Domestic Agenda 1945-1960
Truman
- Demobilization
- Employment Act
- Fed Govs job to promote economic growth
- Council of Econ Advisors created
- Price Controls
- Truman used them
- Labor
- Want wage increase
- Truman handles these issues
- US Steel
- UMW
- Railroads
- Operation Dixie
- Attempt to unionize the south
- GI Bill
- army from 8 million-1.5 million by 1947
- $13 billion=
- Taft-Hartley Act
- Impact=
- Compare to the Wagner Act of the New Deal
- Economic Boom
- Much of it from the boom in Defense spending/Korean War
- Industries benefit
- Aerospace, plastics, electronics, R&D
- Cheap Energy contributes to the boom
- Worker/Farmer productivity increases.
- Baby Boom
- As they grow up they put strains on certain industries and the job market
- Social security issues
- Civil Rights
- Committee on Civil Rights=
- Truman desegregates the Armed Services
- Government Reorganization
- National Security Act
- NSC
- CIA
- “Voice of America”
- Draft
- 22nd Amendment=
- Election 1948
- Republicans won control of the House in 1946 elections
- Eisenhower declined Democrats nomination in 1948
- Third Parties
- Dixiecrats
- Progressive Party
- Fair Deal
- Wanted =
- Blocked by=
- Areas of Success
- Raised min wage, expanded social security, Housing Act 1949
- Red Scare
- Loyalty Programs
- Smith act=
- 1st peacetime anti-sedition act since 1798
- Dennis v United States
- HUAC/Loyalty review Board
- Vetoed McCarran Internal Security Bill
- Role of the FBI
- Fears=
- Alger Hiss=
- Nixon’s role
- Political lessons learned
- Rosenberg’s
- Joe McCarthy
- Impact
- Compare to Post-WWI Red Scare
Eisenhower
- 1952 Election=
- Republicans rejected the isolationist Robert Taft, chose Eisenhower
- Nixon does most of the “attack campaigning”
- Nixon is questioned
- “Checkers” Speech
- Shows the new power of TV on campaigns
- Affluence and economic boom
- Invention of the transistor helps drive the electronics industry
- IBM
- Aerospace industry opens commercial travel
- White collar workers outnumber blue collar workers for the 1st time
- Labor unions begin to decline in 1954
- Scandals, growing white collar jobs, Red Scare impact this
- Landrum-Griffin Act
- 40 million new jobs created
- More women working
- Middle class more than doubled
- Sought new “luxuries”
- White flight to the suburbs
- Levittown
- FHA
- Often declined loans to minorities
- Conservatism
- Dynamic Conservatism/progressive moderation
- “liberal with people, conservative with money”
- Promised to balance the budget
- Only balances it 3 times
- 1959 incurs largest peacetime deficit ever
- Actions=
- Lowers taxes for the wealthy and corporations
- Curbs the power of the TVA by helping private companies take control
- Transfers control of oil fields to the states
- Cabinet condemns distribution of the polio vaccine as “socialist”
- RFC
- Wage/Price Controls
- Farm Support
- Social Security
- Domestic Spending
- Interstate Highway Act
- Public Power/Energy
- AEC
- Defense Spending
- Sherman Adams Scandal
- impact on the economy
- GNP
- Population Growth
- Consumption patterns
- Homes
- TV
- Teens
- Credit
- Diners Club
- Alaska and Hawaii
- Demographic shifts
- Sun Belt
- Dodgers/Giants
- Political impact
- Corporate Employment
- Popular Culture
- Franchises
- McDonalds
- Postwar writers
- Hemingway, Steinbeck
- Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five
- A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman
- A Raisin in the Sun
- The Catcher in the Rye”
- Rock n Roll
- Chuck Berry, Elvis Pressley
- Criticized as too suggestive
- Conformity
- Many attribute it to the growth of the middle class and corporate America
- TV depicted a very conservative America
- “Leave it to Beaver”
- Dr. Spock “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care”
- Critics
- The Beats oppose the conformity
- Allan Ginsburg “Howl”, Jack Kerouac “On the Road”
- “The Affluent Society”
- “The Crack in the Picture Window”
- “The American High School Today”
- Kinsey shocks America
- Women
- New wave of the cult of domesticity
- Ferdinand Lundberg “Modern Women: The Lost Sex”
- Reality is more women are working because jobs are available
- Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique
- “godmother of the women’s movement and feminism”
- Religion
- Televangelism
- Billy Graham, Oral Roberts
- Civil Rights
- WWII impact=
- Truman’s actions=
- Eisenhower appoints Earl Warren Chief Justice
- ______
- NAACP new tactic=
- Sweatt v. Painter
- Brown v. Board=
- Thurgood Marshall
- Southern response= massive resistance
- Montgomery bus Boycott
- MIA, MLK,jr
- Supreme court orders desegregation
- NAACP, SCLC, SNCC
- Civil Rights Acts
- 1957
- 1960
- Little Rock 9
- Governors actions
- Elizabeth Eckford
- Eisenhower’s action
- school year for the students
- Outcome
- Next school year
- Beginning of the end for massive resistance
- Sit-ins
- Greensboro
- Repatriates over 1 million Mexican workers
- Hurts the bracero program
- Threatens to re-institute Dawes Severalty Act