insurance companies. The railroads soon discovered that their pools lacked enforcement power. Those who nominally agreed to be bound by the pooling arrangement could-and often did-cheat. So leaders within the railroad business and beyond began looking for ways to control and manage their increasingly large industry holdings.

The corporate form of business enterprise allowed for potentially immense accumulations of capital to be under the control of a small number of managers; but in the 1870s and 1880s, the corporation was not yet established as the dominant legal form of operation. To overcome these disadvantages, clever lawyers for John D. Rockefeller organized his Standard Oil of Ohio as a common-law trust. Trustees were given corporate stock certificates of various companies; by combining numerous corporations into the trust, the trustees could effectively manage and control an entire industry. Within a decade, the Cotton Trust, Lead Trust, Sugar Trust, and Whiskey Trust-along with oil, telephone, steel, and tobacco trusts-had become, or were in the process of becoming, monopolies.

Consumers howled in protest. The political parties got the message: In 1888, both Republicans and Democrats put an antitrust plank in their platforms. In 1889, the new president, Republican Benjamin Harrison, condemned monopolies as "dangerous conspiracies" and called for legislation to address the tendency of monopolies to "crush out" competition.

The result was the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, sponsored by Senator John Sherman, of Ohio. Its two key sections forbade combinations in restraint of trade and monopolizing. The purpose of the Sherman Antitrust Act is not to protect competitors from harm from legitimately successful businesses, nor to prevent businesses from gaining honest profits from consumers, but rather to preserve a competitive marketplace to protect consumers from abuses. Senator Sherman and other sponsors declared that the act had roots in a common-law policy that frowned on monopolies. To an extent, it did, but it added something quite important for the future of business and the U.S. economy: the power of the federal government to enforce a national policy against monopoly and restraints of trade. Nevertheless, passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act did not end the public clamor; 15 years passed before a national administration began to enforce the act, when President Theodore Roosevelt, known as "the Trustbuster," sent his attorney general after the Northern Securities Corporation, a transportation holding company.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Gilded Age was marked by increased mechanization in manufacturing. Businesses searched for cheaper and more efficient ways to create products. Corporate officials used various techniques, such as timing their workers with stopwatches and using stop-motion photography, to study the production process and improve efficiency.

# data[].attributes.headline
American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

# data[].attributes.subject
American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Growth of Cities - AP U.S. History Topic Outlines - Study Notes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
100% Free AP Test Prep website that offers study material to high school students seeking to prepare for AP exams. Enterprising students use this website to learn AP class material, study for class quizzes and tests, and to brush up on course material before the big exam day.

# data[].attributes.headline
Political Corruption & Progressive Government Reform

# data[].attributes.subject
Political Corruption & Progressive Government Reform

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Progressives - Constitutional Rights Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The 1890's are often viewed today as a happy time period when Americans lived uncomplicated lives with few problems to worry about. But, time has a way of covering up the negative and the ugly.

# data[].attributes.headline
Inventions: Lightbulb, Telephone, Automobile, & Airplane

# data[].attributes.subject
Inventions: Lightbulb, Telephone, Automobile, & Airplane

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
US Industrial Revolution Inventions for Kids ***

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find a summary, definition and facts about the US Industrial Revolution Inventions for kids. United States history and the American Industrial Revolution Inventions for kids. Information about the US Industrial Revolution Inventions for kids, children, homework and schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Labor Movement in the United States | History

# data[].attributes.body
The Second Industrial Revolution (Bessemer Process): https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/the-second-industrial-revolution/
Inventions: Lightbulb, Telephone, Automobile, & Airplane: http://www.american-historama.org/industrial-revolution-inventions.htm
The Rise of Big Business: https://ushistoryclass.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/big-business.jpg
The Rise of the Labor Movement: https://youtu.be/ewu-v36szlE

# data[].attributes.body
American Imperialism (The Spanish-American War: https://www.pbs.org/video/latino-americans-spanish-american-war/
Immigration & The Growth of Cities:https://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/growth-of-cities/
Political Corruption & Progressive Government Reform: http://www.crf-usa.org/election-central/the-progressives.html
Women's Rights (Temperance & Suffrage): https://i.ytimg.com/vi/uWQKYmg_0R0/maxresdefault.jpg

# data[].attributes.headline
The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand

# data[].attributes.subject
The Assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by A. Torrey McLean
Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front

One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914. New technology made war more horrible and more complex than ever before. The United States and other countries felt the effects of the war for years afterwards.

The popular image of World War I is soldiers in muddy trenches and dugouts, living miserably until the next attack. This is basically correct. Technological developments in engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and optics had produced weapons deadlier than anything known before. The power of defensive weapons made winning the war on the western front all but impossible for either side.

When attacks were ordered, Allied soldiers went "over the top," climbing out of their trenches and crossing no-man's-land to reach enemy trenches. They had to cut through belts of barbed wire before they could use rifles, bayonets, pistols, and hand grenades to capture enemy positions. A victory usually meant they had seized only a few hundred yards of shell-torn earth at a terrible cost in lives. Wounded men often lay helpless in the open until they died. Those lucky enough to be rescued still faced horrible sanitary conditions before they could be taken to proper medical facilities. Between attacks,the snipers, artillery, and poison gas caused misery and death.

Airplanes, products of the new technology, were primarily made of canvas, wood, and wire. At first they were used only to observe enemy troops. As their effectiveness became apparent, both sides shot planes down with artillery from the ground and with rifles, pistols, and machine guns from other planes. In 1916, the Germans armed planes with machine guns that could fire forward without shooting off the fighters' propellers. The Allies soon armed their airplanes the same way, and war in the air became a deadly business. These light, highly maneuverable fighter planes attacked each other in wild air battles called dogfights. Pilots who were shot down often remained trapped in their falling, burning planes, for they had no parachutes. Airmen at the front did not often live long. Germany also used its fleet of huge dirigibles, or zeppelins, and large bomber planes to drop bombs on British and French cities. Britain retaliated by bombing German cities.

