United States History II: Industrialization to the Present

This is Unit Two of Social Sciences and History, part two of two: United States history from the crash of nineteen twenty-nine to the Great Recession. Part one closed on the twenties and on the sample question about women's wartime work. This part carries one idea through eighty years. The exam's questions on this century return to a single variable: how far the federal government reached into economic life, and who pushed it further or pulled it back. Read that way, a list of administrations becomes one line that moves forward and back, and the capstone entry at the end draws the line from the Gilded Age to two thousand eight. By the end you will be able to sort a New Deal measure into relief, recovery or reform. To say what containment was and where it worked. To name the civil rights breakthroughs of the fifties and the acts of the sixties. To answer the sample question on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. And to place any program of the century on the thread of federal reach.

Five entries on the crash and the New Deal: the fall and its spread, Hoover's response, the two waves of legislation, and how to sort a measure by its purpose.

The crash.

SSH 0122 The Crash and Its Spread

Easy credit and speculation set up the fall. The market slid through the summer of nineteen twenty-nine, then panic sold sixteen million shares on Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, and in a month it lost nearly forty percent. Banks foreclosed, autos and construction stalled, layoffs spread. Few Americans held stock, yet the crash reached everyone through banks, foreclosures and panic's contagion.

Hoover's response.

SSH 0123 Hoover's Response

Hoover held to American individualism: hard work without government interference. He sought voluntary business measures, then created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation for banks and signed the Emergency Relief Act for public works, while the Bonus Army of nineteen thirty-two was dispersed by the military. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff invited retaliation abroad. The anchor's verdict on Hoover is the anchor's; the course states the measures.

The hundred days.

SSH 0124 The First Hundred Days

Roosevelt won nineteen thirty-two in a landslide. He declared a bank holiday, passed the Emergency Banking Act so inspected banks could reopen, then signed a hundred days of laws for jobs, industry, agriculture and relief, among them the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Not every program worked, and critics were many. The anchor credits the wave with restoring confidence.

The second wave.

SSH 0125 The Second New Deal and the Safety Net

After the Court struck down the AAA and NIRA, Roosevelt won the Banking Act, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act and Social Security, and the WPA employed eight million people. The Fair Labor Standards Act set a minimum wage and maximum hours and barred child labor. Court-packing failed. Whether the New Deal made a welfare state is a debate the anchor names, not one the course settles.

Sorting New Deal measures.

SSH 0126 Sorting New Deal Measures: Relief, Recovery, Reform

The exam asks what a New Deal measure was for, and three purposes cover the field. Relief put money or work into the hands of people in immediate need. Recovery tried to restart industry, agriculture and banking so the economy would grow again. Reform changed the rules so the collapse would not repeat. The Emergency Banking Act, examining banks before reopening them, was recovery of confidence with a reform edge. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration were relief through work. The Tennessee Valley Authority was recovery by development. Social Security was reform, a permanent structure of pensions and insurance; the Fair Labor Standards Act was reform, rules for wages, hours and child labor. A program paying unemployed young men to plant forests is relief; a law creating old-age pensions is reform; a measure closing and inspecting banks is recovery. The trap is calling everything relief because the Depression was the context. The anchor's own line is that Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act still provide much of the safety net, which is reform's mark: it outlasts the emergency.

Three entries on the Second World War: the road to Pearl Harbor, the home front and internment, and the two theaters and the bomb.

The road to Pearl Harbor.

SSH 0127 From Appeasement to Pearl Harbor

Fascism and Nazism rose as the Depression reached Europe. The United States stayed focused on its own troubles, then aided Britain and China short of war, and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the country in. Appeasement is judged by the anchor shortsighted and tragic. Unit six carries the war's global course; here, the American path in and the home front.

The home front.

SSH 0128 The Home Front and Internment

Rationing held goods back while the economy surged. New jobs opened for women and minorities as White men enlisted, creating new anxieties among some White men about equality, and race riots followed. Executive Order nine zero six six interned people of Japanese ancestry, citizens included. The Double V campaign sought victory over racism at home as well as over the enemy abroad.

