AmHst16_GrowingGlobal.pdf

Table of Contents

Unit Themes 2

Unit Content Overview 2

Video Related Materials 3

Theme One Materials 4

Theme Two Materials 29

Theme Three Materials 41

Timeline 52

Reference Materials 53

Further Reading 54

Appendix 55

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Read the following material before attending the workshop. As you read the excerpts and primary sources, take note of the “Questions to Consider” as well as any questions you have. The activities in the workshop will draw on information from the readings and the video shown during the workshop.

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Through imperial ambitions and the mobilization for World War I, businesses and the government established a new relationship to bolster American business interests and build the United States military. After the war, this relationship continued to prosper with the establishment of research foundations for military and medical programs. Even though the United States had increased its economic involvement with Europe by the end of the war, the nation began to distance itself politically and socially from Europe and focused on the Americas.

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After reading the text materials, participating in the workshop activities and watching the video, teachers will

• explore the period in which America extended its power overseas, learning about the experiences of the people who benefi ted from American imperialism and those who suffered from it;

• learn the ways in which World War I became the impetus for the intertwining of business and government;

• examine the evolution of diplomacy and intervention tactics used by the American government in Europe, the Caribbean, the Pacifi c, and Central America.

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• Textbook excerpts (sections of U.S. history surveys, written for introductory college courses by history professors) • Primary sources (documents and other materials

created by the people who lived in the period) including a speech by minister Josiah Strong, an anti-imperialist cartoon from Puck magazine, and a letter to the U.S. Congress from the Central Filipino Committee • A timeline at the end of the unit, which places

important events in the history of the era of imperialism

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Theme 1:

Patriotism, missionary zeal, and the quest for new markets fueled the drive to establish an overseas empire.

Theme 2:

American imperial ambitions and the events of World War I forged a new partnership between business and government.

Theme 3:

While increasingly involved economically with Europe, the United States turned away

politically and socially from Europe and focused on the Americas. Between 1900 and 190, the United States changed from a nation focused

on domestic issues, to a global power that sought to influence and control other parts of the world in order to safeguard its national interests. During these years, the United States established an overseas empire, American businesses played a role in expansion, and America emerged as a global power after World War I.

The United States was part of an imperialistic drive that involved European and Asian nations, and sought overseas expansion because of strategic defense, patriotism, profit, politics, and missionary enthusiasm. The drive for expansion initially came from the military; by the end of the period, however, business led the drive for expansion. American businesses sought access to natural resources, cash crops, and markets in Latin America and Asia.

During World War I, a new relationship developed between industry and government to build up the military. The federal government’s huge expenditures to finance the war produced soaring profits for American industry, and the government came to rely on private industry’s technology and innovation. This relationship extended to large tax breaks that the government gave wealthy businessmen through their foundations. The foundations also served government programs, innovating scientific research that was useful in government military and medical programs.

After the war, the new corporate structures, which were now financially dependent on the continuation of their established close ties to

government, focused on efficiency and planning.

Historical Perspectives

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the United States began to extend its power around the world. The impetus for this global expansion was a combination of enterprising capitalism, a vibrant patriotism, and missionary impulse. During this period, which encompassed WWI, American businesses and the government began to bolster one another, further driving the imperialist machine.

Faces of America

Examining how different groups of people were affected by American expansion offers a way to understand the consequences of imperialism, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Queen Liliuokalani was the last reigning monarch of Hawaii. Her struggles to defend Hawaiian sovereignty against the Americans would eventually lead to her imprisonment, where she continued to resist assimilation—through poetry.

Charles Schwab headed the largest steel company in the nation. His fortune was largely made from wartime production, and his experience illustrates the new partnership between government and industry during this period.

Zeferino Velasquez was part of the fi rst wave of one million Mexicans to enter the U.S. between 1910 and 190. His life was spent migrating between his home country and the U.S., where he found abundant work. As the U.S.

restricted immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia, migrants such as Velasquez found new opportunities in the U.S., but also discrimination.

Hands on History

Retired high-school teacher David Cope takes us to the Field Museum in Chicago, where a project to photograph more than 30,000 artifacts from the 1893 World’s Fair is underway. Through exploring artifacts, primary sources from the fair, and conversations with fi eld curators, Cope gives us a better understanding of the global “show and tell” that was the Columbian Exposition, where the nation that we displayed didn’t necessarily refl ect the nation that we were.

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Theme One:

Patriotism, missionary zeal, and the quest for new markets fueled the

drive to establish an overseas empire.

Overview

Between 1900 and 190, the United States was part of a pattern in which European and Asian countries imposed their imperialistic designs on the rest of the world in the scramble for colonial expansion. Profit, missionary zeal, strategic defense location, patriotism, and a muscular Christianity drove this expansion. Muscular Christianity centered around the idea of manliness. It was in this context that the United States clashed with European countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. Many factors contributed to the growth of imperialism, however, including new technologies, improved communication and transportation, and industry’s desire of cheap raw materials and labor.

Over the course of this period, American imperialism changed from being driven by guns to being driven by dollar diplomacy. American businesses sought profit by tapping into Latin American and Asian markets, and gaining access to cash crops and natural resources such as sugar, coffee, fruit, oil, and rubber. An economic depression in the last decade of the nineteenth century compounded the situation by forcing American business to find new markets to dump their surplus goods. Huge profits motivated businessmen to shape American foreign policy. Imperialism shifted from military action to the thinly veiled threat of it sustained with the power of the dollar.

Some American citizens viewed expansion as a patriotic expression of American greatness; missionary fervor guided others to save the souls of the uncivilized, and impose Western values and culture on non-Christian countries around the world. Some imperialists supported imperial citizenship, but racism plagued American policy and undermined the willingness of the government to confer citizenship to racial “others.”

Questions to Consider

1. What was the role of business in American imperialism, and how did it change over time? How did the role of the U.S. military change?

