Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (49 page)

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

JANE ADDAMS
, from
Twenty Years at Hull-House
:

Our very first Christmas at Hull-House, when we as yet knew nothing of child labor, a number of little girls refused the candy which was offered them as part of the Christmas good cheer, saying simply that they “worked in a candy factory and could not bear the sight of it.” We discovered that for six weeks they had worked from seven in the morning until nine at night, and they were exhausted as well as satiated. . . .

During the same winter three boys from a Hull-House club were injured at one machine in a neighboring factory for lack of a guard which would have cost but a few dollars. When the injury of one of these boys resulted in his death, we felt quite sure that the owners of the factory would share our horror and remorse. . . . To our surprise, they did nothing whatever, and I made my first acquaintance then with those pathetic documents signed by the parents of working children, that they will make no claim for damages resulting from “carelessness.”

Who were the Wobblies?

The Jungle
was more than a muckraking novel. It was the most prominent example of a Socialist novel. Besides being a scathing exposé of meatpacking practices, the book was a call to workers to unite, ending with a utopian vision of a workers’ society. In fact, it had first been published in a Socialist newspaper,
Appeal to Reason
. Years of being associated with Soviet and Chinese Communism have permanently tarred socialism in the American mind as dangerous. But for a period in the early twentieth century it was a growing political force, especially among the working class, who saw it as a way to distribute wealth through government control rather than through private enterprise. Since few workers in America were getting any wealth distributed by the Morgans and Rockefellers, they decided to give socialism a try.

While the conservative, mainstream AFL stayed away from Socialist ideas, not wanting to be associated with the Bolshevism that was taking over Russia (where 10,000 American troops were involved in a secret war to prevent the Bolshevik revolution during World War I), another union sprang up and proudly unfurled the Socialist banner. It was the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and its members became better known, for reasons historically unclear, as the Wobblies. Unlike the AFL, which was open only to white, skilled craftsmen, the Wobblies were organized to accept all workers into “one big union.” At their first meeting, in 1905, were “Big Bill” Haywood (1869–1928), a miner; Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party; and Mary Harris “Mother” Jones (1830–1930), a seventy-five-year-old organizer for the United Mine Workers.

The Wobblies’ cause flared for about ten years, met with the full force of anti-union violence as its leaders were jailed, beaten, and, in the case of the legendary Joe Hill (1872?–1915), framed and executed, although he gained a sort of immortality in the song “I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night.”

Under Debs, the Socialist Party attracted notable personalities, including Helen Keller, and managed to win as much as 6 percent of the presidential vote until the war intervened and in its wake the first powerful wave of anti-Communism swept the country, all but eradicating socialism as a force in American politics and life.

Who was W. E. B. DuBois?

One man who briefly joined the Socialists emerged from this period as the most eloquent and forceful voice for blacks since Frederick Douglass. In stark counterpoint to the accommodating spirit of Booker T. Washington (see p. 285), W. E. B. DuBois (1868–1963) became the trumpeter of a new spirit of “manly agitation.” The great civil rights upheaval in America was still half a century away, but DuBois was its John the Baptist, the voice in the wilderness. Born in Massachusetts, he was the first black to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard, in 1895. He taught, lectured, and wrote, his most notable work being the classic
The Souls of Black Folk
(1903). Rejecting Washington’s conservative restraint, DuBois joined in founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, at that time a white-dominated organization, and became editor of its journal,
The Crisis
, where he served for a quarter-century.

DuBois left the NAACP in 1934, when he promoted a more radical strategy and returned to teaching. Ten years later he rejoined the NAACP, and in 1945 was one of the Americans in attendance at the founding of the United Nations. DuBois later joined the Communist Party, left America, and renounced his citizenship, moving to Ghana, where he died.

Must Read:
W. E. B. DuBois: A Biography of a Race, 1868–1919
by David Levering Lewis.

A
MERICAN
V
OICES

W. E. B. DUBOIS,
from
The Souls of Black Folk
(1903):

So far as Mr. [Booker T.] Washington preaches thrift, patience, and industrial training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustices, North or South, does not rightly value the privileges and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds—so far as he, the South, or the nation, does this—we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.

What was the Bull Moose Party?

Though he could have run for another term and probably would have won handily, given his popularity, Teddy Roosevelt accepted the unwritten rule observed since Washington (and unbroken until Teddy’s cousin Franklin D. came along). Having served out most of McKinley’s unfinished term and his own full term, Roosevelt left a handpicked successor in the White House in William Howard Taft (1857–1930). In 1908, with Roosevelt’s blessing and running on the Roosevelt record, Taft easily defeated the unsinkable William Jennings Bryan, who made his third unsuccessful bid for the White House. At the time, a common joke said the name Taft stood for “Take Advice From Teddy.”

Roosevelt decided that he would head off for an African safari to stay out of Taft’s way. But a year of bagging big game didn’t quench Teddy’s political hunting instincts. When he came back, he set about to recapture the Republican nomination from Taft, whose star could never shine as brilliantly as Roosevelt’s had. Pegged a conservative, Taft had actually brought more antitrust suits than Roosevelt had, including the one that broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and Teddy’s backers included a former Morgan banker. But this was to be an election fought to see who appeared most progressive. And it was Roosevelt who projected himself as the champion reformer. After a bloody battle in which Taft recaptured the Republican nomination, Roosevelt led a group of dissatisfied liberal Republicans out of the fold and into the Progressive Party. Claiming at one point that he was “as strong as a bull moose,” Roosevelt gave the party its popular name.

