Chapter 19-3 Guided Reading

What were some things accomplished by the following wartime agencies and laws?
1) War industries board: It encouraged companies to use mass-production techniques, and eliminate waste by standardizing products. It set production quotas and allocated raw materials. Industrial production in the u.S. increased by 20%. However, price controls were only applied at a wholesale level. Retail prices skyrocketed, to double what they were before the war, as well as the increase in corporate profits.
2) Railroad Administration: Controlled railroads.
3) Fuel Administration: Monitored coal supplies, rationed gasoline and heating oil, and introduced daylight-saving time to take advantage of longer summer days.
4) National War Labor Boards: Started by President Wilson to deal with disputes between management and labor. Workers who did not obey board decisions could lose their draft exemptions. It also worked to improve factory conditions, pushing for an 8-hour workday, promoted safety inspections and enforced the child labor ban.
5) Food Administration: Set up by Wilson to help produce and conserve food under the administration of Herbert Hoover. instead of rationing, he encouraged people to follow the 'gospel of the clean plate". One day a week was meatless, another sweetless, two days wheatless and two others porkless. Homeowners planted victory gardens. These and similar efforts resulted in the tripling of American food shipments to the Allies. Farmers put an additional 40 million acres of land into use and increased their income by about 30%. Hoover set a high govt. price on wheat.
6) Committee on Public Information: The nation's first propaganda agency, set up to popularize the war.Thousands of drawings, paintings and sculptures were made promoting the war. 75,000 men were recruited to spoke about everything relating to the war, called "Four-Minute men". It made 25 million copies of "How the War Came to America", and distributed 75 million pamphlets, booklets, and leaflets.
7) Espionage and Sedition Acts: Passed by Congress, said that a person could be fined with up to $10,000 and sentenced to 20 years in jail for interfering with the war effort or saying anything disloyal about the govt. or war effort.These lead to over 2,000 prosecutions, over half of which resulted in conviction. The Acts were an excuse to suppress everything that the govt. didn't want to hear, and a violation of the 1st Amendment rights.
What changes did the war bring about for the following groups of Americans?
8)Immigrants: Immigrants from German and Americans of German descent faced discrimination. Many lost their Jobs, and orchestras refused to play works by German composers such as Mozart and Bach and Beethoven. Schools stopped teaching German, towns with German names changed them, and books by German authors were removed from libraries.Some Germans were flogged, tarred and feathered, and even lynched.
9) African Americans: Accelerated the Great migration, the movement of hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks to Northern cities. This was spurred by black Newspaper reports comparing the success of Northern blacks to they lynchings of the South, as well as the recruiting agents sent from the North to distribute free railroad passes. The drop in European immigration gave jobs in Northern factories to blacks.
10) Women: Stepped into jobs previously held by men only. Became railroad workers, cooks, dockworkers and bricklayers. Many women also continued to fill more traditional jobs such as nurses, clerks, and teachers. others were active in peace movements, such as Jane Addams. It caused more support for woman suffrage, and in 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.