Back on the ground, the tank proved to be the answer to stalemate in the trenches. This British invention used American-designed caterpillar tracks to move the armored vehicle equipped with machine guns and sometimes light cannon. Tanks worked effectively on firm, dry ground, in spite of their slow speed, mechanical problems, and vulnerability to artillery. Able to crush barbed wire and cross trenches, tanks moved forward through machine gun fire and often terrified German soldiers with their unstoppable approach.

Chemical warfare first appeared when the Germans used poison gas during a surprise attack in Flanders, Belgium, in 1915. At first, gas was just released from large cylinders and carried by the wind into nearby enemy lines. Later, phosgene and other gases were loaded into artillery shells and shot into enemy trenches. The Germans used this weapon the most, realizing that enemy soldiers wearing gas masks did not fight as well. All sides used gas frequently by 1918. Its use was a frightening development that caused its victims a great deal of suffering, if not death.

Both sides used a variety of big guns on the western front, ranging from huge naval guns mounted on railroad cars to short-range trench mortars. The result was a war in which soldiers near the front were seldom safe from artillery bombardment. The Germans used super-long-range artillery to shell Paris from almost eighty miles away. Artillery shell blasts created vast, cratered, moonlike landscapes where beautiful fields and woods had once stood.

Perhaps the most significant technological advance during World War I was the improvement of the machine gun, a weapon originally developed by an American, Hiram Maxim. The Germans recognized its military potential and had large numbers ready to use in 1914. They also developed air-cooled machine guns for airplanes and improved those used on the ground, making them lighter and easier to move. The weapon's full potential was demonstrated on the Somme battlefield in July 1916 when German machine guns killed or wounded almost 60,000 British soldiers in only one day.

At sea, submarines attacked ships far from port. In order to locate and sink German U-boats, British scientists developed underwater listening devices and underwater explosives called depth charges. Warships became faster and more powerful than ever before and used newly invented radios to communicate effectively. The British naval blockade of Germany, which was made possible by developments in naval technology, brought a total war to civilians. The blockade caused a famine that finally brought about the collapse of Germany and its allies in late 1918. Starvation and malnutrition continued to take the lives of German adults and children for years after the war.

The firing stopped on November 11, 1918, but modern war technology had changed the course of civilization. Millions had been killed, gassed, maimed, or starved. Famine and disease continued to rage through central Europe, taking countless lives. Because of rapid technological advances in every area, the nature of warfare had changed forever, affecting soldiers, airmen, sailors, and civilians alike.
A. Torrey McLean, a former United States Army officer who served in Vietnam, studied World War I for more than thirty years, personally interviewing a number of World War I veterans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by A. Torrey McLean Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History See also: WWI: Life on the Western Front One of the saddest facts about World War I is that millions died needlessly because military and civilian leaders were slow to adapt their old-fashioned strategies and tactics to the new weapons of 1914.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
[General John Joseph Pershing, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front, in uniform]. Photograph. c1919. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. LC-USZ62-113824.

World War I was the first time in American history that the United States sent soldiers abroad to defend foreign soil. On April 6, 1917, when the United States declared war against Germany, the nation had a standing army of 127,500 officers and soldiers. By the end of the war, four million men had served in the United States Army, with an additional 800,000 in other military service branches.

Once war was declared, the army attempted to mobilize the troops very quickly. The fatigued British and French troops, who had been fighting since August 1914, sorely needed the relief offered by the American forces. In May 1917, General John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing was designated the supreme commander of the American army in France, and the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) were created. Pershing and his staff soon realized how ill-prepared the United States was to transport large numbers of soldiers and necessary equipment to the front, where supplies, rations, equipment, and trained soldiers were all in short supply. Since even the transport ships needed to bring American troops to Europe were scarce, the army pressed into service cruise ships, seized German ships, and borrowed Allied ships to transport American soldiers from New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. The mobilization effort taxed the limits of the American military and required new organizational strategies and command structures to transport great numbers of troops and supplies quickly and efficiently.

Although the first American troops arrived in Europe in June 1917, the AEF did not fully participate at the front until October, when the First Division, one of the best-trained divisions of the AEF, entered the trenches at Nancy, France. Pershing wanted an American force that could operate independently of the other Allies, but his vision could not be realized until adequately trained troops with sufficient supplies reached Europe. Training schools in America sent their best men to the front, and Pershing also established facilities in France to train new arrivals for combat.

Throughout 1917 and into 1918, American divisions were usually employed to augment French and British units in defending their lines and in staging attacks on German positions. Beginning in May 1918, with the first United States victory at Cantigny, AEF commanders increasingly assumed sole control of American forces in combat. By July 1918, French forces often were assigned to support AEF operations. During the Battle of St. Mihiel, beginning September 12, 1918, Pershing commanded the American First Army, comprising seven divisions and more than 500,000 men, in the largest offensive operation ever undertaken by United States armed forces. This successful offensive was followed by the Battle of Argonne, lasting from September 27 to October 6, 1918, during which Pershing commanded more than one million American and French soldiers. In these two military operations, Allied forces recovered more than two hundred square miles of French territory from the German army.

By the time Germany signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, the American Expeditionary Forces had evolved into a modern, combat-tested army recognized as one of the best in the world. The United States had sustained more than 320,000 casualties in the First World War, including over 53,000 killed in action, over 63,000 non-combat related deaths, mainly due to the influenza pandemic of 1918, and 204,000 wounded. In less than two years the United States had established new motorized and combat forces, equipped them with all types of ordnance including machine guns and tanks, and created an entirely new support organization capable of moving supplies thousands of miles in a timely manner. World War I provided the United States with valuable strategic lessons and an officer corps that would become the nucleus for mobilizing and commanding sixteen million American military personnel in World War II.

Notes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The American Expeditionary Forces | A World at War | Articles and Essays | Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
General John Joseph Pershing, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front, in uniform]. Photograph. c1919. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. LC-USZ62-113824. World War I was the first time in American history that the United States sent soldiers abroad to defend foreign soil.

