WWII

No student hour today (medical appointment).  Tomorrow, virtual student hours are from noon to 2. Email me and will be available within minutes.

For Wednesday, read "The Politics of 1948" on Canvas.  Focus on pp. 1-20 and  32-40. (available both on Canvas and the embedded link)

1936 election: the political apogee of New Deal Democrats:

• Electoral vote: 523-8
• House: 333-89
• Senate: 76-16

Second term blues:  presidential overreach and the 1937 downturn

The 1938 midterm: Dems lose 81 seats in the House, 7 in the Senate.

But in 1940, Republicans nominate former Democrat and liberal Republican Wendell Willkie.

War Approaches:

Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 (Pub. L. 76–783, 54 Stat. 885) enacted September 16, 1940:  first peacetime conscription in American history. Men between 21 and 35 had toregister with local draft boards. Draft calls start in the fall.  In 1941 a bill extending the term of service passes the House by a single vote. Johnson 154.

Selective Service still exists.  (If you are a male citizen or permanent resident, and have not already registered ... do so.)

US Enters the War (litany begins 2:50)

Immense increase in military personnel 

Wartime measures with long-term consequences

Taxes

• Propaganda to encourage quarterly payments, then
• Current Tax Payment Act (Johnson 154) -- Withholding

Wage-Price Controls and Employer-Provided Health Insurance

• More propaganda (start at 6:30)
• In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. By war's end, health coverage had tripled.

The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, aka the GI Bill (Johnson 155-158).

• Spurred by memory of Bonus Marchers
• Education benefits spurred college enrollment (less so for Black veterans in the South). Our connection
• Versions of the GI Bill have stayed on the books:Vietnam vets were more likely to use the education benefits.

Aspirations:  FDR's "Second Bill of Rights"

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

Civil rights

• Executive order 8802 (role of A.P. Randolph and the Sleeping Car Porters) and CA impact
• Riots in Detroit and Harlem (Johnson 147-148)'
• The Zoot Suit Riot