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, 1893–1904

This table shows the nations that participated in imperial expansion between 1893 and 190. What conclusions can be drawn about U.S. imperial expansion?

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1. American Expansionism in Global Context

. . . The nineteenth century was marked by European imperial expansionism throughout much of the world. In southern and southeastern Asia, the British were in India, Burma, and Malaya; the French in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos; the Dutch in Singapore and the East Indies; and the Spanish in the Philippines. These and other colonial powers divided China, its Manchu dynasty weakened by the opium trade, internal conflicts, and European pressure, into spheres of economic influence. A China newspaper editorial complained that other nations “all want to satisfy their ambitions to nibble at China and swallow it.” The Russians wrested away Manchuria, and Japan took Korea after intervention in a Korean peasant rebellion in 189. In addition, China was forced to cede Taiwan and southern Manchuria to Japanese influence and control . . .

Closer to home, the United States sought to replace Great Britain as the most influential nation in Central and South America. In 189, a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guyana threatened to bring British intervention against the Venezuelans. President Cleveland, needing a popular political issue amid the depression, asked Secretary of State Richard Olney to send a message to Great Britain. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine, Olney’s note (stronger than Cleveland intended) called the United States “practically sovereign on this continent” and demanded international arbitration to settle the dispute. The British ignored the note, and war loomed. Both sides realized that war between two English-speaking nations would be an “absurdity,” and the dispute was settled when they agreed to an impartial commission to settle the boundary.

These encounters showed that by 189 the United States had neither the means nor a consistent policy for enlarging its role in the world. The diplomatic service was small and unprofessional. No U.S. embassy official in Beijing spoke Chinese. The U.S. Army, with about 8,000 men, was smaller than Bulgaria’s. The navy, dismantled after the Civil War and partly rebuilt under President Arthur, ranked no higher than tenth and included dangerously obsolete ships. But by 1898, things would change.

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The map below shows U.S. territorial expansion between 18 and 1900. What does the acquisition of territories suggest about the pattern of U.S. expansion?

Nash et al., 685.

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2. Profits: Searching for Overseas Markets

[By the early 1900s, American government and industry had become increasingly aware of the world economy and the importance of competing in a global

market.] Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana bragged in 1898 that “American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours.” Americans like Beveridge revived older dreams of an American commercial empire in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. American businessmen saw huge profits beckoning in heavily populated Latin America and Asia, and they wanted to get their share of these markets, as well as access to the sugar, coffee, fruits, oil, rubber, and minerals that were abundant in these lands.

Understanding that commercial expansion required a stronger navy and coaling stations and colonies, business interests began to shape diplomatic and military strategy. Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut said in 1893: “A policy of isolationism did well enough when we were an embryo nation, but today things are different.” By 1901, the economic adviser for the State Department described overseas commercial expansion as a “natural law of economic and race development.” But not all businessmen in the 1890s liked commercial expansion or a vigorous foreign policy. Some preferred traditional trade with Canada and Europe rather than risky new ventures in Asia and Latin America. Taking colonies and developing faraway markets not only was expensive but might involve the United States in wars in distant places. Many thought it more important to recover from the depression than to annex islands.

But the drop in domestic consumption during the depression also

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States led the world in railroad construction and mass-produced technological products such as agricultural machinery, sewing machines, electrical implements, telephones, cash registers, elevators, and cameras. Manufactured goods grew nearly fivefold between 189 and 191. The total value of American exports tripled, from $3 million in 18 to nearly $1. billion in 1900. By 191, exports had risen to $. billion, a percent increase over 1900 . . .

Investments followed a similar pattern. American direct investments abroad increased from about $3 million to $. billion between 189 and 191. Although the greatest activity was in Britain, Canada, and Mexico, most attention focused on actual and potential investment in Latin America and Eastern Asia. Central American investment increased from $1 million in 189 to $93 million by 191, mainly in mines, railroads, and banana and coffee plantations. At the turn of the century came the formation and growth of America’s biggest multinational corporations: the United Fruit Company, Alcoa Aluminum, Du Pont, American Tobacco, and others. Although slow to respond to investment and market opportunities abroad, these companies soon supported an aggressive foreign policy.

Nash et al., 682–83.

3. Patriotism: Asserting National Power

[While imperialism appealed to some Americans for economic reasons, others viewed expansion in terms of national glory and greatness.] In the late 1890s, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt and Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge emerged as highly influential leaders of a changing American foreign policy. Along with a group of other intensely nationalistic young men, they shifted official policy to what Lodge called the “large policy.” Roosevelt agreed that economic interests should take second place to questions of what he called “national honor.” And by 1899, a State Department official wrote that the United States had become “a world power . . . Where formerly we had only commercial interests, now we have territorial and political interests as well.”

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Question to Consider

Why did Mahan urge the United States to build a canal through Central America?

The history of Sea Power is largely, though by no means solely, a narrative of contests between nations, of mutual rivalries, of violence frequently culminating in war . . .

In these three things—production, with the necessity of exchanging products, shipping, whereby the exchange is carried on and colonies, which facilitate and enlarge the operations of shipping and tend to protect it by multiplying points of safety—is to be found the key to much of the history, as well as of the policy of nations bordering upon the sea . . .

If one [a Central American canal] be made, and fulfill the hopes of its builders, the Caribbean will be changed from a terminus, and place of local traffic, or a best a broken and imperfect line of travel as it now is, into one of the great highways of the world. Along this path great commerce will travel, bringing the interests of the other great nations, the European nations, close along our shores, as they have never been before . . .

Furthermore, as her distance from the Isthmus, though relatively less, is still considerable, the United States will have to obtain in the Caribbean stations fit for contingent, or secondary, bases of operations; which by their natural advantages, susceptibility of defence, and nearness to the central strategic issue, will enable her fleets to remain as near the scene as any opponent . . .