# data[].attributes.headline
How was peace established at the end of World War I?

# data[].attributes.subject
How was peace established at the end of World War I?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris. The conference was called to establish the terms of the peace after World War I. Though nearly thirty nations participated, the representatives of the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Italy became known as the "Big Four." The "Big Four" dominated the proceedings that led to the formulation of the Treaty of Versailles, a treaty that ended World War I.

The Treaty of Versailles articulated the compromises reached at the conference. It included the planned formation of the League of Nations, which would serve both as an international forum and an international collective security arrangement. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was a strong advocate of the League as he believed it would prevent future wars.

Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference were complicated. The United Kingdom, France, and Italy fought together as the Allied Powers during the First World War. The United States, entered the war in April 1917 as an Associated Power. While it fought alongside the Allies, the United States was not bound to honor pre-existing agreements among the Allied Powers. These agreements focused on postwar redistribution of territories. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly opposed many of these arrangements, including Italian demands on the Adriatic. This often led to significant disagreements among the "Big Four."

Treaty negotiations were also weakened by the absence of other important nations. Russia had fought as one of the Allies until December 1917, when its new Bolshevik Government withdrew from the war. The Bolshevik decision to repudiate Russia's outstanding financial debts to the Allies and to publish the texts of secret agreements between the Allies concerning the postwar period angered the Allies. The Allied Powers refused to recognize the new Bolshevik Government and thus did not invite its representatives to the Peace Conference. The Allies also excluded the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria).

According to French and British wishes, the Treaty of Versailles subjected Germany to strict punitive measures. The Treaty required the new German Government to surrender approximately 10 percent of its prewar territory in Europe and all of its overseas possessions. It placed the harbor city of Danzig (now Gdansk) and the coal-rich Saarland under the administration of the League of Nations, and allowed France to exploit the economic resources of the Saarland until 1935. It limited the German Army and Navy in size, and allowed for the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm II and a number of other high-ranking German officials as war criminals. Under the terms of Article 231 of the Treaty, the Germans accepted responsibility for the war and the liability to pay financial reparations to the Allies. The Inter-Allied Commission determined the amount and presented its findings in 1921. The amount they determined was 132 billion gold Reichmarks, or 32 billion U.S. dollars, on top of the initial $5 billion payment demanded by the Treaty. Germans grew to resent the harsh conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

While the Treaty of Versailles did not satisfy all parties concerned, by the time President Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States in July 1919, U.S. public opinion overwhelmingly favored ratification of the Treaty, including the Covenant of the League of Nations. However, in spite of the fact that 32 state legislatures passed resolutions in favor of the Treaty, the U.S. Senate strongly opposed it.

Senate opposition cited Article 10 of the Treaty, which dealt with collective security and the League of Nations. This article, opponents argued, ceded the war powers of the U.S. Government to the League's Council. The opposition came from two groups: the "Irreconcilables," who refused to join the League of Nations under any circumstances, and "Reservationists," led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Henry Cabot Lodge, who wanted amendments made before they would ratify the Treaty. While Chairman Lodge's attempt to pass amendments to the Treaty was unsuccessful in September, he did manage to attach 14 "reservations" to it in November. In a final vote on March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles fell short of ratification by seven votes. Consequently, the U.S. Government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. This separate peace treaty with Germany stipulated that the United States would enjoy all "rights, privileges, indemnities, reparations or advantages" conferred to it by the Treaty of Versailles, but left out any mention of the League of Nations, which the United States never joined.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Milestones: 1914-1920 - Office of the Historian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris. The conference was called to establish the terms of the peace after World War I. Though nearly thirty nations participated, the representatives of the United Kingdom, France, the United States, and Italy became known as the "Big Four."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
History Brief: The Rise of the Automobile

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Alcohol Prohibition, 18th Amendment 1920-1933

# data[].attributes.headline
Black Tuesday & Stock Market Crash of 1929

# data[].attributes.subject
Black Tuesday & Stock Market Crash of 1929

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stock Market Crash of 1929 - Decades TV Network

# data[].attributes.headline
Business Cycle & Causes of the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.subject
Business Cycle & Causes of the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America's Great Depression-and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair.

How bad was the Great Depression? The dimensions of the economic catastrophe in America and the rest of the world cannot be captured fully by quantitative data alone, but here are some figures that might help put this economic nightmare into perspective:

From 1929-1933, production at the nation's factories, mines, and utilities fell by more than half.

People's real disposable incomes dropped 28%.

Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their pre-crash height.

The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933.

At the height of the Depression, one of every four workers was out of a job.

Because of these unspeakable traumas, the Great Depression and its causes have remained at the forefront of economic study and debate. The Great Depression was a complex event, and understanding what happened is no small challenge. In this guide, we aim to give you a clear picture of the key historical figures, policies, and events that caused and extended America's Great Depression.

We'll start by breaking down the timeline of how exactly the Depression unfolded, which we'll break up into into four distinct phases.

The Four Phases of the Great Depression

When you think of the Great Depression, probably the first thing that comes to mind is the massive stock market crash of 1929, when stock prices plummeted spectacularly and investors dumped their stocks as fast as they could. The ensuing panic was memorable indeed, but it was only one aspect of the Depression. In fact, the Depression had four distinct phases:

1. The government's "easy money" policies caused an artificial economic boom and a subsequent crash.

2. President Herbert Hoover's interventionist policies after the crash suppressed the self-adjusting aspect of the market, thus preventing recovery and prolonging the recession.

3. After Hoover left office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" expanded Hoover's interventionism into nearly every aspect of the American economy, thus deepening the Depression and extending it ever longer.

4. Labor laws such as the Wagner Act struck the final blow to the remaining healthy sectors of the economy, dragging the last remaining bulwarks of productivity to their knees.

Each of these phases are marked by distinct events, and each had their own specific causes. Together they produced one common result: business stagnation and unemployment on a scale never before seen in the United States. Let's examine each phase and its causes in turn.

