IB History Economic and Social Impact Notes

Economic and Social Impact of the First World War on the United States

Financing and Directing the War Economy

1. Federal spending rose dramatically. The government financed troops, weapons, shipping, food, and loans to the Allied powers.
2. Liberty Bonds mobilized private savings. Four Liberty Loan campaigns and a Victory Loan encouraged citizens to lend money to the government.
3. New taxes widened federal finance. The War Revenue Acts increased income and corporate taxes, making wealthy households and firms more important sources of revenue.
4. The War Industries Board coordinated production. Under Bernard Baruch, it set priorities, allocated raw materials, and encouraged standardization.
5. The Railroad Administration took control of railways. Federal management reduced competition and attempted to move troops and supplies more efficiently.
6. The Fuel Administration regulated energy. It promoted conservation and introduced measures such as daylight saving time.
7. Wartime planning stopped short of nationalization. Government agencies worked largely through private corporations rather than replacing them.

Industrial Expansion and Corporate Power

1. Military orders increased factory output. Steel, chemicals, machine tools, vehicles, munitions, and shipbuilding expanded rapidly.
2. Large firms gained major contracts. Companies with scale and political connections could meet federal demands more easily than small producers.
3. Corporate consolidation accelerated. Standardized contracts and guaranteed purchasing strengthened leading industrial businesses.
4. Profits attracted criticism. Workers and reformers contrasted corporate earnings with conscription, inflation, and battlefield sacrifice.
5. The government used cost-plus contracts. Payment based on production costs plus profit encouraged rapid output but reduced pressure for economy.
6. Scientific management spread. Factories used tighter supervision, time measurement, and standardized processes to raise output.
7. Wartime capacity influenced the 1920s. Expanded plant, technology, and management supported later growth in mass production and consumer goods.

Labour, Wages, and Industrial Conflict

1. Labour demand increased bargaining power. Employers needed workers as enlistment and military production tightened labour markets.
2. Nominal wages rose. But rapid inflation reduced much of the improvement in workers' real purchasing power.
3. The National War Labor Board mediated disputes. It supported the eight-hour day, equal pay principles, and collective bargaining in selected industries.
4. Union membership expanded. The American Federation of Labor cooperated with the Wilson administration and gained recognition.
5. The Industrial Workers of the World faced repression. Raids, prosecutions, and vigilante violence weakened a union associated with radical industrial action.
6. Strikes continued despite wartime pressure. Workers protested wages, hours, dangerous conditions, and employer refusal to recognize unions.
7. Post-war conflict intensified. The 1919 strike wave showed that wartime labour cooperation had not resolved class tensions.

Agriculture and Rural Change

1. European demand raised farm prices. American farmers expanded wheat, meat, cotton, and other production for domestic and Allied consumption.
2. The Food Administration promoted conservation. Herbert Hoover encouraged voluntary meatless and wheatless days while coordinating purchases.
3. Farmers increased acreage and borrowing. High prices encouraged investment in land, machinery, and credit.
4. Mechanization advanced unevenly. Tractors and new equipment increased output but required capital unavailable to many small farmers.
5. Tenant farmers remained vulnerable. Sharecroppers and farm labourers gained little from high commodity prices and faced unstable employment.
6. The wartime boom encouraged overproduction. When European agriculture recovered, prices fell sharply after 1920.
7. Rural debt became a long-term problem. The post-war agricultural depression began years before the wider Great Depression.

The Great Migration and Urban Transformation

1. African Americans moved out of the South. War industries and reduced European immigration created jobs in northern and midwestern cities.
2. More than 500,000 moved during the war era. Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York received large new populations.
3. Black newspapers encouraged migration. The Chicago Defender publicized jobs and challenged the racial violence of Jim Crow.
4. Migrants gained wages and political opportunities. Urban residence sometimes increased access to voting, unions, and community institutions.
5. Discrimination followed migrants north. Housing segregation, job ceilings, and white hostility limited economic mobility.
6. Competition contributed to racial violence. The East St. Louis riot of 1917 and Red Summer of 1919 revealed national white supremacy.
7. Migration permanently reshaped American society. It strengthened Black urban communities, culture, activism, and political influence.

