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Post-War America
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Post War Economy
• Economic Worries– Depression or Prosperity
• Large Savings– consumer goods unavailable– Inflation– Black Markets
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GI Bill
• Servicemen’s Readjustment Act– Go to college (6 million)– Low-interest government
loans to • Home • Farm• Business
• Reintegrate veterans • Boost economy
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Baby Boom
• Reflected economic confidence of the times
• Younger marriages • More children per family• 12 million new additions
1945 – 1950• Role of women as wives,
mothers, homemakers
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Women at Work
• After WWII women left jobs • Female employment began
to rise again 1947 • Households increasingly had
two working parents• Women worked in semi-
skilled jobs, secretaries and salesclerks
• Women headed households poorest in nation
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Serious Domestic Problem
• Post war housing shortage – Scarcities
homebuilding materials
– Real estate inflation • Public Housing • William Levitt – Mass producing
standardized housing “No man who owns his own house and lot can be a communist.”
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Construction Boom
• New Suburb Communities– middle & working class
move• Federal support
– Fed. tax breaks– Highways– Sewer systems
• Suburb economic growth – Inner city economically
devastated
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Automobile Culture
• Cars essential part of suburb – Auto registration grew – 26 million (1945) - 40 million (1950)
• New businesses – Fast food restaurants– Drive-in movie theaters – Shopping centers – Motels – Gas stations.
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Migrating Americans
• Sunbelt: Southern states – nice weather– low taxes – job opportunities
• Shift in political power • Most desirable city to live in: Los Angeles – Doubled in size 1940-1960
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Truman
• Popular 1945– Honesty– Modest – Blunt
• Seen as inept by 1946
• Foreign Policy Leadership
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Employment Act 1946
• Truman: Government’s duty to prevent long term unemployment– National healthcare– Full employment
• Council of Economic Advisors
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Inflation
• To check inflation Truman wanted:– Increase in minimum wage – Continue wartime price controls
• Southern Democrats/Republicans • Closed OPA • Inflation rate rose 25% 1st year and half after
war
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Unions
• During the war– Unions accepted: no strikes, frozen
wages – In return: wages improved, overtime pay
available • After the war
– Reduced wages collided with inflation prices• Corporations earned massive profits• Late 1946
– Average weekly wages dropped to depression levels• Phillip Murray head of the steelworkers union pointed out that steel
company stockholders had received $700 million in dividends
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Striking Workers
• 5 million workers strike in summer of 1945
• 4,600 stoppages occurred in industries – oil, automobiles, steel, coal
• Coast Of Living Adjustments (COLA)
• 15% wage increase for steelworkers led to a $45per ton hike in steel prices
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Truman Crushes Strikers
• 1946: 4.5 million workers strike
• Railroad strike paralyzed nation
• Truman used Army to operate railroad
• Seized coal mines • Obtained injunction,
$3.5m judgment
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Conservatives Attack Truman
• Republicans criticize– Promoting big government and his – Tolerance for communist influence
• Republicans claimed America had to choose Communism or Republicanism
• McCarthy and Nixon appealed to fear of communism
• Communist infiltration, disapproval of strikes, inflation, big bureaucracy drove criticism of Democrats
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80th Congress
• 1946 Mid-term Elections: voters choose Republican majority for Congress
• Republicans: – ratify 22nd Amendment
limiting the president to two full terms
– Pass two tax cuts • President vetoed seventy-
five bills five of them being overridden
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Taft-Hartley
• Government could seek injunctions • Closed Shop banned• Encouraged states to pass right to work laws• Required Union leaders to certify not communist • Banned secondary boycotts • Gave the President power to call 80 day cooling off period
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Farms
• Truman proposed– Soil Conservation– School Lunch
Subsidies– Farm tenet loans– Crop insurance
• Bills passed by Congress gave benefits to corporate farming
• Producers recognized profitability of modern farming
• Small farmers couldn’t afford– Mechanization– Chemical fertilizers– Additives– Pesticides– Antibiotics– Hybrid crops
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Election 1948
• Republican Thomas E. Dewey a sure win in 1948 election
• Southern Democrats opposed presidents civil rights policies formed Dixiecrats
• Liberal Democrats feared Truman’s aggressive foreign policy formed Progressive Citizens of America
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Truman Reelected
• Truman’s Fair Deal – Aid to education– Civil rights legislation– Funds for public housing – New farm program– Increased minimum wage– National healthcare.
• Republican Congress blocked all but an 87.5% increase in minimum wage