7.1.1 Performance Task
Political Causes
Political Causes - While reviewing these sources, take notes on an additional sheet of paper. You will use these notes to write your paper.
Organized Crime:
The Prohibition was initiated by nativistic desires. We could define nativism as:
- a reaction to the changing patterns of immigration.
- industrialization and urbanization.
- changing moves.
Around the 1880′s-1890′s, people from Poland, Tchecoslovaquia, Eastern Europe arrived in America. This did not please the "older" Americans. The USA were a protestant country and the Ku-Klux-Klan accused the immigrants of all the wrongs.
The first American dream saw America as a land of morality. The urban way of life was a shift from an economy of scarcity to the beginning of the consumer society in the 1920′s, with credits for cars, telephone, entertainments…
Cinema was a symbol between a new technology and a new way of life based on consumption. Money is here to be spent. Pleasure is worthwhile (cinema, cabaret, jazz). The "Roaring Twenties" were a huge part of the young Americans. New types of sexual values: the "flapper" is the new 1920′s woman. (Note: woman was the cornerstone of morality).Censorship first applied to gangster movies and to the movies describing this new sexuality.
The Prohibition is an attempt to give back America its morality. The immigrants were associated with people who drank Italian wine, Irish beer.. After World War I, the enemy was Germany: drinking beer was un patriotic. The saloon was not only a place to drink but also a place of social life and a center of vice (prostitutes). Alcohol became the segregation line between the Americans and the undesirable (the immigrants). It was also based on scientific data: eugenics (idea of improving the race), and the idea of preventing alcohol from ruining the future generations. Henry Ford said it would improve the efficiency of his workers (even before the Prohibition, he used to check his workers, even at home !). Creation of women’s movements to prevent the abuse and violence at home. 1874 saw the creation of the Woman Christian Temperance Union (WCTV). The Anti-Saloon League was created.
Prohibitionists were not a majority and yet they manages to impose their will to the nation. The real Prohibition came about on the 16th of January 1919 with the ratification of the 18th Amendment by 36 states. In 1920, the Volstead Act prohibited the sale of all intoxicating beverages (more than 0.5% of alcohol), with the exception of the beverage needed for medical purposes. The consumption of alcohol at home was not prohibited but its manufacturing, distribution… was.
This was not a popular law and people tried to drink all the more. Since supply of alcohol was banned, they had to find other ways: by making alcohol illegal, it made it more desirable. The speakeasy were clandestine bars where you could buy alcohol. The Roaring Twenties were the age of jazz, alcohol and sexual liberation.
Repression was made difficult by the widespread corruption at every level. Politicians were corrupted, especially at the Prohibition bureau. Basically, Prohibition made things go from bad to worse. Gangsters were able to intimidate witnesses and to avoid going to prison. In 1920, there were 6.8 murders for 1000 people. In 1933, there were 9.7 murders for 1000 people.
The gangsters had a popular image: they were businessmen providing the people with what they needed. They were considered as men who made it and embodied the American Dream, especially in the period of depression of the 1930′s.
The Prohibition increased enormously the power of gangsters. There was an economic mutation: the alcohol being banned, the prices went up and there were high risks in running an alcohol shop. Legal businessmen stopped their production, except for medicine or for non-alcoholic beers (inferior to 0.5% alcohol). The thing is that before the removing of alcohol, you had alcoholic beers… It became a highly lucrative system for gangsters, much more important than prostitution or gambling. It was an expensive investment but it produced high revenues. You had to import your alcohol and hire people to protect it (Al Capone hired 700 gunmen). Organized crime became very influential.
A way of getting alcohol was to hi-jack federal reserves or stealing ale before the alcohol was removed, or alcohol destined to medicine use. Some people tried to produce their own whisky, mixed with turpentine but it was so toxic that people could die from it (!). Vertical integration controlled the importation and production of alcohol. Organized crime was first local and then became a wider organization thanks to syndication.