Immigration, Mexican Labour, and Nativism

1. European immigration fell during the war. Travel disruption and military danger reduced the labour supply from traditional sources.
2. Mexican migration increased. Employers recruited workers for agriculture, railways, mines, and industry in the Southwest and beyond.
3. The 1917 Immigration Act imposed new restrictions. It introduced literacy tests and an Asiatic barred zone while preserving exceptions for needed labour.
4. Employers and officials balanced demand with exclusion. Mexican workers were welcomed during shortages but faced deportation, violence, and discrimination.
5. German Americans experienced suspicion. Public institutions suppressed German-language education, music, newspapers, and civic associations.
6. Americanization campaigns expanded. Schools, employers, and patriotic groups pressured immigrants to demonstrate cultural and political loyalty.
7. Wartime nativism shaped later quotas. Fear of foreigners and radicals contributed to restrictive immigration laws in the 1920s.

Public Health, Consumption, and Daily Life

1. Inflation changed household budgets. Food, fuel, clothing, and rent prices rose as military demand competed with civilian consumption.
2. Conservation became a patriotic duty. Government campaigns asked families to save wheat, meat, sugar, and fuel.
3. The influenza pandemic struck in 1918. Crowded military camps, troop movements, and public gatherings helped spread the disease.
4. About 675,000 Americans died from influenza. The pandemic killed more Americans than combat and placed severe pressure on local health systems.
5. Cities adopted uneven controls. Closures, masks, quarantines, and bans on gatherings varied by location and timing.
6. Voluntary organizations filled gaps. The Red Cross, settlement houses, churches, and women's groups organized relief and nursing.
7. War and disease exposed public capacity limits. The crisis encouraged greater attention to health administration while showing deep local inequality.

Public Health and Food Policy Behind the Statistics

1. Herbert Hoover led voluntary food conservation. As head of the U.S. Food Administration, he promoted 'meatless' and 'wheatless' days rather than mandatory rationing, relying on public pressure to redirect food supplies to Allied forces.
2. The influenza pandemic struck as troops mobilized. Beginning in 1918, the disease spread rapidly through crowded army camps and cities, killing far more Americans than combat did and straining a public health system already stretched by the war.
3. Wartime grain conservation helped build support for Prohibition. Restricting grain use for brewing tied the temperance movement to patriotic wartime sacrifice, contributing to the Eighteenth Amendment's ratification in 1919.
4. The Woman's Land Army recruited urban women to farm work. Thousands of 'farmerettes' took over agricultural labour to replace men who had enlisted or been drafted, extending wartime mobilization into rural areas.
5. Historians debate how much wartime economic change outlasted the war. Some emphasize a durable expansion of federal economic power, while others argue most wartime agencies were dismantled quickly once the emergency ended.

Assessing Economic and Social Transformation

1. The war strengthened federal economic management. Agencies coordinated industries and infrastructure on a scale not previously attempted in peacetime.
2. Private capitalism remained central. Mobilization enhanced corporate capacity rather than creating permanent state ownership.
3. Economic gains were unevenly distributed. Large firms and skilled workers often benefited more than small producers, tenants, and marginalized labourers.
4. Migration widened opportunity and conflict. African American and Mexican workers gained new employment while encountering discrimination and violence.
5. The wartime boom carried post-war risks. Inflation, industrial strikes, agricultural debt, and abrupt demobilization destabilized the transition to peace.
6. David Kennedy emphasizes coercive organization. He argues that mobilization relied on propaganda and pressure as well as voluntary patriotism.
7. Jennifer Keene and Ronald Schaffer stress social experience. Their work connects military participation, labour, migration, and citizenship to the changing relationship between Americans and the state.