1. Easy Money: A Series of False Signals

The first phase of the Great Depression was a massive boom during the "Roaring 20's," which inevitably burst in 1929. In order to understand this crash, we first have to understand the boom and how it happened.

For various reasons, the government in the 1920's created monetary policies that ballooned the quantity of money and credit in the economy. A great boom resulted, followed soon after by a painful day of reckoning. None of America's depressions prior to 1929, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The Great Depression lasted for a dozen years because the government compounded its monetary errors with a series of harmful interventions. But how exactly did the government inflate the economy, and how did that cause the boom and inevitable bust?

Monetary Policy, Interest Rates, and the Business Cycle

The key to understanding how the government's policies caused the initial boom and bust of the Great Depression lies in understanding how businessmen and investors use interest rates to decide how and when to spend their money.

Investors rely on interest rates to gauge the level of risk for various investments. In simplistic terms, a relatively low interest rate for a given loan signals to potential investors that taking out the loan is probably a safe bet; a high interest rate, on the other hand, signals to investors that money can bet better invested elsewhere. The government's expansion of the money supply artificially reduces and thus falsifies the interest rates, and thereby misguides businessmen in their investment decisions.

The government's expansion of the money supply artificially reduces and thus falsifies interest rates. In the belief that declining rates indicate growing supplies of capital savings, investors embark upon new production projects. The creation of money gives rise to an economic boom. It causes prices to rise, especially prices of capital goods used for business expansion.

The costs of capital goods used for business expansion soar ever higher until business is no longer profitable. It is at this point that the decline begins. In order to prolong the boom, the monetary authorities may continue to inject new money until finally, frightened by the prospects of a run-away inflation, they being to contract the money supply. The boom that was built on the quicksand of inflation then comes to a sudden end.

The ensuing recession is a period of repair and readjustment. Prices and costs adjust anew to consumer choices and preferences.

Most importantly, interest rates readjust to reflect once more the actual supply of and demand deposits in savings. The malinvestments are abandoned or written down. Business costs are reduced through through various means until business can once more be profitably conducted, capital investments earn interest, and the market economy functions smoothly again.

Changes in the supply of money in the economy do have an effect on economic activity. This effect works through the fluctuations of interest rates, which in turn cause fluctuations in business activity.

When money is provided to the market in the form of credit expansion through the banking system, business firms erroneously view this as an increase in the supply of capital. Due to the decreased interest rate in the loan market brought about by the fictitious "increase" in capital, businesses increase their investments in long-range projects that appear profitable.

In addition, other factors as well can cause a discrepancy between the natural rate of interest and the rate which is paid in the loan market. Government policies with regard to debt creation, monetization, bank deposit guarantees, and taxation, can effectively externalize the risk associated with running budget deficits, thus artificially lowering loan rates in the market.

Either of these two influences on interest rates, or a combination of the two, can and do influence economic activity by inducing businesses to make investments that would otherwise not be made. Since real savings in the economy, however, do not increase due to these interventionist measures, there is no real money for businesses to finance the supplies and workers needed for production and growth. And thus the business boom must ultimately give way to a bust.

The Artificial Boom of the Roaring 20's

Now that you can see how manipulations of interest rates and money supply can affect the economy, we can take a look at the boom and bust business cycle leading up to the Great Depression.

The spectacular crash of 1929 followed five years of significant credit expansion by the Federal Reserve System under the Coolidge Administration. In 1924, after a sharp decline in business, the Reserve banks suddenly created some $500 million in new credit, which led to a bank credit expansion of over $4 billion in less than one year.

While the immediate effects of this new powerful expansion of the nation's money and credit were seemingly beneficial, initiating a new economic boom and effacing a 1924 decline, the ultimate outcome was most disastrous. It was the beginning of a monetary policy that led to the stock market crash in 1929 and the following depression.

Signifiant credit expansion under the Coolidge Administration was the beginning of a monetary policy that led to the crash in 1929.

The Federal Reserve System launched a further burst of inflation in 1927, the result being that total currency outside banks plus demand and time deposits in the United States increased from $44.51 billion at the end of June, 1924, to $55.17 billion in 1929. The volume of farm and urban mortgages expanded from $16.8 billion in 1921 to $27.1 billion in 1929.

Similar increases occurred in industrial, financial, and state and local government indebtedness. This expansion of money and credit was accompanied by rapidly rising real estate and stock prices. Prices for industrial securities, according to Standard & Poor's common stock index, rose from 59.4 in June of 1922 to 195.2 in September of 1929. Railroad stock climbed from 189.2 to 446.0, while public utilities rose from 82.0 to 375.

The flood of easy money drove interest rates down, pushed the stock market to dizzy heights, and thus gave birth to the "Roaring Twenties."

The Inevitable Bust

As the boom matured, business costs rose, interest rates began to readjust upward, and profits began to fall. The easy-money effects of the expansion wore off, and the monetary authorities, fearing price inflation, slowed the growth of the money supply. The manipulation was enough to knock out the shaky supports from underneath the economic house of cards.

After a failed attempt at stabilization in 1928, the Federal Reserve System finally abandoned its easy money policy at the beginning of 1929. It sold government securities and thereby halted the bank credit expansion. It raised its discount rate to 6% in August, 1929. Time-money rates rose to 8%, commercial paper rates to 6%, and call rates to the panic figures of 15% and 20%. The American economy was beginning to readjust to fair value levels. In June, 1929, business activity began to recede. Commodity prices began their retreat in July.

The security market reached its high on September 19 and then, under the pressure of early selling, slowly began to decline. For five more weeks the public nevertheless bought heavily on the way down. More than 100 million shares were traded at the New York Stock Exchange in September. Finally it dawned upon more and more stockholders that the trend had changed.

The deflation following the inflation wrenched the economy from tremendous boom to colossal bust.