The Democrats struggled through forty-six ballots before turning to Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), then governor of New Jersey, a surprise choice, and, for his times at least, rather liberal. The Democratic Party solidified behind Wilson, especially in the South, where Roosevelt was never forgiven for welcoming Booker T. Washington to the White House. Taft essentially threw in the towel and stayed out of the campaign—later to head the Supreme Court, the job he really always wanted. In spite of an unsuccessful assassination attempt that seemed to confirm his invincibility, Roosevelt campaigned hard, and Wilson’s popular vote was less than the combined Taft-Roosevelt vote. (Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs polled 6 percent of the vote—nearly a million votes, and an indication that the political winds had clearly shifted to the left.) But Wilson’s electoral victory was sweeping. Taft won only two states and Roosevelt six. The rest of the country was solidly Democratic behind Wilson. And once again, a third-party candidacy had changed the course of American politics.

Like his opponents, Wilson ran on a progressive reform platform he called the New Freedom. During his first administration, his legislative success was quite remarkable. Duties on foreign goods, the almost sacred weapon held by big business to keep out foreign competition, were reduced for the first time since the Civil War. The Sixteenth Amendment, imposing an income tax, was ratified. The Seventeenth Amendment, providing for election of U.S. senators by popular direct vote, was ratified. (Previously, U.S. senators had been chosen by state legislatures.) And a Federal Reserve Act gave the country its first central bank since Andrew Jackson’s time. In other key reforms, the Federal Trade Commission was created and the Clayton Antitrust Act was passed; both were intended to control unfair and restrictive trade practices, exempting unions and farm groups.

The shame of Wilson’s “progressive” administration was his abysmal record on civil rights. Under Wilson, Jim Crow became the policy of the U.S. government, with segregated federal offices, and blacks losing some of the few government jobs they held. Virginia-born, Wilson was a product of the post–Civil War South, and he reflected that mentality to a remarkable extent for a man who seemed so forward-thinking in other respects. But his treatment of blacks was of little concern to a nation that was warily watching the approach of a European war.

Who was Pancho Villa?

Under Woodrow Wilson, America went from “big stick” to Big Brother when it came to Latin America. With the nearly completed Panama Canal to defend, Wilson was going to ensure that American power in the hemisphere would not be threatened. Local unrest in the Caribbean left American troops controlling Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. All were pushovers for American military might. Less simple to deal with was the instability in Mexico that produced Pancho Villa.

Mexico had undergone a series of coups and dictatorships in the early twentieth century, leaving General Victoriano Huerta installed as president in 1911 with the help of the American ambassador and the blessings of foreign investors who wanted only the stability that allowed them to exploit Mexico. But President Wilson refused to recognize Huerta’s government, throwing Mexico into more turbulence. Using as a pretext the arrest of some American sailors, Wilson sent the U.S. Navy to invade Vera Cruz in 1914, and Huerta soon abdicated. The door was opened for another general, Venustiano Carranza, and two of his “generals,” Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. An illiterate Indian, Zapata made some claims for social reform by giving land to the poor. Villa was simply a bandit who eventually rose against Carranza and seized Mexico City.

In an attempt to undermine Carranza, Villa began to attack the United States. He killed a dozen American passengers aboard a train in northern Mexico, and then began to make raids across the border into New Mexico, murdering a group of American mining engineers. An outraged Wilson sent General John J. Pershing (1860–1948) into Mexico in pursuit of Villa. But chasing the wily outlaw general was like trying to catch the wind. Villa led the American troops deeper into Mexican territory on a nine-month fox hunt that only served to alarm Carranza, raising tensions between America and Mexico.

With involvement in Europe’s war growing more likely, Wilson relented and recalled Pershing from Mexico in 1917. Within a few years, Villa, Zapata, and Carranza were all dead by assassination in the turbulent world of Mexican politics, a world that was being drawn in by the powerful pull of European war.

How did a dead archduke in Sarajevo start a world war?

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was in the city of Sarajevo (in modern Yugoslavia), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A group of young student nationalists who wanted to join independent Serbia to Austria’s south plotted to kill the archduke. One of them, Gavrilo Princip, shot the archduke in his automobile. Within days, the Austrian Empire declared war on Serbia, Austria’s tiny neighbor to the south, claiming it was responsible for the assassination. Allied to Serbia, Russia mobilized its troops. Austria’s ally Germany responded by declaring war on Russia and its ally, France. Also bound by defense treaties, Great Britain declared war on Germany as German troops began an invasion of Belgium on their way to France.

Ferdinand’s death was merely the spark that ignited a short fuse that exploded into what was then called the Great War, and only later, at the time of the Second World War, became known as World War I. Another way to put it is that the assassination was a final piece in a Rube Goldberg contraption, a crazy scheme of interlocking parts that finally sent Europe reeling into a war that covered most of the globe.

On the eve of war, Europe was more in the nineteenth century than the twentieth. The German Empire had been consolidated into the continent’s leading power during the late nineteenth century by the Iron Chancellor Bismarck, and was linked to the Austrian Empire through aristocratic bloodlines and military alliance. Together they constituted the Central Powers in Europe and were also allied to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled much of the modern Middle East. The German Empire had been partly built at French expense after Germany won a war in 1870 that humiliated France and gave Germany the rich territories of Alsace and Lorraine. Resentment over this loss and surrender of French territory had never subsided between the two nations, and France, in the wake of its disastrous defeat at Germany’s hands, had rearmed heavily, reorganized its armies, and become an intensely militarized nation with plans to eventually retake the steel-producing region it considered its property.