The two theaters.

SSH 0129 Two Theaters and the Bomb

The Allies invaded North Africa, then Italy; D-Day came on June sixth, nineteen forty-four, after the Soviets had turned the eastern tide. Yalta, in February nineteen forty-five, strengthened Stalin. In the Pacific, island hopping, the Manhattan Project, and two atomic bombs. The anchor finds the Pacific war drew on long American racism toward Asians; the course voices it as the anchor's.

Four entries on the Cold War at home and abroad: containment and Korea, the second Red Scare, the affluent suburban nation, and the civil rights breakthroughs of the fifties.

The Cold War's opening.

SSH 0130 Containment, the Marshall Plan, Korea

Fear of Soviet expansion produced containment: aid to governments threatened by Communist forces and billions to rebuild Europe under the Marshall Plan, against what Churchill called the Iron Curtain. The Berlin airlift succeeded; Korea did not stop Communist expansion. Unit six carries the Cold War globally. Here it is the American policy and the domino theory behind it.

The fear at home.

SSH 0131 The Second Red Scare

The Soviet bomb and the arrest of spies raised fear of Communist agents within. Loyalty boards and congressional hearings sought sympathizers in government, Hollywood and the military, and the blacklist denied work to the suspected, a screenwriter unemployable on suspicion alone. The GI Bill eased veterans' return, though Black, Mexican American and gay veterans often could not use it fully.

The affluent society.

SSH 0132 Affluence, Suburbs, and the Baby Boom

Eisenhower balanced budgets, built defense around massive retaliation, and avoided new wars while the economy boomed. Record marriages, the baby boom of nineteen forty-six to sixty-four, and mass-produced Levittowns made a suburban nation, with rock and roll and television reshaping leisure. Truman's Fair Deal had been partly blocked. Prosperity was uneven, and the next entry shows where.

The civil rights breakthroughs of the fifties.

SSH 0133 Brown, Montgomery, Little Rock

Thurgood Marshall's lawsuits attacked Jim Crow, and Brown against Board of Education in nineteen fifty-four barred school segregation. Eisenhower sent troops to desegregate Little Rock's Central High, and Montgomery's bus boycott was grassroots. The anchor names the violence, the murder of Emmett Till. Courts and the federal government did not assist in every case; change came from lawsuits, troops and boycotts together.

Three entries on the sixties: Kennedy's thousand days, the sample question on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Great Society with its civil rights acts.

Kennedy's thousand days.

SSH 0134 Kennedy, Cuba, and the Turn to Vietnam

Kennedy's New Frontier promised aid to the poor and civil rights, but he focused on foreign policy. He defused the Cuban Missile Crisis with a naval quarantine and sent advisers and troops to South Vietnam, with flexible response and counterinsurgency replacing massive retaliation. His assassination in Dallas passed the agenda to Lyndon Johnson, and Vietnam with it.

The sample question on the Gulf of Tonkin.

SSH 0135 The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Sample question two asks what the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution did, and the key is that it authorized the president to repel attacks on American forces. In August nineteen sixty-four the destroyer Maddox reported fire from North Vietnamese boats. On August seventh, with two dissenting votes, Congress passed the resolution, and the president signed it on August tenth. Its text authorized all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against United States forces and to prevent further aggression, which the anchor reads as authority to use force in Vietnam without a declaration of war. Look for the option naming authorization to repel attacks; reject a declaration of war, a treaty, or a troop ceiling. The resolution declared no war, and that is why it mattered. The anchor records that the National Security Agency later revealed the August fourth attack did not occur; Congress revoked the resolution in January nineteen seventy-one. The trap is the phrase declaration of war: the resolution's force came from being something less than a declaration that worked like one. The second trap is the date. It belongs to Johnson in nineteen sixty-four, not Kennedy and not Nixon.

The Great Society and the civil rights acts.

