1. Why Is the Suffrage Movement Included in a Chapter Called the Socialist Challenge ?

Study Questions Howard Zinn Chapters 13-15

Chapter 13 1. Why is the suffrage movement included in a chapter called “The Socialist Challenge”? 2. Emma Goldman argued that “the cause of the Spanish-American war was the price of sugar…..” How could that be? 3. In a letter to the New York Herald in 1900 characterizing the U.S. government’s conduct of the Spanish-American war, Mark Twain refers to the United States as “Christendom.” Why? Why does he refer to battles as “pirate raids”? How might the war have had the effect of filling America’s “soul full of meanness”? 4. What was the topic of Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel, The Jungle? What might have accounted for its popularity? 5. For Jack London, what details/evidence/facts may have led him to the conclusion that the “capitalist class has mismanaged…criminally and selfishly mismanaged”? 6. Of the following, who cannot be considered a muckraker? Explain your rejections as well as your choice. a. Ida Tarbell b. Lincoln Steffens c. Henry Frick d. Upton Sinclair

Are there other muckrakers whom Zinn mentions who are not in the list above? Explain.

7. How was Taylorism a response to the concerns of big business (concerns raised by the financial collapse of 1907)? 8. Which of the following was not a year that marked the beginning of an economic collapse: 1819, 1857, 1873, 1907, 1837, 1861, 1893, 1929 9. What would be the best word to describe the economic cycle of ups and downs in American history? Spasmodic? Cyclical? Sporadic? Fitful? Predictable? 10. Why did Clara Lemlich call for a general strike? 11. Why was it particularly impressive that the shirtwaist workers went on strike at the time that they did? 12. How did working-class culture sustain strikers? 13. Why did 146 Triangle Shirtwaist Company workers die in the fire of 1911? 14. What reasons/factors might explain the following disparities: a. In 1910, women were 20 percent of the labor force but 1 percent of union members. b. In 1910, black workers made 33 percent of the earnings of white workers/ 15. Why did the AFL leadership consider discrimination a practical tactic? 16. How did the leadership of the IWW differ from that of the AFL? Does the difference in membership between the IWW and AFL explain the difference in tactics and goals between the two organizations? If not, then what does explain the difference? 17. “…the IWW became a threat to the capitalist class, exactly when capitalist growth was enormous and profits huge.” Is this a coincidence? Defend your answer. 18. Discuss the First Amendment in relation to the laws that the Wobblies were fighting against with their “free speech” tactics. 19. Why do you think that Joel Hill’s trial became known throughout the world? 20. What were Dr. Shapleigh’s concerns about the living conditions of the Lawrence workers? 21. What event precipitated the walkout that led to the Lawrence Strike of 1912? 22. What role did the IWW play in the Lawrence strike, and why? What role did the government play, and why? 23. Why did the managers of the American Woolen Company finally decide to begin negotiations with the strikers? 24. Why did school boards want their female teachers to be single and celibate? 25. In 1909, what accomplishments did the Laundry Workers Union claim? 26. Why were workers attracted to socialism? Why did businessmen find socialism the greatest of threats? Why would women workers be skeptical of socialism? Why would they be skeptical of feminism? Why would black workers be skeptical or socialism? Why would skilled workers be antagonistic to socialism? 27. What opinions did Crystal Eastman, Margaret Sanger, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn share? 28. How did Rose Schneiderman expose as hypocrisy the antisuffrage argument that voting would make women unfeminine? 29. Why was Helen Keller a socialist but not a suffragist? 30. What irony did Helen Keller invoke in her response to the Brooklyn Eagle? 31. Why did Mother Jones work so hard to end child labor? 32. If William Trotter’s actions in a Boston church in 1903 reveal him to be a “radical militant,” then what is the definition of a “radical militant”? Did the NAACP promise to be a militant organization? 33. For each group below, explain how a Progressive piece of legislation, policy, or amendment benefited that group. Were any of the groups helped more than others? Were any left out? a. Farmers b. Skilled labor c. Small businesses d. Manufacturers e. Consumers f. Unskilled labor g. Blacks h. Monopolies i. Women