. . . we can live off ourselves indefinitely in ‘our little corner,’ to use the expression of a French officer to the author. Yet should that little corner be invaded by a new

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Alfred Thayer Mahan Some Americans viewed territorial expansion as an assertion of national power.

The State Department and other government officials who shaped foreign policy To argue that naval supremacy determined a nation’s power

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. . . The government by its policy can favor the natural growth of a people’s industries and its tendencies to seek adventure and gain by way of the sea . . . The influence of the government will be felt in its most legitimate manner in maintaining an armed navy, of a size commensurate with the growth of its shipping and the importance of the interests connected with it.

[Americans also became more intensely nationalistic, in part because large numbers of immigrants who spoke little English moved to cities. Americans witnessed the immigrants’ poverty in the cities but also blamed the immigrants for the poverty; they thought the diseases came from the immigrants rather than their living conditions. Some Americans regarded immigrants as radicals who embraced alarming ideologies. Paradoxically, immigrants supported imperialism as a way to proclaim their own Americanness and distance themselves from allegedly inferior peoples.

Emanating from this sense of nationalism was a new movement called “muscular Christianity” that fueled imperialism. Anxiety about manliness and gender roles was evident throughout the culture during this period. Muscular Christianity purported that participation in outdoor activities, such as camping and boxing, developed a “manly”

character and contributed to Christian moral development. In the United States, Josiah Strong and Theodore Roosevelt regarded the growth of urbanization, white-collar jobs, and immigration as “threats.” They encouraged Americans to practice a “strenuous life” full of sports and other activities that espoused aggressive male behavior. Lasting from 1880 to 190, muscular Christianity contributed to an environment for the invention of basketball and volleyball, and the

creation of organized camping and public playgrounds. Heroes such as Tarzan and organizations such as the Boy Scouts, became symbols of manliness and further strengthened the ideas of muscular Christianity.]

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Question to Consider

What influence did Darwin’s theory of evolution have on Strong?

It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world’s future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet to-day on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history-the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it-the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization-having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can any one doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the “survival of the fittest?”

Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: The American Home Missionary Society, 1885), 174–175.

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Josiah Strong, a Congregationalist minister

Territorial expansion by nations throughout the world

The general public To show the Christian justification for American imperialism

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Question to Consider

How does the artist satirize American imperialism?

Item 4204 Frank A. Nankivell, THE ULTIMATE CAUSE (Puck, Dec. 19, 1900, cover).

Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 55

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Frank A. Nankivell, artist Anti-imperialism of labor unions Readers of Puck

magazine

To satirize the anti-immigration sentiment of American labor unions

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4. Politics: Manipulating Public Opinion

Although less significant than the other factors, politics also played a role. For the first time in American history, public opinion on international issues helped shape presidential politics. The psychological tensions and economic hardships of the 1890s depression jarred national self-confidence. Foreign adventures then, as now, provided an emotional release from domestic turmoil and promised to restore patriotic pride and win votes.

This process was helped by the growth of a highly competitive popular press, the penny daily newspapers, which brought international issues before a mass readership. When New York City newspapers, notably William Randolph Hearst’s Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s World, competed in stirring up public support for the Cuban rebels against Spain, politicians dared not ignore the outcry. Daily reports of Spanish atrocities in 189 and 189 kept public moral outrage constantly before President McKinley. His Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, entered the fray, advocating American intervention in Cuba on moral grounds of a holy war to help the oppressed. He even raised a regiment of Nebraska volunteers to go to war, but the Republican administration kept him far from battle and therefore far from the headlines.

Politics, then, joined profits, patriotism, and piety in motivating the expansionism of the 1890s. These four impulses interacted to produce the Spanish-American War, the annexation of the Philippine Islands and subsequent war, and the energetic foreign policy of President Theodore Roosevelt.

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Questions to Consider

1. How did penny presses sensationalize the news?

2. What are the similarities and differences in how the New York Journal and New York World reported the sinking of the USS Maine?

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Item 4726 William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal (February 17, 1898, cover). Courtesy of the Image Works.

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 56

Item 6833 Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, (February 17, 1898, cover). Courtesy of Ross Collins. Originally printed in

New York Extra. A Newspaper History of the Greatest City in the World from 1671 to the 1939 Worlds Fair. From the Collection of Eric C. Caren. Edison, NJ, Castle Books, 2000.

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 57

William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World

The penny newspapers stirred up public opinion in support of international issues and events, such as the Spanish American War. The readers of the New York Journal and the

New York World

To boost circulation and profits

Politics played a role in driving

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, 1898–1939

This map illustrates the extent of American interests and military interventions in the Caribbean between 1898 and 1939. Why did the United States military intervene in this region?

Peter H. Wood et al., eds. Created Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States

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5. The Philippines Debates and War

[In 1898, a newspaper blamed Spain for sinking the USS Maine off the coast of Cuba. Public outrage at the incident led McKinley to declare war on Spain. The Spanish-American War displayed the power and might of the United States, and many Americans regarded the war over Cuba in terms of national glory and greatness. Once under U.S. control, American corporations quickly gained control of two-thirds of Cuba’s sugar industry. Corporations wanted the freedom to go into Cuba and purchase large amounts of land in order to grow sugar that the United States reimported.

The U.S. also waged war in the Philippines, but expansion was more complicated than Cuba. Public opinion toward expansion in the Philippines was different than expansion in Cuba. There was the hope that the Cubans could become “civilized,” but many Americans regarded the Philippines as too primitive. A debate ensued over how to treat Filipinos. Conservative expansionists promoted the takeover of a primitive people, while liberal expansionists wanted to “uplift” the Filipinos — in other words, let the local Filipinos who were friendly to American business interests be in charge. The concern among all expansionists was what would the implications be by making Filipinos American citizens. In spite of the differences in expansion, the need for raw materials and a desire to Christianize Filipinos was evident in Cuba and the Philippines.]