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Traditionalist/Rural |
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Modernist/Urban |
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Didn’t want it because they supported unilateralism and thought that if Europe went to war then U.S. would be forced to go |
The League of Nations In 1919, isolationist Senators rejected American membership in the League of Nations, which had been supported by President Woodrow Wilson. The US remained outside the League throughout the 1920’s. |
Wanted it because they believed that the league could prevent wars. |
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Happy with decision because they believed they believed in the traditional view of creation. |
Scopes Trial Schoolteacher John Scopes was found guilty in 1925 of breaking a Tennessee law against the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution in the public schools. He was defended by noted criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow, while the famous fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan aided the prosecution. |
Considered it a victory because it brought fundamentalism to the stands and scopes didn’t do anytime. |
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Viewed it as a good thing because they thought alcohol was a sin and was frowned upon and caused social problems. |
Prohibition With ratification of the 18thAmendment to the Constitution, the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages became illegal in the United States. It remains so, despite widespread violations and rampant crime throughout the 1920’s. |
With the ratification, there was an uproar against it. However, alcohol was still being consumed. |
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Women are too exposed. They shouldn’t wear clothes above the nee and shouldn’t cut their hair short. |
Flappers Women were first granted the vote under the 19th Amendment in 1920. Relaxed standards of morality and dress also contributed to the “emancipated woman” of the 1920’s. |
With the relaxed standards, modernists felt that the 19thamendment was necessary to women gaining status in a men’s world. |
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Red scare is an example of what people thought of immigration. They also believed in nativism. |
Immigration High unemployment. Labor troubles, and anti-Communist feeling brought a quota system in 1921 that limited European immigration for the first time in American history. These quotas favored northwestern Europeans at the expense of Asians. |
Although there was still nativism, it wasn’t as strong and didn’t discriminate as much of “new” immigrants. |
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They thought that the people were heroes for persecuting certain people. |
Ku Klux Klan Klu Klux Klan was revived partially to the film, Birth of a Nation. It expanded targets of hate to include Catholics, iimmigrants, and Jews, as well as blacks. |
Went against it because of the horrible things that they did to innocent people. |
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Believed in Nativism and thought that the execution was fair and for a good reason. |
Sacco and Vanzetti In 1920, these Italian immigrants were put on trial for the murder of a paymaster in Massachusetts. Their execution seven years later provoked controversy over the fairness of their trial, since many thought their radical political views had been held against them. |
Thought that the trial was unfair because the immigrants were convicted under radically political views and not the actual evidence. |
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Catholics are too inferior to become president. |
Election of 1928 This election marked the first time that a Catholic, New York governor Al Smith, ran for president. Republican Herbert Hoover won on the issue of prosperity but the size of his victory was viewed as evidence that a Catholic could not be elected President of the United States |
They accepted new religious views and thought Al was a good candidate. |
The Quota System
The American, Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, (ch. 8, 42 Stat. 5, or the Johnson Quota Act) of May 19, 1921, restricted immigration into its country; the act imposed a quota that limited the number of immigrants who would be admitted from any country annually to 3%[1] of the number of residents from that same country who lived in the United States, based on the United States Census figures from 1910. Taking native-born residents into account, this calculation indicated a total of 357,802 new immigrants would be allowed annually. Of that number just over half was allocated for northern and western Europeans, and the remainder for eastern and southern Europeans, a 75% reduction from prior years. Professionals were allowed in despite their origins. The act was passed without a record vote in the U.S. House of Representatives and by a vote of 78-1 in the U.S. Senate during a time of swelling isolationism following World War I.
The Emergency Quota Act had been proposed several times before, but never made it through until 1921. The main reason for passing the Act was that the flood of immigrants in recent years had negative wage effects on native-born Americans. This led to increasing support for immigration restrictions. Another factor was the increasing political power of immigration groups. Historian John Higham wrote in his classic work on American nativism, Strangers in the Land (1963), that although intended as temporary legislation the act "proved in the long run the most important turning-point in American immigration policy" because it imposed numerical limits on European immigration for the first time and established a nationality quota system (Higham, p. 311).
The immigration level was limited to 3% in 1921 by the Emergency Quota Act, soon to be limited by the Immigration Act of 1924, which brought it down to 2%.
The average annual inflow of immigrants prior to 1921 was 175,983 from Northern and Western Europe, and 685,531 from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe.