By early 1929, the Federal Reserve was taking the punch away from the party. It choked off the money supply, raised interest rates, and for the next three years presided over a money supply that shrank by 30%. This deflation following the inflation wrenched the economy from tremendous boom to colossal bust.

Only the sharpest financers saw that the party was coming to an end before most other Americans did. Some even began selling stocks and buying bonds and gold as early as 1928. As Joseph Kennedy said, "only a fool holds out for the top dollar."

When the masses of investors caught up with forward-looking financers like Kennedy, they sensed the change in Fed policy, and the stampede was underway. The stock market, after nearly two months of moderate decline, plunged on "Black Thursday"-October 24, 1929-as the pessimistic view of large and knowledgeable investors spread.

After the crash in 29, the masses rushed on the banks to withdraw their money. The pressure on banks was great and tended not to decrease with the passage of time. In 1929, 659 banks failed; in 1930, 1,352; in 1931, 2,294, and in 1932, 1,456.

2. Hoover's Anti-Adjustment Policies

We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counter attack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. -Herbert Hoover

If this crash had been like previous ones, the subsequent hard times might have ended in a year or two. But unprecedented political bungling, starting with the policies of President Herbert Hoover, prolonged the misery for twelve long years.

Unemployment in 1930 averaged a mildly recessionary 8.9%, up from 3.2% in 1929. It shot up rapidly until peaking out at more than 25% in 1933. Until March 1933, these were the years of President Herbert Hoover.

Hoover's interventionist policies prevented the natural readjustment of the market.

But, as we'll see, Hoover's interventionist policies prevented the natural readjustment of the market. He not only signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which we'll cover in the next section, but also encouraged businessmen to artificially prop up wages, expanded government spending, set up all manner of government lending facilities, and increased the budget deficit. Along with the Federal Reserve System's failure to do its job, resulting in a 30% drop in the money supply, Hoover's interventions were responsible for turning what might have been a severe but swift recession into the Great Depression.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

The Hoover administration passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in June 1930. The most protectionist legislation in U.S. history, Smoot-Hawley aimed to prop up prices in the American economy by keeping foreign products out.

The Act raised American tariffs to unprecedented levels, which practically closed our borders to foreign goods. According to most economic historians, this was the crowning folly of the whole period from 1920 to 1933 and the beginning of the real depression.

"Once we raised our tariffs," wrote Benjamin Anderson,

an irresistible movement all over the world to raise tariffs and to erect other trade barriers, including quotas, began. Protectionism ran wild over the world. Markets were cut off. Trade lines were narrowed. Unemployment in the export industries all over the world grew with great rapidity. Farm prices in the United States dropped sharply through the whole of 1930, but the most rapid rate of decline came following the passage of the tariff bill.

Officials in the administration and in Congress believed that raising trade barriers would force Americans to buy more goods made at home, which would solve the nagging unemployment problem. They ignored an important principle of international commerce: trade is ultimately a two-way street; if foreigners cannot sell their goods here, then they cannot earn the dollars they need to buy here.

Foreign companies and their workers were flattened by Smoot-Hawley's steep tariff rates.

Foreign companies and their workers were flattened by Smoot-Hawley's steep tariff rates, and foreign governments soon retaliated with trade barriers of their own. With their ability to sell in the American market severely hampered, they curtailed their purchases of American goods.

American agriculture was particularly hard hit. With a stroke of the presidential pen, farmers in this country lost nearly a third of their markets. Farm prices plummeted and tens of thousands of farmers went bankrupt. With the collapse of agriculture, rural banks failed in record numbers, dragging down hundreds of thousands of their customers.

Agricultural commodity prices, which had been well above the 1926 base before the crisis, dropped to a low of 47 in the summer of 1932. Crashing prices plunged hundreds of thousands of farmers into bankruptcy. Farm mortgages were foreclosed until various states passed moratoria laws, thus shifting the bankruptcy to countless creditors.

American exports fell from $5.5 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1932. American agriculture customarily had exported over 20% of its wheat, 55% of its cotton, 40% of its tobacco and lard, and many other products. When international trade and commerce were disrupted, American farming collapsed. In fact, the rapidly growing trade restrictions, including tariffs, quotas, foreign exchange controls, and other devices were generating a world-wide depression.

Hoover's Taxes, Subsidies, and Relief Schemes

Hoover dramatically increased government spending for subsidy and relief schemes. In the space of one year alone, from 1930 to 1931, the federal government's share of GNP increased by about one-third.

President Hoover called together the nation's industrial leaders and pledged them to adopt his program to maintain wage rates and expand construction. He sent a telegram to all the governors, urging cooperative expansion of all public works programs. He expanded Federal public works and granted subsidies to ship construction.

And for the benefit of the suffering farmers, a host of Federal agencies embarked upon price stabilization policies that generated ever larger crops and surpluses which in turn depressed product prices even further. Economic conditions went from bad to worse and unemployment in 1932 averaged 12.4 million.

In this dark hour of human want and suffering, the Federal government struck a final blow. The Revenue Act of 1932 doubled the income tax, the sharpest increase in the Federal tax burden in American history. Under the new Revenue Act:

Tax exemptions were lowered.

"Earned income credit" was eliminated.

Normal tax rates were raised from a range of 1.5% to 5% to a range of 4% to 8%.

Surtax rates were raised from 20% to a maximum of 55%.

Corporation tax rates were boosted from 12% to 13.75 and 14.5%.

Estate taxes were raised.

Gift taxes were imposed with rates from .75 to 33.5%.

On top of all these, a 10% gasoline tax was imposed, a 3% automobile tax, a telegraph and telephone tax, a 2¢ check tax, and many other excise taxes. And, finally, postal rates were increased substantially.

When state and local governments faced shrinking revenues, they, too, joined the Federal government in imposing new levies. The rate schedules of existing taxes on income and business were increased and new taxes imposed on business income, property, sales, tobacco, liquor, and other products.

Murray Rothbard, in his authoritative work on America's Great Depression (Van Nostrand, 1963), estimates that the fiscal burden of Federal, state, and local governments nearly doubled during the period, rising from 16% of net private product to 29%. This blow alone would bring any economy to its knees.