[Even before the official end of the Spanish-American War,] McKinley immediately began shaping American public opinion to accept the “political, commercial [and] humanitarian” reasons for annexing all ,000 of the Philippines islands. The Treaty of Paris gave the United States all of the islands in exchange for a $0 million payment to Spain. [McKinley wanted to acquire the Philippines for business interests because it was the gateway to China and to aid religious groups who hoped to convert Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics to Protestantism.]

Fellow Republicans confirmed McKinley’s arguments for annexation, and many Democrats supported the president out of fear of being labeled disloyal. Americans of both parties added arguments reflecting the openly racist thought that flourished in the United States. Filipinos were described as childlike, dirty, and backward; they were compared to blacks and Indians. “The country won’t be pacified,” a Kansas veteran of the Sioux wars told a reporter, “until the niggers are killed off like the Indians.” Roosevelt called Aguinaldo a “renegade Pawnee” and said that the Filipinos had no right “to administer the country which they happen to be occupying.”

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6. The Philippines Debate and War

A small but prominent and vocal Anti-Imperialist League vigorously opposed war and annexation. These dignitaries included ex-presidents Harrison and Cleveland, Samuel Gompers and Andrew Carnegie, Jane Addams, and Mark Twain. The anti-imperialists argued that imperialism in general and annexation in particular contradicted American ideals. First, the annexation of territory without immediate or planned steps toward statehood was unprecedented and unconstitutional. Second, to occupy and govern a foreign people without their consent violated the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Third, social reforms needed at home demanded American energies and money before foreign expansionism. “Before we attempt to teach house-keeping to the world,” one writer put it, we needed “to set our own house in order.”

Not all anti-imperialist arguments were so noble. A racist position alleged that Filipinos were nonwhite, Catholic, inferior in size and intelligence, and therefore unassimilable. Annexation would lead to miscegenation and contamination of Anglo-Saxon blood. South Carolina Senator Ben Tillman opposed “incorporating any more colored men into the body politic.” A practical argument suggested that once in possession of the Philippines, the United States would have to defend them, possibly even acquiring more territories—in turn requiring higher taxes and bigger government, and perhaps demanding that American troops fight distant Asian wars.

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Questions to Consider

1. What is Kipling’s view of the “new-caught, sullen peoples”? 2. How does poem reflect the view that Anglo-Saxon nations had a

moral duty to help non-Western cultures?

3. Why does an alternative interpretation portray the poem as a satire on imperialism?

The White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man’s burden— In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain To seek another’s profit, And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought, Watch sloth and heathen Folly Bring all your hopes to nought.

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Creator: Context: Audience: Purpose: Historical Significance: Rudyard Kipling Philippine-American War and the ratification of a treaty in which Cuba, Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico came under U.S. control Readers of McClure’s Magazine

To encourage the United States to take up the “burden” of empire

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Take up the White Man’s burden— No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper— The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go mark them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man’s burden— And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard— The cry of hosts ye humour (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:— “Why brought he us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden— Ye dare not stoop to less— Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloke your weariness; By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden— Have done with childish days— The lightly preferred laurel, The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood Through all the thankless years } Cold, edged with dear-bough wisdom, The judgment of your peers!

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Questions to Consider

1. What was the main idea of Crosby’s parody?

2. What did Crosby think would result from expansion?

Take up the White Man’s burden; Send forth your sturdy sons, And load them down with whisky And Testaments and guns . . .

And don’t forget the factories. On those benighted shores They have no cheerful iron-mills Nor eke department stores.

They never work twelve hours a day, And live in strange content,

Altho they never have to pay A single cent of rent.

Take up the White Man’s burden, And teach the Philippines What interest and taxes are And what a mortgage means. Give them electrocution chairs, And prisons, too, galore,

And if they seem inclined to kick, Then spill their heathen gore.

They need our labor question, too, And politics and fraud,

We’ve made a pretty mess at home; Let’s make a mess abroad.

And let us ever humbly pray The Lord of Hosts may deign To stir our feeble memories, Lest we forget — the Maine.

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Ernest Howard Crosby Expansion into the Philippines created anti-imperialists who attacked American imperialism.

The general public and readers of his poetry To parody Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” by attacking American imperialism

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Take up the White Man’s burden; To you who thus succeed In civilizing savage hoards They owe a debt, indeed; Concessions, pensions, salaries, And privilege and right,

With outstretched hands you raise to bless Grab everything in sight.

Take up the White Man’s burden, And if you write in verse,

Flatter your Nation’s vices And strive to make them worse. Then learn that if with pious words You ornament each phrase, In a world of canting hypocrites This kind of business pays.

Ernest Howard Crosby, “The Real White Man’s Burden,”

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Question to Consider

Why did the advertisement use the images of a ship captain and priest to persuade readers to purchase soap?

Item 6827 Pears’ Soap Company, LIGHTENING THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN (1899).

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 58

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Unknown

The White Man’s Burden became an idea that American imperialists used to justify territorial expansion.

Cosmopolitan readers To show how

businesses capitalized on the idea of the White Man’s Burden

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7. The Philippines Debates and War

As U.S. treatment of the Filipinos became more and more like Spanish treatment of the Cubans, the hypocrisy of American behavior became even more evident. This was especially true for black American soldiers who fought in the Philippines. They identified with the dark-skinned insurgents, whom they saw as tied to the land, burdened by debt and pressed by poverty like themselves. “I feel sorry for these people,” a sergeant in the th Infantry wrote. “You have no idea the way these people are treated by the Americans here.”