In 1921, the incoming immigrant population was settled down to 198,082 from Northern and Western Europe, and 158,367 from principally Southern and Eastern Europe (including other countries), being shown as a drastic reduction in immigration levels from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe. This also portrays a 3% level in reduction. This was due to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921.
The 2% level was reached in the Quota Act of 1924, where levels dropped to 140,999 for Northern and Western Europe, and 21,847 for other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe.
The census used for the Emergency Quota Act was the 1910 census. (The Immigration Act of 1924 was based on the census of 1890.)
The Act set no limits on immigration from Latin America.
The Sacco-Vanzetti case draws national attention
A paymaster and a security guard are killed during a mid-afternoon armed robbery of a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Out of this rather unremarkable crime grew one of the most famous trials in American history and a landmark case in forensic crime detection.
Both Fred Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli were shot several times as they attempted to move the payroll boxes of their New England shoe company. The two armed thieves, identified by witnesses as "Italian-looking," fled in a Buick. The car was found abandoned in the woods several days later. Through evidence found in the car, police suspected that a man named Mike Boda was involved. However, Boda was one step ahead of the authorities, and he fled to Italy.
Police did manage to catch Boda's colleagues, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were each carrying loaded weapons at the time of their arrest. Sacco had a .32 caliber handgun--the same type as was used to kill the security guards--and bullets from the same manufacturer as those recovered from the shooting. Vanzetti was identified as a participant in a previous robbery attempt of a different shoe company.
Sacco and Vanzetti were anarchists, believing that social justice would come only through the destruction of governments. In the early 1920s, mainstream America developed a fear of communism and radical politics that resulted in a anti-communist, anti-immigrant hysteria. Sacco and Vanzetti, recognizing the uphill battle ahead, tried to put this fear to their advantage by drumming up support from the left wing with claims that the prosecution was politically motivated. Millions of dollars were raised for their defense by the radical left around the world. The American embassy in Paris was even bombed in response to the Sacco-Vanzetti case; a second bomb intended for the embassy in Lisbon was intercepted.
The well-funded defense put up a good fight, bringing forth nearly 100 witnesses to testify on the defendants' behalf. Ultimately, eyewitness identification wasn't the crucial issue; rather, it was the ballistics tests on the murder weapon. Prosecution experts, with rather primitive instruments, testified that Sacco's gun was the murder weapon. Defense experts claimed just the opposite. In the end, on July 14, 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty; they were sentenced to death.
However, the ballistics issue refused to go away as Sacco and Vanzetti waited on death row. In addition, a jailhouse confession by another criminal fueled the controversy. In 1927, Massachusetts Governor A. T. Fuller ordered another inquiry to advise him on the clemency request of the two anarchists. In the meantime, there had been many scientific advances in the field of forensics. The comparison microscope was now available for new ballistics tests and proved beyond a doubt that Sacco's gun was indeed the murder weapon.
Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in August 1927, but even the new evidence didn't completely quell the controversy. In October 1961, and again in March 1983, new investigations were conducted into the matter, but both revealed that Sacco's revolver was indeed the one that fired the bullet and killed the security guards. On August 23, 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had not received a fair trial.
The Russian Revolution:
Russian Revolution: Background
By 1917, most Russians had lost faith in the leadership ability of Czar Nicholas II. Government corruption was rampant, the Russian economy remained backward, and Nicholas repeatedly dissolved the Duma, the Russian parliament established after the 1905 revolution, when it opposed his will. However, the immediate cause of the February Revolution–the first phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917–was Russia’s disastrous involvement in World War I (1914-18). Militarily, imperial Russia was no match for industrialized Germany, and Russian casualties were greater than those sustained by any nation in any previous war. Meanwhile, the economy was hopelessly disrupted by the costly war effort, and moderates joined Russian radical elements in calling for the overthrow of the czar.
Did You Know?
After Czar Nicholas II and his family were executed by Bolshevik forces in July 1918, the killers hid the victims’ mutilated bodies. The remains were discovered and exhumed in the late 1970s near Yekaterinburg, Russia, and eventually identified through DNA testing.
