Although the United States had gone to war to defend democracy, in 1917 democracy did not extend to the right to oppose that war. America was torn by this and even more serious conflicts over the following months as the administration sought to reorganize the economy for war, raise and equip troops, and establish and enforce a patriotic fervor that would support the effort.
Despite the brief engagement in the war and the relatively light casualties, the war had a deep and lasting impact on American society. The war marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. The deepest changes to American politics, economy, and society came about because of what transpired on the home front in the United States itself. When America declared war, its military forces were underprepared so they had to be organized and their numbers increased. Furthermore the US had to finance part of the French and British war effort, whose treasuries by 1917 were severely depleted.
In general, Republicans, both the traditional conservatives and those who had joined Theodore Roosevelt in the Progressive movement, criticized the organization of supply, the management of industry, and the rate of training and shipment of troops to Europe. In Congress, Republicans sought to wrest control of the domestic organization of the war from Wilson by establishing a congressionally-appointed war cabinet. Although Democrats defeated that measure, partisan bickering over such issues as industrial organization, military preparations and battle strategy continued throughout the 19 months of the war.
Democrats trusted in voluntary systems of compliance and cooperation and a federal government that remained small and out of the way of the economy and the states. Wilson’s approach had been dubbed the New Freedom during the presidential campaign of 1912, and, to a significant extent, his administration already embodied the small-government, voluntary approach. Reconciling Wilson’s New Freedom views about free enterprise with the modern needs of total warfare, in which national resources of manpower and finance had to be channeled efficiently into the effort, proved a daunting task.
In order to find enough troops for a massive army, Wilson and his colleagues did not like the concept of universal military training or conscription. Nevertheless, raising an army simply by calling for volunteers would not be sufficient. Yet advocates of small government abhorred the idea of a centralized system. The solution was a national selective service system administered locally, which would require all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register, and then to be selected at random.
While the military draft represented a means to reconcile the need to meet national objectives with a locally based administration, no such dispersed mechanism could be effectively employed to deal with such pressing needs as industrial production, transportation coordination, shipping needs, and state financing. As the Wilson administration struggled to address these and other problems, it devised reforms and legislation that conformed as much as possible to the ideals of voluntary consent rather than federal government control.
The nation declared war, but was quite unprepared militarily and economically for the demands of war. Furthermore, the public remained unready, psychologically and politically, to switch from the role of high-minded neutrality to a bloody and thorough commitment to war. So, while the Wilson administration attempted to organize funding and manpower, it also sought ways to win and solidify national support for the war. Wilson relied on a combination of loyal journalists and established political figures, together with his eloquent and impressive speaking manner, to win popular support for his positions.
In efforts to ensure unity, the Wilson administration took extraordinary steps. In response to a suggestion from the secretaries of war, treasury and state, Wilson established the Committee on Public Information (C.P.I.) and placed at its head George Creel, a colorful journalist who had been one of Wilson’s political supporters. Under Creel, the C.P.I. would go on to become a combination propaganda agency and censorship bureau that flooded the nation with speakers, posters, music, movies, books and pamphlets all urging support for the war, support for bond drives to raise funds, support for the military draft, and suppression of any pro-German or peace-advocacy sentiments.
To further ensure unity of opinion, under the Espionage Act passed in the first months of the war, Postmaster Albert Burleson instituted a campaign of intimidation and censorship. By far the most aggressive and hostile member of Wilson’s cabinet, Burleson specifically focused on foreign-language newspapers, as well as socialist and liberal publications that advocated continued neutrality or opposition to American participation in the war. Burleson would suspend a publication’s mailing privileges, and he would then claim that it had failed to maintain its status as a regularly published periodical, using that as an excuse to then permanently cancel mailing privileges.
The combined efforts of the C.P.I. to whip up public support for the war and of the intelligence agencies and their volunteer assistants to stamp out opposition almost completely silenced criticism of the war and its goals. Most elected politicians and other leaders sought only to outdo each other in demonstrations of loyalty. Republican members of Congress could criticize the president for not conducting the war vigorously enough. But pacifists and others opposing the war simply could not get a public forum to express their ideas.
President Wilson and his son-in-law and secretary of the treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo, chose to raise money for the war primarily by the voluntary method of selling and buying bonds rather than relying on compulsory taxation. The interest rate on the first issued bonds was set below the prevailing market rate for solid commercial loans, at 3.5 percent. To make that rate attractive, any income tax on the gain was waived. This feature made the bonds financially attractive to wealthier individuals most concerned with income tax, rather than those in the lowest income ranks.
The doctrine of voluntary cooperation and compliance had its limits, soon revealed in attempts to organize industry. Different purchasing agencies of the government soon found themselves bidding against each other for the same products. With shipowners reluctant to send freighters through the submarine blockade, goods piled up. Coal prices climbed, and, despite increased production, fuel supplies dropped to dangerously low levels because of a severe winter in 1917-18 and vastly increased factory production. To meet these challenges, Wilson established several coordinating agencies. Although the agencies had few powers, they represented a step in the direction of a managed economy.
Under the Lever Food and Fuel Act, Wilson appointed Harry Garfield as fuel administrator, hoping that reforms could be operated on a voluntary basis. However, as coal and oil stocks dropped in the severe winter of 1917-18 he issued an order shutting down all manufacturing plants east of the Mississippi for four days. The outcry against this decision, and the obvious failure of planning that it represented, led Republicans in Congress to attempt to pass legislation establishing a congressionally selected war cabinet to run the economy and the war effort. Democratic floor leaders successfully forestalled that attack on Wilson, pushing through the Overman Act, which gave the president the power to reorganize government departments without congressional approval.
The fact that some 2 million men went out from the labor force to enter the A.E.F. created a shortage of workers. While black men migrated from the South to take the places formerly occupied by waves of European immigrants, many women of all races also took new positions. However, contrary to popular impressions, the vast majority of women who went to work were not drawn from the ranks of middle-class housewives. Most women in these industrial and service jobs had worked before, many as low-paid domestic servants, seamstresses, or in textile industries.
The women’s suffrage movement had been severely divided by the war, with many women hoping that by pledging loyalty and support for the war and holding off from protest, they would win the approval of Congress for the suffrage amendment. The National Woman’s Party, however, under the leadership of Alice Paul, a suffragist from New Jersey, decided on a more direct approach. Paul’s group began picketing the White House. These protests had an effect. After a vigorous state-by-state campaign, 36 states approved the suffragette amendment and it went into effect in August 1920, in time for the November 1920 elections.
The Wilson administration had worked assiduously to suppress opposition to the war and to foster a sense of national unity and patriotism. Yet many of the people attacked in that effort included some who had been among Wilson’s earlier advocates. Those opposed to the war had mostly supported Wilson in 1916; however his own administration made opposition to the war an illegal act and actively suppressed the voicing of that opinion. The instruments of government thus turned against the very core of Wilson’s earlier voting base. It was in this context that Republicans took over Congress.