The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. Its ground forces at the time numbered only 128,000 men with only one infantry division. General John Joseph Pershing, newly appointed commander of the American Expeditionary Force, called for a force of three million men that, in his assessment, was needed to claim victory in the war. President Woodrow Wilson’s administration was faced with a dilemma as to how best to fill the gap between these two figures. The president turned to a military draft, or conscription, as the means to build an army.
Since its inception, the United States had a tradition of voluntary military service. Only during the Civil War, in fact, had a draft been relied upon to provide soldiers for wartime. Even during that crisis, the imposition of a draft had caused antidraft riots in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania and in New York City. For that reason, President Wilson had hoped to rely on a call to public service. Conscription, however, was the only way to raise a huge army in a short time.
Initially, Wilson opposed a military draft, but he later supported and defended it as a “disagreeable but necessary evil.” There was, at the time, some public opposition to the “European war” and to conscription specifically. It was a long six weeks between the time Congress declared war and the passage of the Selective Service Act of 1917, which implemented the military draft. Wilson appointed General Enoch Crowder to head the new Selective Service System. All men between the ages of 18 and 45 were required to register. No exemptions, outside of those in vital wartime industries, were allowed. No one was allowed to hire a substitute, as was the case during the Civil War. Crowder set up local draft boards staffed by community volunteers, who decided who would be sent into, or deferred from, military service. The use of community volunteers, in addition to government propaganda promoting patriotic service, prevented “the streets from running red with blood” on registration day, as many had feared.
The Committee for Public Information (CPI), created by President Wilson shortly after America joined the war in 1917, raised public support for the war effort through propaganda. War posters urged Americans to join the army. Movie stars, marching bands, and billboards celebrated those who “did their duty.” Fighting to keep the world “safe for democracy” was a potent recruiting slogan.
Recruitment poster for the U. S. Marines, ca. 1918 (Library of Congress)
Speakers from the CPI gave speeches in schools, camps, and public gatherings of all kinds. They were highly effective in inspiring patriotic fervor and stirring anti-German feeling.
Registration day, for those who did voluntarily register, was a day for patriotism. Twenty-four million men responded to the call and registered, and in only a few months, the United States Army grew to over four million soldiers. For the first time in the history of the United States, women also were allowed to join as volunteers. Twenty-one thousand women served in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, and another 13,000 worked as clerks for the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps. Their service came less as a response to compulsory military service than as an expression of patriotism or a desire for adventure.
To maintain the peace and ensure the success of the draft, Congress and the Wilson administration instituted a number of measures. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 as well as the Trading with the Enemy Act, all to suppress popular opposition to the conscription in speech, writing, or public protest. The Justice Department prosecuted antiwar socialists and members of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) under these acts. Government officials also prompted support for military service by playing on public fears of violent radicals and German spies who, they said, were active throughout the United States. CPI posters encouraged citizens to report anyone who they thought might have pro-German sympathies. In fact, approximately 337,000 men refused to answer the draft call. Called “slackers” in the jargon of the day, many of these men were hunted down by civilian agents of the Justice Department. Under the name of the American Protective League, they organized raids in New York City. In addition, some 65,000 men objected to war and became conscientious objectors, due to their religious beliefs. Many of these were also imprisoned. By World War II, the idea of a compulsory military draft in the United States was no longer foreign. Conscription became the major means by which the armed forces raised troops for foreign wars until the 1970s.
Further reading: John Whiteclay Chambers, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to America (New York: Free Press, 1987).
—Annamarie Edelen
Coolidge, Calvin John (1872-1933) president of the United States
A staunch conservative and supporter of business, Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States when he assumed office following the death of Warren Gamaliel Harding. Born in 1872 in Plymouth, Vermont, Coolidge was raised by his father after his mother’s death. Active in politics, his father held several jobs, including farmer and storekeeper. He taught young Calvin to be honest, hardworking, fair, religious, and conservative. Coolidge was the first in his family to attend college, graduating from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1895. He then studied law privately and passed the bar in 1897. In 1905, he married Grace Anna Goodhue, who was a teacher at the Clark Institute for Deaf Children.
A lifelong Republican, Coolidge entered politics at an early age. He first ran for public office in 1898, winning a seat on the city council of Northampton, Massachusetts. Over the next decade, Coolidge held numerous elected offices in Northampton, finally becoming mayor in 1908. Though reserved, Coolidge developed into a capable public speaker and earned a reputation for honesty, fairness, compassion, party loyalty, and fiscal conservatism. He proved willing to support efforts to improve the lives of those less fortunate, so long as it didn’t cost too much money. Elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1911, Coolidge became the lieutenant governor in 1915. In 1918 he was elected governor of Massachusetts. As governor, Coolidge supported the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, efforts to reduce the workweek for women and children, and other progressive reforms. He was not, however, aligned with Republican progressives who had supported Theodore Roosevelt, and his support for progressive legislation had limits.