The war starkly exposed the hypocrisies of shouldering the white man’s burden. After the war, Aguinaldo wrote that Americans made “vague verbal offers of friendship and aid and then fairly drowned them out with the boom of cannons and the rattle of Gatling guns.” On reading a report that 8,000 Filipinos had been killed in the first year of the war, Carnegie wrote a letter, dripping with sarcasm, congratulating McKinley for “civilizing the Filipinos . . . About 8,000 of them have been completely civilized and sent to Heaven. I hope you like it.” Another writer penned a devastating one-liner: “Dewey took Manila with the loss of one man— and all our institutions . . .”

The anti-imperialists failed either to prevent annexation or to interfere with the war effort. However prestigious and sincere, they had little or no political power. An older elite, they were out of tune with the period of exuberant expansionist national pride, prosperity, and promise.

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Question to Consider

How does the author of the pamphlet make his argument against American occupation?

June 1900.

God Almighty knows how unjust is the war which the Imperial arms have provoked and are maintaining against our unfortunate country! If the honest American patriots could understand the sad truth of this declaration, we are sure they would, without the least delay, stop this unspeakable horror.

When we protested against this iniquitous ingratitude, then the guns of the United States were turned upon us; we were denounced as traitors and rebels; you destroyed the homes to which you had been welcomed as honored guests, killing thousands of those who had been your allies, mutilating our old men, our women and our children, and watering with blood and strewing with ruins the beautiful soil of our Fatherland.

. . . the Spanish government, whose despotic cruelty American Imperialism now imitates, and in some respects surpasses, denied to us many of the liberties which you were already enjoying when, under pretext of oppression, you revolted against British domination.

Why do the Imperialists wish to subjugate us? What do they intend to do with us? Do they expect us to surrender — to yield our inalienable rights, our homes, our properties, our lives, our future destinies, to the absolute control of the United States? What would you do with our nine millions of people? Would you permit us to take part in your elections? Would you concede to us the privilege of sending Senators and Representatives to your Congress? Would you allow us to erect one or more federal states? Or, would you tax us without representation? Would you change your tariff laws so as to admit our products free of duty and in competition with the products of our own soil?

Emilio Aguinaldo, Central Filipino Committee, LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1899).

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Central Filipino Committee

Philippine-American War

The American people and readers of

pamphlets published by the Cincinnati

Anti-Imperialist League and the New England Anti-Imperialist League To show the outrage by Filipinos against American occupation

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8. Intervening in Mexico and Central America

[Since the nineteenth century, U.S. corporations had purchased huge quantities of land from Spanish elitists who dominated Nicaragua and were friendly to American business. When the Nicaraguan economy worsened in the 190s, U.S. corporations had difficulty accessing their goods and suffered economically; the U.S. military intervened.]

. . . Combining the zeal of a Christian missionary with the conviction of a college professor, [Wilson] spoke of “releasing the intelligence of America for the service of mankind.” Along with his secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, Wilson denounced the “big stick” and “dollar diplomacy” of the Roosevelt and Taft years. Yet Wilson’s administration used force more systematically than did his predecessors. The rhetoric was different, yet just as much as Roosevelt, Wilson tried to maintain stability in the countries to the south in order to promote American economic and strategic interests.

At first, Wilson’s foreign policy seemed to reverse some of the most callous aspects of dollar diplomacy in Central America. Bryan signed a treaty with Colombia in 1913 that agreed to pay $ million for the loss of Panama and virtually apologized for the Roosevelt administration’s treatment of Colombia. The Senate, not so willing to admit that the United States had been wrong, refused to ratify the treaty.

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Francisco Madero, a reformer who wanted to destroy the privileges of the upper classes, overthrew Díaz. Two years later, Madero was deposed and murdered by order of Victoriano Huerta, the head of the army.

To the shock of many diplomats and businessmen, Wilson refused to recognize the Huerta government. Everyone admitted that Huerta was a ruthless dictator, but diplomatic recognition, the exchange of ambassadors, and the regulation of trade and communication had never meant approval. In the world of business and diplomacy, it merely meant that a particular government was in power. But Wilson set out to remove what he called a “government of butchers.”

At first, Wilson applied diplomatic pressure. Then, using a minor incident as an excuse, he asked Congress for power to involve American troops if necessary. Few Mexicans liked Huerta, but they liked the idea of North American interference even less, and they rallied around the dictator. The United States landed troops at Veracruz, Mexico. Angry Mexican mobs destroyed American property wherever they could find it. Wilson’s action outraged many Europeans and Latin Americans as well as Americans.

Wilson’s military intervention drove Huerta out of office, but a civil war between forces led by Venustiano Carranza and those led by General Francisco “Pancho” Villa ensued. The United States sent arms to Carranza, who was considered less radical than Villa, and Carranza’s soldiers defeated Villa’s. When an angry Villa led what was left of his army in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico, in March 191, Wilson sent an expedition commanded by Brigadier General John Pershing to track down Villa and his men. The strange and comic scene developed of an American army charging 300 miles into Mexico unable to catch the retreating villain. The Mexicans feared that Pershing’s army was planning to occupy northern Mexico. Carranza shot off a bitter note to Wilson, accusing him of threatening war, but Wilson refused to withdraw the troops. Tensions rose. An American patrol attacked a Mexican garrison, with loss of life on both sides. Just as war seemed inevitable, Wilson agreed to recall the troops and to recognize the Carranza government. But this was in January 191, and if it had not been for the growing crisis in Europe, it is likely that war would have resulted.

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Conclusion

The United States entered the imperialistic race to carve up the globe. Justification for territorial acquisition was motivated by financial gain, missionary enthusiasm, and nationalism. During this period, American imperialism evolved from military intervention to maintaining business interests. Critics of imperialism used a variety of arguments to counter expansion, but they were unable to slow the drive to establish an overseas empire. Racism bedeviled both imperialists and anti-imperialists.

Questions to Consider

1. What were some of the arguments for and against overseas expansion? Who made these arguments, and how did their position reflect their own interests and attitudes?

2. Why were business interests looking abroad to countries such as Cuba, Hawaii, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Philippines?