3. The New Deal: FDR's Interventionism

Soon after Herbert Hoover assumed the presidency in 1929, the economy began to decline, and between 1930 and 1933 the contraction assumed catastrophic proportions never experienced before or since in the United States. Disgusted by Hoover's inability to stem the collapse, in 1932 the voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, along with a heavily Democratic Congress, and set in motion the radical restructuring of government's role in the economy known as the New Deal.

Roosevelt was undeterred by the failure of the Hoover programs to achieve their object. So far as they considered them in that light at all, the New Dealers thought the Hoover effort was too timid and much too piecemeal. In any case, they were much more convinced of the healing powers of monetary inflation than Hoover had been.

The most prominent of the New Deal programs were supposed to deal with economic problems arising from the Great Depression. Most of them were put forward as remedies for depression-related conditions, many of them in an emergency atmosphere. But rather than cure the depression, they plunged it to new depths.

The New Deal's Central Planning: NRA and AAA

One of the great attributes of the private-property market system is its inherent ability to overcome almost any obstacle. Through price and cost readjustment, managerial efficiency and labor productivity, new savings and investments, the market economy tends to regain its equilibrium and resume its service to consumers. It doubtless would have recovered in short order from the Hoover interventions had there been no further tampering.

However, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the Presidency, he, too, fought the economy all the way. Instead of clearing away the prosperity barriers erected by his predecessor, he built new ones of his own. He struck in every known way at the integrity of the U.S. dollar through monetary expansion schemes. He seized the people's gold holdings and subsequently devalued the dollar by 40%.

With some third of industrial workers unemployed, President Roosevelt embarked upon sweeping industrial reorganization. He persuaded Congress to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA).

The professed purpose of the NRA was to get business to regulate itself, ignoring the antitrust laws and developing fair codes of prices, wages, hours, and working conditions. The President's Re-employment Agreement called for a minimum wage of 400 an hour ($12 to $15 a week in smaller communities), a 35-hour work week for industrial workers and 40 hours for white collar workers, and a ban on all youth labor.

This was a naive attempt at "increasing purchasing power" by increasing payrolls. But, the immense increase in business costs through shorter hours and higher wage rates worked naturally as an anti revival measure. After passage of the Act, unemployment rose to nearly 13 million. The South, especially, suffered severely from the minimum wage provisions: the Act forced 500,000 Blacks out of work.

These National Recovery Administration codes were typically concerned with restricting competition within an industry, reducing hours of labor, and raising prices and wages. Employers were usually forbidden to employ children under 16 years old. A minimum wage throughout the industry and a work week of 40 hours were ordinarily specified. Further, the Cotton Textile Code, for example, forbade employers to use "productive machinery in the cotton textile industry for more than two shifts of 40 hours per week." Planning was supposed to be accomplished by the companies and workers acting in concert with government.

Nor was it simply major industries that were governed by codes initially; any and every sort of undertaking was included.

Code 450 regulated the Dog Food Industry

Code 427regulated the Curled Hair Manufacturing Industry and Horse Hair Dressing Industry

Code 262 regulated the Shoulder Pad Manufacturing Industry.

In New York, I. 'Izzy' Herk, executive secretary of Code 348, brought order to the Burlesque Theatrical Industry by insisting that no production could feature more than four strips.

President Roosevelt also attempted to address the disaster that had befallen American agriculture. He attacked the problem by passage of the Farm Relief and Inflation Act, popularly known as the First Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).

The objective was to raise farm income by cutting the acreages planted or destroying the crops in the field, paying the farmers not to plant anything, and organizing marketing agreements to improve distribution. The program soon covered not only cotton, but also all basic cereal and meat production as well as principal cash crops. The enormous costs of the program were to be covered by a new "processing tax" levied on an already depressed industry.

The AAA was expected to do for agriculture much the same sort of thing that NRA would for industry, only more. Farmers were reckoned to be in much worse condition than manufacturers and industrial workers. The first task with them, according to the planners, was to bring farm income up to a "parity" (as it was called) with industrial income.

The AAA was expected to do for agriculture much the same sort of thing that NRA would for industry, only more.

The years 1909-1914 were chosen as a base for most farm staple products, and the aim was to raise farm prices to a level that would give them an income equivalent to the ratio between farm and industry that prevailed in the base period.

The main device for accomplishing this was reduction of production of staples. So dramatic was the need for reduction, New Dealers thought, that a considerable portion of the 1933 cotton crop was plowed up and destroyed, and many small pigs put to death.

Thereafter, farmers were induced to plant less by government subsidies for those who "cooperated." Under the first AAA (1933-1936), the money to pay for the various benefits paid to farmers came from a tax on processors. Many farmers had long believed, of course, that the middlemen got the profits from their endeavors. The New Deal gave this spurious notion legal standing by levying the tax.

NRA codes and AAA processing taxes came in July and August of 1933. Again, economic production which had flurried briefly before the deadlines, sharply turned downward. The Federal Reserve index dropped from 100 in July to 72 in November of 1933.

The thrust of the NRA and AAA was in the opposite direction from what was needed. If people have material needs, are unemployed or underemployed, the solution for them is either to produce for themselves what they need or produce for sale in the market enough of what is wanted to be able to buy what they need. These things require more, not less, production and changes in production activities, not the freezing of them into patterns of the past.

The thrust of the NRA and AAA was in the opposite direction from what was needed.

That is not to say that government would have had greater success in planning increased production. Some things were already being produced in greater quantities than could be profitably produced for the market. Any general effort to solve the problem was doomed to failure, for the problem was one of individuals, families, and other producing units. Only they could solve it.

The Supreme Court, by unanimous decision, outlawed NRA in 1935 and AAA in 1936. The Court maintained that the Federal legislative power had been unconstitutionally delegated and states' rights violated. These two decisions removed some fearful handicaps under which the economy was laboring.