34. How was the NCF’s approach to preserving the status quo more sophisticated than that of the courts? 35. What were the electoral gains that the Socialist party made in 1911? 36. Why might the Rockefellers want to buy coal mines? 37. Why did the coal strike at Ludlow “culminate” in a “massacre”? 38. From 1854-56, Kansas was engulfed essential in a civil war between pro- and antislavery forces. From September 1913 to April 1914, Colorado was similarly engulfed in violence that the New York Times referred to at the time as “the war in Colorado.” Standard history books reference to the violence in Kansas as “Bleeding Kansas.” Why do history books not apply a similar epithet to the violence in Colorado? 39. If the 26 (or so) deaths at Ludlow on April 20, 1914 were called the “Ludlow Massacre,” why not also refer to the deaths of 146 women in the Triangle fire of 1911 as the “Triangle Massacre”?

Chapter 14 1. When did WWI begin? When did the US enter WWI? 2. How many Europeans died during WWI? How many Americans? 3. Why can WWI be called a war of attrition? 4. What was so ironic about the title of Remarque’s famous book about WWI? 5. Why were American troops “badly needed” by the French and British governments? 6. Why did the British and US governments lie about the cargo that the Lusitania carried in 1915? 7. How was America’s interest and participation in WWI an extension of the same foreign policy rationale behind the government’s decision to wage war on Spain in 1898? 8. According to Zinn, once the US declared war on Germany “a national consensus for war was needed, and the government quickly moved to create such a consensus.” What actions did the government take to create consensus? 9. Did the US government’s decision to enter WWI cause an increase in popularity of socialism in America, or did socialism’s popularity merely coincide with America’s participation in the war? 10. Was advocating socialism during the war equivalent to falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theater? 11. What were the methods employed by the different levels of government and private citizens to inhibit criticism of America’s participation in WWI? 12. What were the reasons to oppose America’s involvement in WWI? What were the reasons to support the war? 13. How did WWI shatter the IWW? 14. What is the evidence for Zinn’s argument that “when the war was over, the Establishment still feared socialism”?

Chapter 15

1. Why did the Seattle general strike end after five days? 2. What did the Seattle general strike symbolize to the business and government elite? 3. Why were there so many strikes directly after the end of WWI? 4. Why is the depiction of the 1920’s as prosperous and “roaring” a misleading one? 5. Why might working-class women not celebrate the passage of the 19th Amendment? 6. How did Fiorella La Guardia behave differently from other political figures in the 1920’s? 7. Would you have voted for the Mellon Plan? Why or why not? 8. Why was a communist party not organized in the US until after 1919? 9. Why did mill owners move their factories to the South in the 1920’s? 10. What was Galbraith’s explanation of the American economy collapse in 1929? What was the socialist’s explanation? What was Henry Ford’s? What information, in addition to what Zinn provides, would you want to have in order to decide which theory to support? 11. What percentage of the workforce was laid off during the Great Depression? What happened to these workers? 12. What series of historical events did Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath chronicle? 13. What was the direct action or grassroots political activity that the hungry and homeless engaged in as a response to their condition during the depression? What was their cultural response? Their electoral response? 14. What were the demands of the Bonus Army? What was Hoover’s response to those demands? How might Hoover have handled the situation differently? 15. What evidence does Zinn use to support his argument that the New Deal legislation was intended “to reorganize capitalism in such a way as to overcome the crisis and stabilize the system; also, to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion….” Include the following: NRA, AAA, Wagner Act, Minimum Wage Act of 1938, Social Security Act, WPA and FEPC. 16. Was the purpose of the Unemployment Council consistent with the structure of its organization? 17. Does Zinn believe that workers and capitalists were consciously acting according to the interests of the class? 18. Why would the AFL work hard to end the longshoremen-inspired general strike of 1934? 19. “The grave danger of the situation is that it will get completely out of the hands of the leaders.” To whom was this possibility so dangerous, and why? 20. According to Hosea Hudson, why did people want to attend block committee meetings? 21. What led to the creation of the CIO? 22. What were the tactical advantages of the sit-down-strike over a walkout? What were the disadvantages? 23. How were the workers able to sustain the strike in Flint, Michigan, for three winter months? 24. Did WWII function to weaken labor’s strength in the same way WWI did? 25. What is Langston Hughes’s argument in the section of his poem “Let America Be America Again,” quoted by Zinn?