Lecture 3

Plan

1) WWI

2) The Roaring 20-s

3) The Great Depression and WWII

4) Prosperity and Problems

1) In August 1914, a war started in Europe. It was the beginning of a struggle that lasted for more than four years, brought death to millions of people and changed the history of the world. It was called the First World War.

On one sight were fighting France, Great Britain and Russia. They were known as Allies. On the other side were fighting Germany and Austria, who were called the Central Powers. Most Americans wanted to keep out of the war.

In the next few years German submarines sank about 10 American ships. With German torpedoes sending American sailors to their deaths in the waters of the Atlantic, President Wilson felt that he had no choice. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany. When it was done, the American army was a small force of only 200,000 soldiers. They had to recruit millions more before they could really help European Allies.

By January 1919, President Wilson was in Europe. He was there to help to work out a peace treaty. After much arguing, and without consulting the Germans, the Allied leaders agreed on a peace treaty. They called it the Versailles Treaty, after the palace near Paris where it was signed in May 1919.

2) The United States was very rich in these years. Because of the First World War, other countries owed it a lot of money. It had plenty of raw materials and plenty of factories. Its national income was much higher than that of Britain, France, Germany and Japan put together.

The busiest factories were those making automobiles. Between 1922 and 1927, the number of cars on the roads rose from under 11 million to over 20 million. The electrical industry also prospered. It made hundreds of thousands of refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, stoves and radios.

The United States became the first nation in history to build its way of life on selling a lot of goods that gave ordinary people easier and more enjoyable lives. These "consumer goods" poured off the assembly lines of big new factories. Between 1919 and 1929 such mass-production factories doubled their output.

The growth of industry made many Americans well-off. Millions earned good wages. Thousands invested money in successful firms. Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s. Men like Henry Ford were admired as the creators of the nation's prosperity.

To help businessmen, Congress placed high import taxes on goods from abroad. The aim was to make imported goods more expensive, so that American manufacturers would have less competition from foreign companies. At the same time Congress reduced taxes on high incomes and company profits. This gave rich men more money to invest.

Yet there were lots of poor Americans, such as immigrant workers and farmers. A survey in 1929 showed that half the American people had hardly enough money to buy sufficient food and clothing.

3) By 1929 buying and selling shares - "playing the market" - had become almost a national hobby. You can buy them at one price, then, if the company does well, sell them later at a higher price. More and more people wanted to get some of this easy money. You could see this from the rise in the number of shares changing hands. In 1923 the number was 236 million; by 1928 it had grown to 1,125 million. Like most other things in the United States in the 1920s, you could buy shares on credit.

Yet some people began to doubt and sell their shares faster and faster. A panic began. By the end of 1929 the value of all shares had dropped by $ 40,000 million. Thousands of people found themselves facing debt and ruin. Some committed suicide. This collapse of American share prices was known as the Wall Street Crash. It marked the end of the prosperity of the 1920s.

By the end of 1931 nearly eight million Americans were out of work. Many were soon without homes or food and had to live on charity. During the Depression factories and shops were closing, farmers couldn’t sell their products. On November 9, 1931, people elected Franklin Roosevelt as the next President of the United States by the largest majority in American history in the forty-two states. His politics was to give people jobs and money, that’s why he created a lot of special organizations to help it.

Then, in 1939, war broke out in Europe. By the summer of 1939 Hitler's armies had overrun all of Western Europe, except for Britain. And Roosevelt was the one who persuaded Congress to send Britain and Russia military equipment.

But the USA didn’t actually take part in the war. On Decembcr 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the American Navy's main base in the Pacific Ocean. Their bombs and torpedoes sank or badly damaged eight American battleships, blew up hundreds of aircraft and killed over 1,000 men. The next day The US declared war on Japan, and later Hitler declared war on the USA.

There were thousands of fights, but the most memorable and cruel happened after scientists tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945 an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, on August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both cities were devastated and nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. On August 14, the Japanese government surrendered. The Second World War was over.

4) Prosperity and problems.

In the years after the war, Americans lived better than other countries. Between 1947 and 1971 the value of their wages, their "real incomes”, more than doubled. During these years of prosperity the United States was run first by President Truman (1945- 53), then by President Eisenhower (1953 - 61). In 1961 a new President called John F. Kennedy (1961-3) was elected.

He was a Democrate and as Roosevelt tried to help the poor with money and food. He also wanted to help black Americans, but was shot and killed.

Lyndon B. Johnson became the next President, but after he started war in Vietnam he bacame so unpopular that decided to retire in 1969.

The next President, Richard Nixon, was more popular, mainly because he stopped war in Vietnam, but in the end had to give up his Presidency because of an illigal plan to discredit his opponent, called the “Watergate affair”.

In 1980, Americans elected a President they hoped would make a better job of running the country. He was a former film actor named Ronald Reagan. People liked his simple politics and they started to prosper again. He successfully ruled for 9 years.

One of the biggest problems at that time was racial segregation. The black struggle for equality became known as the Civil Rights movement. An important legal turning point came in 1954. In a case called Brown v. Topeka, the Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were illegal and ordered that black children should be allowed to attend any school. In November 1956, the Supreme Court declared that segregation on public buses was also unconstitutional.

A climax of the Civil Rights movement came in 1963. On a hot August day 200,000 people, black and white took part in a mass demonstration in Washington to demand full racial equality. In a moving and dramatic speech, Martin Luther King told millions of Americans his famous words “I have a dream…”.

In 1964 the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land, but as racial discrimination was too deep-rooted in people’s mind, it took many years to solve this problem. In April 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered. But black Americans decided that voting was the best way to get what they wanted. And soon many of King’s dreams come true.