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Theme Two:

American imperial ambitions and the events of World War I

forged a new partnership between business and government.

Overview

After 1900, the government relied increasingly on technology and innovation from private industries to build up its military. When the United States entered World War I, the federal government organized public and private resources for the war effort. President Wilson believed that centralized planning in the mass production of war materials would lead to military victory. The government restructured the economy by creating new federal agencies—such as the Bureau of War Risk Insurance (191) and the United States Railroad Administration (1918)—to manage the war effort. The BWRI was successful in its system of federal payments to servicemen’s dependents, and the railroads ran more efficiently under the USRA. The government also succeeded in collaborating with the private sector when it came to building cheap, efficient ships to carry cargo across the Atlantic. Wilson looked to Charles Schwab the world’s biggest shipbuilder to fix the problem, just as Roosevelt would look to Kaiser Shipyards three decades later.

The federal government’s large expenditures gave businesses involved in war production a financial windfall. Corporate earnings soared because of the industry-government partnership and the demand for war materials from the Allies. As the war progressed, the federal government’s reliance on industry intensified. This relationship extended to large tax breaks that the government gave wealthy businessmen

through their foundations, such as the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The understanding between big business and government was that these foundations would invest their savings from tax breaks in scientific research to benefit both the government and industry.

Questions to Consider

1. How did the American economy change during and after World War I?

2. In what ways did the power of the federal government increase and redefine its relationship to industry during and after World War I?

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1. Financing the War

[When World War I ended in 1919,] by one calculation, it cost the United States over $33 billion. Interest and veterans’ benefits bring the total to nearly $11 billion. Early on, when an economist suggested that the war might cost the United States $10 billion, everyone laughed. Yet many in the Wilson administration knew the war was going to be expensive, and they set out to raise the money by borrowing and by increasing taxes.

. . . [T]he wealthy were not . . . pleased with [Secretary of Treasury William] McAdoo’s other plan to finance the war: raising taxes. The War Revenue Act of 191 boosted the tax rate sharply, levied a tax on excess profits, and increased estate taxes. The next year, another bill raised the tax on the largest incomes to percent. The wealthy protested, but a number of progressives were just as unhappy with the bill, for they wanted to confiscate all income over $100,000 a year. Despite taxes and liberty bonds, however, World War I, like the Civil War, was financed in large part by inflation. Food prices, for example, nearly doubled between 191 and 1919.

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Questions to Consider

1. Why did the artist use the Boy Scouts of America to sell liberty bonds?

2. How does this poster reflect the idea of muscular Christianity?

Item 5698 J.C. Leyendecker, American Lithographic Co., THIRD LIBERTY LOAN CAMPAIGN

— BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA WEAPONS FOR LIBERTY (1917). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

See Appendix for larger image – pg. 59

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J.C. Leyendecker, an artist for the American Lithographic Company The federal government initiated a campaign to sell liberty bonds at a low interest rate to Americans.

The general public People bought liberty bonds to support the war effort.

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Questions to Consider

1. How did the artist persuade people to buy Liberty Bonds? 2. Who financed the war? Who profited from the war?

Item 5981

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Walter H. Everett The federal government initiated a campaign to sell Liberty Bonds at a low interest rate to Americans.

The general public People bought Liberty Bonds to support the war effort.

In 1918, the federal government issued this poster as part of a

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2. Domestic Impact of the War

For at least 30 years before the United States entered the Great War, a debate raged over the proper role of the federal government in regulating industry and protecting people who could not protect themselves. Controversy also centered on the question of how much power the federal government should have to tax and control individuals and corporations and the proper relation of the federal government to state and local governments. Even within the Wilson administration, advisers disagreed on the proper role of the federal government. In fact, Wilson had only recently moved away from what he defined in 191 as the New Freedom—limited government and open competition. But the war and the problems it raised increased the power of the federal government in a variety of ways. The wartime experience did not end the debate, but the United States emerged from the war a more modern nation, with more power residing in Washington. At the same time, the federal government with its huge expenditures provided immense economic advantage to businesses engaged in war production and to the cities where those businesses were located. [After the war, the

structure of American business companies diverted increasing amounts of capital from production into management, service, distribution, and research.]

Nash et al., 766–67.

3. Increasing Federal Power

The major wars of the twentieth century made huge demands on the nations that fought them and helped to transform their governments. The United States was no exception. At first, Wilson tried to work through a variety of state agencies to mobilize the nation’s resources. The need for more central control and authority soon led Wilson to create a series of federal agencies to deal with the war emergency. The first crisis was food. Poor grain crops for two years and an increasing demand for American food in Europe caused shortages. Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover, a young engineer who had won great prestige as head of the Commission for Relief of Belgium, to direct the Food Administration. Hoover set out to meet the crisis not so much through government regulation as through an appeal to the patriotism of farmers and consumers alike. He instituted a series of “wheatless” and “meatless” days and urged housewives to cooperate. In Philadelphia, a large sign announced, “FOOD WILL WIN THE WAR; DON’T WASTE IT.” Women emerged during the war as the most important group of consumers. The government urged them to save, just as later it would urge them to buy.

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In its sudden growth, wide distribution of benefits, and bureaucratic administration, the system of federal payments to the dependents of World War I servicemen was a milestone in the development of the American welfare state. When the system was in effect (between November 1, 191, and July 31, 191), .1 million beneficiaries “in almost every State, city, town, and hamlet of the United States” received such payments, officially entitled “Allotments and Allowances” and provided under the War Risk Insurance Act (WRIA) of October 191. The Bureau of War Risk Insurance (BWRI), a small agency established in the Treasury Department in 191 to insure ships and crews engaged in the Atlantic trade during the war, quickly grew into one of the largest federal agencies after it was charged with administering benefits created by WRIA. The BWRI had 1,80 employees by July 1919. It dispensed almost $0 million in allotments and allowances, a sum equivalent to two-thirds of the federal budget for the last fiscal year before the outbreak of war in 191. Monthly payments amounted to not less than $30 for wives—the largest group of beneficiaries—and as much as $ for wives and children. Often benefits exceeded prewar family income, especially in rural and low-income regions such as the South. The system of family support payments, officials of the BWRI proudly stated, represented “one of the largest financial undertakings the country has ever known.”

