1. Mobilizing the Home Front-WWI
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2009

2. Industry Council of National Defense (1916)
Business and labor leaders
Coordinate industrial mobilization
Little authority
War Industries Board (1917)
Military refused to cooperate
Congressional investigation-Overman Act
Bernard Baruch to head
Standardized products
Strict production and purchasing controls
Paid high prices
Ineffective
Most heavy equipment and munitions produced in Europe

3. War Industries Board Original caption: War Industries Board
War Industries Board Original caption: War Industries Board. Seated from left to right are : Seated, Admiral F.F. Fletcher; Robt. S. Brookings, chairman price-fixing committee; Bernard N. Baruch, chairman: and Hugh Frayne, labor representative. Standing H.P. Ingles, secretary; Judge E. B. Parker, priorities commissioner; George N. Peek, commissioner of finished products; J. Leonard Replogle, steel administrator; Alexander Legge, vice chairman; Major General George W. Goethals, army; and Albert C. Ritchie, general counsel.

4. Food Supplied US and European allies Bad winter 1917-1918 Lever Act
President could control production, price, and distribution
Food Administration
Herbert Hoover
Fixed high prices
Encourage production of wheat, pork, etc.
Encouraged conservation of food
“Wheatless Mondays” and “Meatless Tuesday”
Food exports tripled/farm income up 30%

6. Fuel Fuel Administration Coal production increased 35%
Harry A. Garfield
Coal production and conservation
Severe winter
“Fueless Mondays” and “Gasless Sundays”
Coal production increased 35%

9. Railroads United States Railroad Administration
William McAdoo, Sec. of Treasury
Take over and operate all railroads as one system
Paid owners rent for RR lines
$500 million on improvements
Efficient railroad system

10. Maritime Shipping United States Shipping Board
Emergency Fleet Corporation
Buy, build, lease, operate merchant ships
Built shipyards
Just beginning to produce by end of war
Seized German and Dutch ships
Purchased private ships
Large fleet by SEP 1918

11. Labor War Labor Board Union membership doubled
Prevent strikes and work stoppages in war industries
William Howard Taft and Frank Walsh
Prohibited strikes
Encouraged higher wages, eight-hour day, and unionization
Union membership doubled

12. War Finance and Taxation
$33.5 billion by 1920
$7 billion loaned to allies
Taxes and borrowing
Revenue Act of 1918
Personal income tax
6% up to $40,000
12% over $40K
Excess profits tax-65%
Excise taxes on luxury items
Liberty Bonds
100% inflation from

13. The Committee on Public Information
George Creel
Voluntary censorship of the press
Propaganda campaign
150,000 paid writers, lecturers, artists, etc.
Portray Germans as barbaric
Liberty Leagues established
Spy on neighbors
Report suspicious activity to Justice Department

15. War Hysteria American Protective League
250,000 members
Claimed approval of Justice Dept.
Humiliated people for not buying war bonds
Persecuted, beat, sometimes killed Germans and German-Americans
German language instruction and music banned
German measles- “liberty measles”
Sauerkraut-“liberty cabbage”
Pretzels prohibited

16. "No person, individually or as a teacher, shall, in any private, denominational, parochial or public school teach any subject to any person in any language other than the English language." –Nebraska state law (1919)
"If these people are Americans, let them speak our language. If they don't know it, let them learn it. If they don't like it, let them move " –Nebraska state legislator

17. Espionage and Sedition Acts
Espionage Act of 1917
Fines and imprisonment for making false statements that aided the enemy, incited rebellion, or obstructed recruitment
Excluded seditious material from the mail
Upheld by Supreme Court-Shenk v. United States
“clear and present danger” (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
Can’t cry “fire” in a crowded thater
Sedition Act of 1918
Forbade criticism of the government, flag, or uniform
Eugene V. Debs-10 years in prison for speech
Upheld in Abrams v. United States
2168 prosecuted, 1055 convicted, 10 charged with sabotage

18. Debs defended his comrades who had already been sent to jail for speaking against the war, some of them his close friends, and he disputed the common charge that the Socialists were pro-German. He added that America’s greatest enemy was not the Kaiser, but those American businessmen who had taken the country to war, and were making inordinate profits from the venture. Debs also repeated the standard socialist talking point that wars were a nasty by-product of capitalist greed, and that when working people took charge of the earth, peace would reign. The most often quoted line from that speech was Debs’s comment, “you need to know that you are fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.”
Debs knew that federal agents were in the crowd, and he may have expected to be arrested, though I don’t think he was actively courting martyrdom—more likely, he was saying what he felt he had to say. He was in his 60s and in frail health, and he certainly did not relish the prospect of spending his last days in prison, but he felt it was his duty not to remain silent while his friends were going to jail. He was a reluctant martyr.
The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that the United States Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.

19. Mobilizing the Home Front-WWI
AP US History
East High School
Mr. Peterson
Spring 2009