February Revolution: 1917
The February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar until February 1918) began on March 8, 1917 (or February 23 on the Julian calendar), when demonstrators clamoring for bread took to the streets in the Russian capital of Petrograd (now called St. Petersburg). Supported by huge crowds of striking industrial workers, the protesters clashed with police but refused to leave the streets. On March 10, the strike spread among all of Petrograd’s workers, and irate mobs destroyed police stations. Several factories elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet, or council, of workers’ committees, following the model devised during the 1905 revolution.
On March 11, the troops of the Petrograd army garrison were called out to quell the uprising. In some encounters, regiments opened fire, killing demonstrators, but the protesters kept to the streets and the troops began to waver. That day, Nicholas again dissolved the Duma. On March 12, the revolution triumphed when regiment after regiment of the Petrograd garrison defected to the cause of the demonstrators. The soldiers subsequently formed committees that elected deputies to the Petrograd Soviet.
The imperial government was forced to resign, and the Duma formed a provisional government that peacefully vied with the Petrograd Soviet for control of the revolution. On March 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued Order No. 1, which instructed Russian soldiers and sailors to obey only those orders that did not conflict with the directives of the Soviet. The next day, March 15, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Michael (1878-1918), whose refusal of the crown brought an end to the czarist autocracy.
Bolshevik Revolution: 1917
In the aftermath of the February Revolution, power was shared between the weak provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet. Then, on November 6 and 7, 1917 (or October 24 and 25 on the Julian calendar, which is why this event is also referred to as the October Revolution), leftist revolutionaries led by Bolshevik Party leader Vladimir Lenin launched a nearly bloodless coup d’état against the provisional government. The Bolsheviks and their allies occupied government buildings and other strategic locations in Petrograd, and soon formed a new government with Lenin as its head.
Lenin became the virtual dictator of the first Marxist state in the world. His government made peace with Germany, nationalized industry and distributed land, but beginning in 1918 had to fight a devastating civil war against anti-Bolshevik White Army forces. In 1920, the anti-Bolsheviks were defeated, and in 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established.
Fear of Dissent:
. Mitchell Palmer
The Case Against the "Reds"
A powerful reaction against "radicalism" in various forms swept the country immediately after the end of the war. One of the leading progenitors and sponsors of the "Red Scare" was the Attorney General of the United States, who summarizes his fears of Bolshevism and his methods of extirpating it.
SOURCE. A Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds,'" Forum (1920), 63:173- 185.
In this brief review of the work which the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country almost unaided by any virile legislation. Though I have not been embarrassed by political opposition, I have been materially delayed because the present sweeping processes of arrests and deportation of seditious aliens should have been vigorously pushed by Congress last spring. The failure of this is a matter of record in the Congressional files.
The anxiety of that period in our responsibility when Congress, ignoring the seriousness of these vast organizations that were plotting to overthrow the Government, failed to act, has passed. The time came when it was obviously hopeless to expect the hearty cooperation of Congress in the only way to stamp out these seditious societies in their open defiance of law by various forms of propaganda.
Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way into the homes of the American workmen, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.
Robbery, not war, is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated in Russia, Germany, and in America. As a foe, the anarchist is fearless of his own life, for his creed is a fanaticism that admits no respect of any other creed. Obviously it is the creed of any criminal mind, which reasons always from motives impossible to clean thought. Crime is the degenerate factor in society.
Upon these two basic certainties, first that the "Reds" were criminal aliens and secondly that the American Government must prevent crime, it was decided that there could be no nice distinctions drawn between the theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our national laws. An assassin may have brilliant intellectuality, he may be able to excuse his murder or robbery with fine oratory, but any theory which excuses crime is not wanted in America. This is no place for the criminal to flourish, nor will he do so so long as the rights of common citizenship can be exerted to prevent him.
OUR GOVERNMENT IN JEOPARDY
It has always been plain to me that when American citizens unite upon any national issue they are generally right, but it is sometimes difficult to make the issue clear to them. If the Department of Justice could succeed in attracting the attention of our optimistic citizens to the issue of internal revolution in this country, we felt sure there would be no revolution. The Government was in jeopardy; our private information of what was being done by the organization known as the Communist Party of America, with headquarters in Chicago, of what was being done by the Communist Internationale under their manifesto planned at Moscow last March by Trotzky, Lenin and others addressed "To the Proletariats of All Countries," of what strides the Communist Labor Party was making, removed all doubt. In this conclusion we did not ignore the definite standards of personal liberty, of free speech, which is the very temperament and heart of the people. The evidence was examined with the utmost care, with a personal leaning toward freedom of thought and word on all questions.