Progressive reformers, Congress, and beneficiaries endorsed the system of allotments and allowances because it, like other contemporary social policies, conformed to established social norms regarding men’s and women’s family responsibilities, economic roles, and citizenship. The system automatically allotted part of an enlisted man’s pay to his wife and supplemented that with an allowance that varied according to the size of the family . . . [F]amily support payments were intended to allow dependent women to dedicate themselves to the care of home and children when they could not rely on the income of a husband . . .

Female beneficiaries, black and white, quickly realized the economic advantages and political implications of allotments and allowances. In claiming benefits under the War Risk Insurance Act, they drew on conventional notions of women’s

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Even though the system of family support payments was dismantled in 191, in its dialectic of gender and race it prefigured federal social policies of the 190s and 1930s. Allotments and allowances cemented the principle, laid out in Civil War and mothers’ pensions, that social benefits in the emerging national welfare state would be channeled through male heads of households as a validation of their citizenship and their role as wage earners, while women could receive benefits only indirectly and only as mothers of future citizens. Moreover, the system of family support payments was based on the requirement that male heads of families make compulsory contributions from their pay if they wanted to secure the benefit of federal protection for their dependents. In this sense the system might well represent an important conceptual and political stage in the transition from noncontributory Civil War pensions to the contributory Social Security insurance implemented during the New Deal.

K. Walter Hickel, “War, Region, and Social Welfare: Federal Aid to Servicemen’s Dependents in the South, 1917–1921,” The Journal of American History 87, no. 4 (March 2001), 1362–91.

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4. Increasing Federal Power

. . . The Wilson administration used the authority of the federal government to organize resources for the war effort. The National Research Council and the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics helped mobilize scientists in industry and the universities to produce strategic materials formerly imported from Germany, especially optical glass and chemicals to combat poison-gas warfare. American companies also tried to reproduce German color lithography that had dominated the market for postcards, posters, and magazine illustrations before the war. Perhaps most valuable were the efforts of scientists in industry to improve radio, airplanes, and instruments to predict the weather and detect submarines. The war stimulated research and development and made the United States less dependent on European science and technology.

The War Industries Board, led by Bernard Baruch, a shrewd Wall Street broker, used the power of the government to control scarce materials and, on occasion, to set prices and priorities. But cooperation among government, business, and university scientists to promote research and develop new products was one legacy of the war. The government itself went into the shipbuilding business. The largest shipyard, at Hog Island, near Philadelphia, employed as many as 3,000 workers but did not launch its first ship until the late summer of 1918. San Francisco and Seattle also became major shipbuilding centers, while San Diego owed its rapid growth to the presence of a major naval base.

The government also got into the business of running the railroads. When a severe winter and a lack of coordination brought the rail system near collapse in December 191, Wilson put all the nation’s railroads under the control of the United Railway Administration. The government spent more than $00 million to improve the rails and equipment, and in 1918, the railroads did run more efficiently than they had under private control. Some businessmen complained of “war socialism” and resented the way government agencies forced them to comply with rules and regulations. But most came to agree with Baruch that a close working relationship with government could improve the quality of their products, promote efficiency, and increase profits.

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5. The Rise of the Modern Corporation

The structure and practice of American business were transformed in the 190s. After a crisis created by the economic downturn of 190–19, business boomed until the crash of 199. Mergers increased during the decade at a rate greater than at any time since the end of the 1890s—there were more than 1,00 mergers in 199 alone—creating such giants as General Electric, General Motors, Sears Roebuck, Du Pont, and U.S. Rubber. These were not monopolies but oligopolies (industry domination spread among a few large firms). By 1930, the 00 largest corporations controlled almost half the corporate wealth in the country.

Perhaps the most important business trend of the decade was the emergence of a new kind of manager. No longer did family entrepreneurs make decisions relating to prices, wages, and output. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., an engineer who reorganized General Motors, was a prototype of the new kind of manager. He divided the company into components, freeing the top managers to concentrate on planning new products, controlling inventory, and integrating the whole operation. Marketing and advertising became as important as production, and many businesses began to spend more money on research. The new manager often had a large staff but owned no part of the company. He was usually an expert at cost accounting and analyzing data. Increasingly, he was a graduate of one of the new business colleges . . .

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On a hot Tuesday morning following Labor Day in 193, several hundred people crowded into the Caucus Room of the Senate Office Building to witness the opening of an investigation that journalists were already calling “historic.” Although World War I had been over for 1 years, the inquiry promised to reopen an intense debate about whether the nation should ever have gotten involved in that costly conflict.

The so-called “Senate Munitions Committee” came into being because of widespread reports that manufacturers of armaments had unduly influenced the American decision to enter the war in 191. These weapons’ suppliers had reaped enormous profits at the cost of more than 3,000 American battle deaths. As local conflicts reignited in Europe through the early 1930s, suggesting the possibility of a second world war, concern spread that these “merchants of death” would again drag the United States into a struggle that was none of its business. The time had come for a full congressional inquiry.

To lead the seven-member special committee, the Senate’s Democratic majority chose a Republican—-year-old North Dakota Senator Gerald P. Nye. Typical of western agrarian progressives, Nye energetically opposed U.S. involvement in foreign wars. He promised, “when the Senate investigation is over, we shall see that war and preparation for war is not a matter of national honor and national defense, but a matter of profit for the few.”