The NRA in particular was a nightmare with continuously changing rules and regulations by a host of government bureaus. Above all, voidance of the act immediately reduced labor costs and raised productivity as it permitted labor markets to adjust. The death of AAA reduced the tax burden of agriculture and halted the shocking destruction of crops. Unemployment began to decline. In 1935 it dropped to 9.5 million, or 18.4% of the labor force, and in 1936 to only 7.6 million, or 14.5%.

Inflation and Pump-Priming Measures

When the economic planners saw their plans go wrong, they simply prescribed additional doses of Federal pump priming. In his January 1934 Budget Message, Mr. Roosevelt promised expenditures of $10 billion while revenues were at $3 billion. Yet, the economy failed to revive; the business index rose to 86 in May of 1934, and then turned down again to 71 by September. Furthermore, the spending program caused a panic in the bond market which cast new doubts on American money and banking.

The New Dealers held generally that the depression was caused by a shortage of purchasing power, or, at the least, a shortage in the hands of those who would spend it. In the most obvious sense, there was some sort of shortage of purchasing power by those who had great difficulty in providing for their most direct wants.

That is, there was food, clothing, shoes, and other goods available in stores. Yet, many people had to resort to charitable aid to get the wherewithal to live. Surely, they lacked the purchasing power to buy the goods.

They did not lack money-money, per se, is not purchasing power. Money is a medium of exchange. It is, then, a medium through which purchasing power is exercised.

A shortage of purchasing power is not a shortage of money-it's a shortage of goods.

The idea that pumping new money stimulates the economy stems from the idea that money itself is what gives people purchasing power. The problem is that purchasing power is not merely money; it is, in fact, real goods or services. Ultimately, all exchanges are of goods for goods. In a money economy, goods are exchanged for money, and money is then exchanged for other goods. A shortage of purchasing power, then, is in fact a shortage of goods.

Operating on the idea that purchasing power is money, the New Dealers simply printed more money in the hopes of restoring purchasing power to the underemployed masses. But this policy amounts to a trade in which money is exchanged not for goods, but for nothing at all.

The problem is that trading with a shortage of goods is not a normal market phenomenon at all. It occurs only as a result of a large scale intervention in the market through credit expansion fueled by debt; this process is known as inflation. Monetized debt, or inflation, is based not on trading goods for goods, but on trading goods for the promise of goods that don't exist yet, but will be produced in the future. It is nothing other than a promise of future production.

Flooding the economy with money that has not been traded for real goods introduces a whole set of temporary imbalances in the economy. There is a trade imbalance because the goods to be traded for other goods have not yet been produced. There is a price imbalance because prices are no longer in proportion to the money supply. There is a shortfall of real purchasing power (i.e., goods and services). In the wake of the credit expansion there will be an imbalance of production, for many producers will be induced to increase their production, and even their facilities for production, for there are many willing buyers with the money, it seems, to pay for their wares.

The imbalances resulting from any single monetary expansion, however large, will be only temporary. The market tends always toward balance, and if people are free to operate the market, balance will be restored. Prices will rise to compensate for the increase in the money supply. People will generally pay their debts out of production, if they can, and the trade imbalance will be restored.

However, at this stage the shortage of purchasing which was there at the outset will become obvious. Much of production must go into repaying debts. Moreover, even when the debts are repaid, there may need to be a further interval for savings to be made before many new purchases can be made. Many plants may lie idle, and there will be a depression. The adjustments that must be made to restore the balance are often difficult and unpleasant.

The impact of all these multitudinous measures - industrial, agricultural, financial, monetary, and other - upon a bewildered industrial and financial community was extraordinarily heavy. We must add the effect of continuing disquieting utterances by the President. He had castigated the bankers in his inaugural speech. He had made a slurring comparison of British and American bankers in a speech in the summer of 1934... That private enterprise could survive and rally in the midst of so great a disorder is an amazing demonstration of the vitality of private enterprise. -Benjamin Anderson

4. The Wagner Act and Labor Laws

The third phase of the Great Depression was thus drawing to a close. But there was little time to rejoice, for the scene was being set for another collapse in 1937 and a lingering depression that lasted until the day of Pearl Harbor. More than 10 million Americans were unemployed in 1938, and more than 9 million in 1939.

The Wagner Act of July 5, 1935, radically changed American employment and business. It took legal employer-employee disputes over labor contracts out of the courts of law and brought them under a newly created Federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, which became prosecutor, judge, and jury, all in one. Labor union sympathizers on the Board further perverted the law that already afforded legal immunities and privileges to labor unions. The U. S. thereby abandoned a great achievement of Western civilization, equality under the law.

The Wagner Act, or National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), was passed in reaction to the Supreme Court's voidance of NRA and its labor codes. It aimed at crushing all employer resistance to labor unions. Any legal defense from an employer became an "unfair labor practice" punishable by the Board. The law not only obliged employers to deal and bargain with the unions designated as the employees' representative; later Board decisions also made it unlawful to resist the demands of labor union leaders.

The NLRA enabled unions to extort higher wages from employers than they could have received in the market.

The NRLA placed the power of government behind the organization of labor unions, mainly by way of the National Labor Relations Board, weighted the legal scales in favor of unions, and signaled a determination by the federal government that unions should prevail. Thereby, unions were able to extort higher wages from employers than they could have received in the market. The differential is a redistribution of wealth from employers to employees.

Following the election of 1936, the labor unions began to make ample use of their new powers. Through threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, and outright violence committed in legal sanctity, they forced millions of workers into membership. Consequently, labor productivity declined and yet wages were forced upward. Labor strife and disturbance ran wild. Ugly sit down strikes idled hundreds of plants. In the ensuing months economic activity began to decline and unemployment again rose above the ten million mark.

From the White House on the heels of the Wagner Act came a thunderous barrage of insults against business. Businessmen, Roosevelt fumed, were obstacles on the road to recovery. New strictures on the stock market were imposed. A tax on corporate retained earnings, called the "undistributed profits tax," was levied.