The whole mass of evidence, accumulated from all parts of the country, was scrupulously scanned, not merely for the written or spoken differences of viewpoint as to the Government of the United States, but, in spite of these things, to see if the hostile declarations might not be sincere in their announced motive to improve our social order. There was no hope of such a thing.
By stealing, murder and lies, Bolshevism has looted Russia not only of its material strength but of its moral force. A small clique of outcasts from the East Side of New York has attempted this, with what success we all know. Because a disreputable alien ‹Leon Bronstein, the man who now calls himself Trotzky‹can inaugurate a reign of terror from his throne room in the Kremlin, because this lowest of all types known to New York can sleep in the Czar's bed, while hundreds of thousands in Russia are without food or shelter, should Americans be swayed by such doctrines?
Such a question, it would seem, should receive but one answer from America.
My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotzky. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants. How the Department of Justice discovered upwards of 60,000 of these organized agitators of the Trotzky doctrine in the United States is the confidential information upon which the Government is now sweeping the nation clean of such alien filth....
WILL DEPORTATION CHECK BOLSHEVISM?
Behind, and underneath, my own determination to drive from our midst the agents of Bolshevism with increasing vigor and with greater speed, until there are no more of them left among us, so long as I have the responsible duty of that task, I have discovered the hysterical methods of these revolutionary humans with increasing amazement and suspicion. In the confused information that sometimes reaches the people they are compelled to ask questions which involve the reasons for my acts against the "Reds." I have been asked, for instance, to what extent deportation will check radicalism in this country. Why not ask what will become of the United States Government if these alien radicals are permitted to carry out the principles of the Communist Party as embodied in its so-called laws, aims and regulations?
There wouldn't be any such thing left. In place of the United States Government we should have the horror and terrorism of bolsheviki tyranny such as is destroying Russia now. Every scrap of radical literature demands the overthrow of our existing government. All of it demands obedience to the instincts of criminal minds, that is, to the lower appetites, material and moral. The whole purpose of communism appears to be a mass formation of the criminals of the world to overthrow the decencies of private life, to usurp property that they have not earned, to disrupt the present order of life regardless of health, sex or religious rights. By a literature that promises the wildest dreams of such low aspirations, that can occur to only the criminal minds,, communism distorts our social law....
It has been inferred by the "Reds" that the United States Government, by arresting and deporting them, is returning to the autocracy of Czardom, adopting the system that created the severity of Siberian banishment. My reply to such charges is that in our determination to maintain our government we are treating our alien enemies with extreme consideration. To deny them the privilege of remaining in a country which they have openly deplored as an unenlightened community, unfit for those who prefer the privileges of Bolshevism, should be no hardship. It strikes me as an odd form of reasoning that these Russian Bolsheviks who extol the Bolshevik rule should be so unwilling to return to Russia. The nationality of most of the alien "Reds" is Russian and German. There is almost no other nationality represented among them.
It has been impossible in so short a space to review the entire menace of the internal revolution in this country as I know it, but this may serve to arouse the American citizen to its reality, its danger, and the great need of united effort to stamp it out, under our feet, if needs be. It is being done. The Department of Justice will pursue the attack of these "Reds" upon the Government of the United States with vigilance, and no alien, advocating the overthrow of existing law and order in this country, shall escape arrest and prompt deportation.
It is my belief that while they have stirred discontent in our midst, while they have caused irritating strikes, and while they have infected our social ideas with the disease of their own minds and their unclean morals we can get rid of them! and not until we have done so shall we have removed the menace of Bolshevism for good.
Source: A. Mitchell Palmer, " The Case Against the Reds," Part III Peacemaking, 1919-1920, Radicalism and the Red Scare, World War I At Home: Readings on American Life, 1914-1920. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.: New York, pp. 185-189.