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Appropriations Committee Chairman Carter Glass of Virginia, unleashed a furious response against Nye for “dirtdaubing the sepulcher of

Woodrow Wilson.” Standing before cheering colleagues in a packed Senate Chamber, Glass slammed his fist onto his desk until blood dripped from his knuckles.

Although the Nye Committee failed to achieve its goal of nationalizing the arms industry, it inspired three congressional neutrality acts in the mid-1930s that signaled profound American opposition to overseas [military] involvement.

Richard A. Baker, Historical Minutes of the U.S. Senate, “Era of Investigations (1921–1940): September 4, 1934, ‘Merchants of Death’”; available at http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/merchants_of_death.htm (accessed July 16, 2007).

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Conclusion

During World War I, large military expenditures gave rise to soaring business profits in a new-found industry/government partnership. After the war, American businesses shifted funds to research, marketing, and advertising. It also changed the organizational structure with a new kind of manager who spearheaded the creation of new products, controlled inventory, and integrated operations. Efficiency and planning were the goals of this new corporate structure, and it came to depend on the continuation of the industry/government alliance established during the war. The expansion of credit, advertising, and the drive to increase profit stimulated the increased production of consumer goods, while the rhetoric of efficiency justified cutting skilled-labor costs and hiring cheaper labor.

Questions to Consider

1. On the domestic front, who prospered from the war? Who suffered losses from the war? What happened to these groups after the war?

2. How did the relationship between industry and government support corporate expansion after World War I?

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Theme Three:

While increasingly involved economically with Europe,

the United States turned away politically and socially from Europe and

focused on the Americas.

Overview

Historians have traditionally viewed the decade following World War I as a period of isolationism in which the United States retreated from the rest of the world, but there is evidence to support the argument that America significantly increased its involvement in international affairs. The United States led the effort to resolve the international financial problems attributed to the war and tried to reduce naval weapons. It also took an active role in the regional politics of the Western Hemisphere by intervening in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. Before and after the war, the thread of continuity was to maintain a climate of stability in the Western Hemisphere that safeguarded America’s economic and military interests. After World War I, the United States became increasingly involved with Europe economically, but the U.S. turned away politically and socially from Europe and focused on the Americas.

Questions to Consider

1. Why did the United States emerge as a global power after World War I? 2. What types of interventions did the United States initiate in Central and South

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1. A Prospering Economy

[American businesses prospered while] much of the rest of the world suffered in the aftermath of the war. Germany, wracked by inflation so great that it took millions of marks to buy a loaf of bread, sunk into depression and was unable to make reparation payments. Great Britain and France recovered slowly from the war’s devastation. Although it was not clear at the time, it became obvious later that the United States was part of a global economy and eventually would be affected by the economic difficulties of the rest of the world.

Nash et al., 784.

2. A Patriotic Crusade

[Wilson launched a propaganda campaign to persuade the American public that the war promoted the causes of freedom and democracy, but this campaign turned anti-German and anti-immigrant. After the war, anti-immigration attitudes extended to the passage of immigration acts that restricted European and Asian immigration. During World War I, most] school districts banned the teaching of German, a “language that disseminates the ideals of autocracy, brutality and hatred.” Anything German became suspect. Sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage,” and German measles became “liberty measles.” Many families Americanized their German surnames. Several cities banned music by German composers from symphony concerts. South Dakota prohibited the use of German on the telephone, and in Iowa, a state official announced, “If their language is disloyal, they should be imprisoned. If their acts are disloyal, they should be shot.” Occasionally, the patriotic fever led to violence. The most notorious incident occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois, which had a large German population. A mob seized Robert Prager, a young German American, in April 1918, stripped off his clothes, dressed him in an American flag, marched him through the streets, and lynched him. The eventual trial led to the acquittal of the ringleaders on the grounds that the lynching was a “patriotic murder.”

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The federal government excluded Chinese immigrants from entering the United States in 188, and Japanese and Korean immigrants in 19. In 191, the government also excluded immigrants from India, Indonesia, and the Arabian Peninsula. Why did the United States limit immigration from Asian countries?

Wood et al., 648.

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3. Immigration and Migration

. . . The immigration acts of 191, 19, and 19 sharply limited European immigration and virtually banned Asian immigrants. The 19 law contained a provision prohibiting the entry of aliens ineligible for citizenship. This provision was aimed directly at the Japanese, for the Chinese had already been excluded; but even without this provision, only a small number could have immigrated. “ We try hard to be American,” one California resident remarked, “But Americans always say you always Japanese.” Denied both citizenship and the right to own land, the first generation Issei placed all of their hope in the children, but the second generation Nisei often felt trapped between the land of their parents and the America they lived in, and they still were treated like second-class citizens. A California politician called the Japanese a “non-assimilable people” who

threatened to make California a “Japanese Plantation” . . .

Nash et al., 796.

4. Global Expansion

The decade of the 190s is often remembered as a time of isolation, when the United States rejected the League of Nations treaty and turned its back on the rest of the world. It is true that many Americans had little interest in what was going on in Paris, Moscow, or Rio de Janeiro, and it is also true that a bloc of congressmen was determined that the United States would never again enter another European war. But the United States remained involved—indeed, increased its involvement—in international affairs during the decade. Although the United States never joined the League of Nations, and a few dedicated isolationists, led by Senator William Borah, blocked membership in the World Court, the United States cooperated with many league agencies and conferences and took the lead in trying to reduce naval armaments and to solve the problems of international finance caused in part by the war . . .

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What is Lodge’s reason for not ratifying U.S. entry in the League of Nations?

Mr. President:

. . . Contrast the United States with any country on the face of the earth today and ask yourself whether the situation of the United States is not the best to be found. I will go as far as anyone in world service, but the first step to world service is the maintenance of the United States.

I have always loved one flag and I cannot share that devotion [with] a mongrel banner created for a League.

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life. I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it.

I have never had but one allegiance - I cannot divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I cannot share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league. Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all c