The relentless assaults of the Roosevelt administration against business, property, and free enterprise guaranteed that the capital needed to jumpstart the economy was either taxed away or forced into hiding. When Roosevelt took America to war in 1941, he eased up on his anti-business agenda, but a great deal of the nation's capital was diverted into the war effort instead of into plant expansion or consumer goods.

Not until both Roosevelt and the war were gone did investors feel confident enough to "set in motion the postwar investment boom that powered the economy's return to sustained prosperity."

Conclusion

On the eve of America's entry into World War II and twelve years after the stock market crash of Black Thursday, ten million Americans were jobless. Roosevelt had pledged in 1932 to end the crisis, but it persisted two presidential terms and countless interventions later.

Along with the horror of World War II came a revival of trade with America's allies. The war's destruction of people and resources did not help the U.S. economy, but this renewed trade did. More important, the Truman administration that followed Roosevelt was decidedly less eager to berate and bludgeon private investors, and as a result, those investors came back into the economy to fuel a powerful postwar boom.

In the final analysis, the genesis of the Great Depression lay in the inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government in the 1920s. It was prolonged and exacerbated by a litany of political missteps: trade-crushing tariffs, incentive-sapping taxes, mind-numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws. It was not the free market that produced twelve years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a scale as grand as there ever was.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America's Great Depression-and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair. How bad was the Great Depression?

# data[].attributes.headline
President Roosevelt’s New Deal & Plan for Ending the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.subject
President Roosevelt’s New Deal & Plan for Ending the Great Depression

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Great Depression, the worst crisis in American history, brought the country to its knees by 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt took office. FDR and his team launched the New Deal to help get the country back on its feet. They succeeded, yet the myth persists that the New Deal had little effect on economic recovery and only World War II ended the Depression.

The proximate cause of the Great Depression was the financial meltdown that began in October 1929. Stock prices nosedived, millions defaulted on mortgage payments, and thousands of businesses and banks were shuttered.

The real economy was going into recession well before Black Friday, when all hell broke loose. Investment shrank, wages were slashed, layoffs multiplied, and consumer demand shriveled, propelling the economy into a downward spiral. By early 1933, GDP had fallen by half, industrial output by a third, and employment by one-quarter.

A key accomplishment of the New Deal was to get the U.S. financial house in order. Failing banks were culled, deposit insurance instituted, homeowners bailed out, and mortgages guaranteed. The Federal Reserve loosened up the money supply and credit began to flow again.

Meanwhile, billions were pumped into the economy through emergency relief funds and public works programs, from the CCC to the WPA. Not only were millions of desperate American put to work, their families had spending money to stimulate aggregate consumption.

Furthermore, federal spending shot ahead of tax revenue, creating a large budget deficit. FDR didn't believe in deficits, but was willing to try anything, thus inventing 'fiscal policy' even before economist John Maynard Keynes gave it a name.

The economy took off, reaching double-digit growth rates. By 1937, the Great Recovery had pushed output, income, and manufacturing back to 1929 levels. Then recession hit in 1937-38, dropping output by a third and driving unemployment back up. Three things contributed to the setback: FDR tried to re-balance the budget; Social Security taxes kicked in; and the Federal Reserve tightened money supply.

Nevertheless, growth resumed in 1939 and regained its long-term trajectory before war broke out. The big exception was unemployment, which stayed above 10 percent, forever marring the New Deal's reputation. Worse, a key study exaggerated joblessness by not counting the millions working in federal work programs.

World War II brought full employment through military recruitment and full-tilt production, with the federal government running more massive deficits than the New Deal ever dared.

To be sure, recovery cannot be ascribed only to the New Deal. By the 1920s, the American economy was the largest in the world and the assembly line, electricity, chemicals, and petroleum had unleashed a new Industrial Revolution. Advances in productivity continued through the 1930s. Dramatic improvement in transportation was helped by the New Deal's extensive road building. The downside was closure of obsolete factories and railways, terminating millions of jobs, which explains much of the unemployment that remained despite the Great Recovery.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Did the New Deal Cure the Great Depression?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Great Depression, the worst crisis in American history, brought the country to its knees by 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt took office. FDR and his team launched the New Deal to help get the country back on its feet.

# data[].attributes.headline
The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

# data[].attributes.subject
The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Definition ofTotalitarianism: Examples of WW2 Totalitarian countries for Kids ***

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find Definition of Totalitarianism for kids. Definition and Examples of WW2 Totalitarianism countries for Kids. WW2 Totalitarianism governments for kids, children, homework and schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
WWII In HD: America Enters World War II | History

# data[].attributes.body
The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: https://www.history.com/.image/ar_16:9%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cg_faces:center%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_768/MTU3OTIzNjYwOTQzMjcxODg2/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand-100-years-agos-featured-photo.jpg

Technology of WWI:  https://www.ncpedia.org/wwi-technology-and-weapons-war
America's Role In WWI: https://www.loc.gov/collections/stars-and-stripes/articles-and-essays/a-world-at-war/american-expeditionary-forces/

How was peace established at the end of WWI?:  https://history.state.gov/milestones/1914-1920/paris-peace
The Rise of the Automobile:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL_lStk8q9c
The 18th Amendment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNQ_2_J7G2w

# data[].attributes.body
Black Tuesday & Stock Market Crash of 1929:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp7u328PKu4
Business Cycle & Causes of the Great Depression: https://fee.org/articles/what-caused-the-great-depression/
President Roosevelt's New Deal & Plan for Ending the Great Depression: https://livingnewdeal.org/did-the-new-deal-cure-the-great-depression/
The Dust Bowl: https://allthatsinteresting.com/thumb/800.422.https://allthatsinteresting.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/dust-bowl-og1.jpg
The Rise of Totalitarianism in Europe in the 1930s:  http://www.american-historama.org/1929-1945-depression-ww2-era/totalitarianism.htm
America's Involvement in WWII:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yQyCTTPGuQ&pbjreload=10