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The Home Front Author(S): Ronald Schaffer Source: Magazine of History, Vol The Home Front Author(s): Ronald Schaffer Source: Magazine of History, Vol. 17, No. 1, World War I (Oct., 2002), pp. 20-24 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163559 Accessed: 17/04/2010 15:20 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oah. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Organization of American Historians is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Magazine of History. http://www.jstor.org Ronald Schaffer The Home Front By the time the United States entered World War I, the Allies?were willing and perhaps even eager to fight the Central Jbelligerent powers were approaching total warfare, pitting Powers, other intellectuals and religious organizations strenuously their entire societies against one another. American leaders opposed intervention. Pacifism, isolationism, antimilitarism, and believed their country must do the same; yet the obstacles to apathy were so widespread that in the fall of 1916, President mobilizing a united American society were formidable. This essay Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection with the slogan "He Kept Us discusses the ways by which the United States government sought to Out ofWar." overcome those obstacles, particularly how it attempted to unify the To develop the support needed to mobilize America, the home front and to convert the nation's United States government followed economy for war. It considers the several approaches. It directed interaction between government and massive propaganda at the Ameri elements of the society it sought to can people and imprisoned those mobilize, examines the effectiveness who openly challenged itswar poli of mobilization, and looks at prece cies. Yet it often used a softer dents the war created for later emer method, what one of its leaders gencies. called "engines of indirection" com Unity was a crucial requirement (2),to encourage rather than for success. Yet America in 1917 pel Americans to pay for the war, was far from unified. Race riots, conserve scarce resources, and par lynchings, and increasing segrega ticipate in home front activities. It tion characterized its racial system. offered rewards to those who coop Decades of business consolidation erated and withheld benefits from and industrial violence had left the those who declined to go along. nation's middle class citizens wary The result was a wartime welfare both of radical labor organizations state that benefitted millions of and of the economic and political Albert Sterner paints the war poster "Over There," featured on page Americans, especially those with 7. Sterner was one ofthe many artists who worked for the government power of large corporations. With the power, resources, and organiza the war and war efforts. Film Service, millions of Americans connected advertising (International tion needed to induce the federal 1918. NARA NWDNS 165-WW-61 [8]) by ancestry to the warring nations, government to respond to their ethnic conflict threatened to tear needs. In the America of 1917 the United States apart once it joined the Allies. And ominous 1918 self-sacrifice, idealism and patriotism existed side by side signs were appearing that American women might divide over the with efforts to reap private gain from the war, with government war. Women had been prominent in the prewar peace movement. management of interest groups, and with efforts by those groups to The first woman elected to congress voted against entering the manipulate the government that sought to control them. was war, and militant women suffragists had begun to picket the Foremost among the wartime propaganda agencies the White House, publicizing the gaps between government slogans Committee on Public Information (CPI), headed by the journalist about making the world safe for democracy and a political system and social reformer George Creel. This committee sought to meld in which millions of women could not vote (1). all Americans into what its director called "one white-hot mass... There were other threats to unity on the eve of war. Although with fraternity, devotion, and deathless determination" to support some Americans?particularly those with ancestral ties to the an Allied victory. It deluged the country with press releases and 20 OAH Magazine of History October 2002 pamphlets, newspaper and magazine advertisements, and organized Act of 1918, it denied the mails to publications it believed would scores of pageants and parades. The CPI had educators explain to embarrass or hamper it in the prosecution of the war. It jailed students the official reasons for fighting, stimulate their patriotism, members of a radical labor organization, the Industrial Workers of and enhance their admiration for American and Allied armed theWorld, that threatened to disrupt production of war materials. forces. It told immigrants in their own languages why they owed it It imprisoned a former Socialist candidate for president, Eugene to America to assist it against its enemies. To those who could not V. Debs, and hundreds of other persons for statements that read, the committee communicated with billboards, posters, mo government prosecutors claimed would interfere with the an war tion pictures, and army of patriotic speakers. government's programs. At times, the administration also Although Creel's committee sometimes allowed its audience stifled dissent subtly and indirectly, as when the CPI urged editors to know that the government was addressing them, it frequently to censor themselves or face penalties, without specifying what followed an indirect or covert ap would cause the government to proach. It set up front organiza silence their publications. tions, such as the American In its efforts to clamp down Alliance for Labor and Democ on pacifists, radicals and persons racy, led by conservative labor too friendly to the enemy, the union leader Samuel Gompers, federal government allied itself that opposed radicalism and paci with state and private groups. It fism among workers. Its own sponsored a quarter million vol name was a euphemism, suggest unteer members of the Ameri ing that it conveyed, not propa can Protective League, who ganda, but simply information. sought to root but opponents of The head ofthe committee's film war. State governments autho division observed that one ofthe rized councils of defense that not CPI's objectives was to spread only assisted mobilization in posi "telling propaganda which at the tive ways but also attacked per same time would not be obvious sons the councils considered or propaganda, but will have the pro-German, antiwar, too fa effect we desire to create." vorable toward social reform. Among the CPI's great variety Other groups, some of them of messages, certain themes ap nameless organizations, or just peared repeatedly. One was the mobs, joined in the repression of notion that the enemies were vi alleged internal enemies. cious, subhuman monsters who While many Americans felt had committed unspeakable intense exhilaration and na atrocities and were preparing to tional pride during this war, a bring horror and devastation to large number experienced it as a America. Thus one wartime poster time of terror. People spied on showed lower Manhattan in one another; intimidated those flames, a decapitated Statue of Lib who seemed slow to purchase erty, and enemy warplanes hover government war bonds or to join ing overhead. Another depicted the military; forced suspected Germany as a spike-helmeted slob pro-Germans to kiss the Ameri bering ape-like creature standing can flag or painted them yellow; on in two the American shore. A second America's different ethnic groups were encouraged to support the threatened, tortured, and, theme was the crusade motif, that United States during World War I. (Libary of Congress, LC cases, murdered those who USZC4-9560) America was engaged in a holy seemed to oppose the war. Citi war to avenge those atrocities, safe zens and governments attacked guard democracy and assure lasting peace. Third, there was the the country's German American subculture, suppressed German theme that Americans of all classes, national origins, occupations, music, threatened German American religious sects, forbade the and genders must stand together to support that crusade. speaking and teaching of the German language, and sought to Like other warring nations, the United States used forceful remove words of German origin from American speech, turning methods, along with exhortation, to control the way its people "frankfurters" into "liberty sausages" and "dachshunds" into felt. Although President Wilson expressed concern that war "liberty dogs". would deeply curtail American freedoms, his administration rarely Some of these actions were an outgrowth ofthe patriotism that hesitated to crack down on dissenters. With the authority of led Americans to volunteer spontaneously for military service, to legislation, such as the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition enter war industries, to roll bandages or become Red Cross nurses, OAH Magazine of History October 2002 21 to join local home defense leagues, and to buy government bonds.
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