SSH 0136 The Great Society and the Civil Rights Acts

Johnson's Great Society and war on poverty funded education, job training and community development. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty-four, the Voting Rights Act of sixty-five, and the Civil Rights Act of sixty-eight, pressed by sit-ins, freedom rides and marches from CORE, SCLC and SNCC. Vietnam undermined the Great Society, and slow change turned many toward Black Power and the Chicano Movement.

Four entries to close: the storms of the seventies, the Reagan era, the new century, and the one variable that runs through the whole unit.

The storms of the seventies.

SSH 0137 Vietnam's End, Watergate, Stagflation

Nixon won in nineteen sixty-eight on law and order, opened China and pursued détente. He escalated Vietnam to end it: Cambodia, Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, withdrawal in nineteen seventy-three, Saigon's fall two years later. Watergate indicted twenty-five aides and produced the first presidential resignation. Stagflation defeated Nixon, Ford and Carter alike; Carter brokered peace between Egypt and Israel and could not free the Tehran hostages.

The Reagan era.

SSH 0138 The Reagan Era and the End of the Cold War

Reagan's supply-side tax cuts, defense increases and social-spending cuts broke stagflation at the price of recession and deficits, in the anchor's account. The war on drugs swelled prisons along racial lines. Iran-Contra brought indictments; START and Desert Storm followed. The Cold War ended, and Clinton, a New Democrat, moved his party toward the center. The anchor's verdicts are not repeated.

The new century.

SSH 0139 9/11, Two Wars, the Great Recession

September eleventh, two thousand one brought war in Afghanistan, then Iraq in two thousand three on a weapons claim, and the Patriot Act. Subprime mortgages and a deregulated bond market made the Great Recession of two thousand eight, answered by TARP's seven hundred billion and, later, the Affordable Care Act. The anchor's summary misprints TARP in trillions; its own text and the law say seven hundred billion.

The thread that runs through the whole unit.

SSH 0140 Government's Reach, 1877–2008: One Thread

The exam's questions on the century after Reconstruction return to one variable: how far the federal government reached into economic life, and who pushed it further or pulled it back. In the Gilded Age the reach was slight, patronage and graft, with only weak measures like the Sherman Acts; the Populists asked for more and lost. Progressives got more: the Square Deal, the New Freedom, the initiative and referendum. The Great War extended the reach into railroads, bonds and dissent, then closed the wartime agencies at once, and the twenties pulled back to normalcy. The Depression made the largest change: Hoover's individualism resisted, and Roosevelt's hundred days, Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act built a permanent structure, so that after nineteen forty-one, in the anchor's own line, the question was no longer whether government would regulate and provide but how much. The Second World War and the Cold War added rationing, containment's spending and the Marshall Plan; the Great Society added a war on poverty and three civil rights acts. Then the thread reversed: Reagan's cuts and Clinton's move to the center pulled the domestic reach back while defense grew, and the crisis of two thousand eight pulled it forward again with TARP and the Affordable Care Act. The thread is a reading aid, not a verdict. The anchor offers verdicts on several administrations and the course does not repeat them. What the exam tests is the direction and the instrument. Given any program from this unit, place it on the line by asking whether it added a federal rule, a federal payment or a federal agency, or removed one. That is the idea this lecture opened with, paid off.

Look at what you can now do. You can sort a New Deal measure into relief, recovery or reform, and you know reform's mark: it outlasts the emergency. You can say what containment was, aid and rebuilding against Soviet expansion, and that Berlin succeeded where Korea did not stop the spread. You can name Brown, Little Rock and Montgomery, and the acts of sixty-four, sixty-five and sixty-eight. You can answer sample question two: the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized the president to repel attacks, and its force came from being less than a declaration of war that worked like one. And you can place any program of the century on the thread of federal reach by asking whether it added or removed a rule, a payment or an agency, which is the idea this lecture was built on. Unit three turns to Western civilization, from the first cities to the fall of Constantinople.