Coolidge first entered the national spotlight in 1919. For several years, police officers in Boston had struggled to improve their pay and working conditions without success. Frustrated by the lack of response from city officials, officers formed the Boston Social Club and applied to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) for union recognition. Boston city officials refused to recognize the union or meet its demands for pay increases. On September 9, 1919, three-quarters of the city’s police force went out on strike. The move infuriated local government officials, who appealed to Coolidge and President Woodrow Wilson for help. The 1919 police strike occurred at the height of a wave of postwar strikes and radicalism, which included the Steel Strike of 1919 and the Seattle General Strike. Led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, the federal government responded by cracking down on
Calvin Coolidge poses with his two sons, 1924 (Library of Congress)
Organized labor, progressive reformers, radicals, and anyone who seemed to threaten the social order. Initially, Coolidge appeared reluctant to act; but when rioting broke out in Boston, he responded swiftly and dramatically. Stating that, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time,” Coolidge called out the state militia and permitted the Boston police commissioner to fire any striking officers. New recruits replaced the striking officers who were not given their jobs back when the strike ended.
The swift and aggressive manner in which Coolidge dealt with the strike earned him high praise from conservatives throughout the country and catapulted him into the 1920 race for the Republican presidential nomination. The Republican convention nominated Warren G. Harding as its presidential nominee and selected Coolidge to be the party’s vice presidential candidate. Harding and Coolidge aligned themselves with the party’s Old Guard and in opposition to party progressives. Promising to return the country to prosperity and “normalcy,” Harding and Coolidge defeated their Democratic rivals, James Cox and Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a landslide. The electoral vote was 404 to 127. Between taking office in 1921 and 1923, Coolidge played a barely visible role in the Harding administration and received little national attention. By 1922, when President Harding found himself besieged by scandal and corruption, his health took a turn for the worse. He died of a heart attack on August 2, 1923, and Coolidge took the oath of office at 2:47 A. M. the next day.
When Coolidge assumed office, he was immediately confronted by rampant rumors of scandal and corruption among Harding’s cabinet officers. Many of the charges of corruption aimed at the Harding administration centered on Attorney General Harry Daugherty. Initially reluctant to fire one of Harding’s closest confidants, Coolidge finally asked Daugherty to resign in 1924. That same year, an even larger scandal, known as the Teapot Dome scandal, became public. Public confidence in the presidency was at an all-time low. Coolidge confronted these scandals head-on and quickly removed from office anyone involved. In office, he continued to be reserved, earning him the nickname “Silent Cal.” Efficient, productive, and honest, Coolidge convinced the nation that the government was in the hands of someone they could trust. He easily won the Republican presidential nomination in 1924. With running mate Charles Gates Dawes, Coolidge handily defeated challenges from John W Davis, the Democratic Party nominee, and Robert La Fol-LETTE, the candidate of the reformed Progressive Party. Coolidge won the electoral vote 382 to 136 for Davis and 13 for La Follette.
Elected in his own right, Coolidge presided over the country during a time of general economic prosperity.
Between 1922 and 1927, the economy grew 7 percent annually. Although the economic prosperity primarily benefited corporations and the wealthy, the general public benefited as well. Coolidge and his secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, believed that the best way to perpetuate this economic boom was for the federal government to give whatever assistance was necessary to the private sector. As Coolidge put it in 1925, “the business of America is business.” Under his secretary of the treasury, Andrew William Mellon, one of the administration’s primary objectives was to reduce federal taxes. Arguing that a large tax cut was the best way to ensure continued prosperity, Coolidge proposed a series of reductions that would benefit all taxpayers and eliminate income taxes for the poorest citizens. These cuts were passed in 1926.
Foreign policy issues also shaped Coolidge’s presidency. Anti-Japanese sentiment had been growing, especially in the West, as more Japanese immigrants came to the United States. Congress passed legislation that prohibited Japanese from entering the country and set strict quotas for other Asian immigrants. Following upon the Quota Act of 1921, the new act sharply reduced the quota for immigrants entering the United States from southern and eastern Europe. Though Coolidge personally opposed the legislation and attempted to block it, he agreed to sign the National Origins Act of 1924. When in 1919 Congress had refused to join the League Of Nations following the end of World War I, the nation’s role in world affairs became unclear. Not wanting to antagonize isolationists in the Republican Party, Coolidge was still convinced that the nation ought to be more active internationally. In 1924, he secured the passage of the Dawes Plan, which reduced German reparation payments and secured American loans to stabilize the German economy. His administration also convinced the Senate to pass the Kel-logg-Briand Treaty outlawing war. Although it lacked an effective enforcement mechanism and quickly proved unrealistic, the pact captured the optimistic mood of the 1920s. In the final analysis, however, the Coolidge administration had no great vision or overarching agenda other than perpetuating the economic boom that had begun in 1922. To this extent, Coolidge could claim success; but by 1929 it was clear that the boom of the Roaring Twenties had been built on excess consumer spending and overproduction. Not only were real wages stagnant and unemployment figures on the rise, but also certain sectors such as agriculture, textiles, and coal had never recovered from the postwar recession of 1921-22. When the inevitable slowdown came, the hands-off approach established by Coolidge and continued by his successor, President Herbert Hoover, resulted in a complete economic collapse and the Great Depression. Coolidge died in 1933, only a few years after he left office.
Further reading: John E. Haynes, ed., Calvin Coolidge and the Coolidge Era: Essays on the History of the 1920s (Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 1998); Robert K. Murray, The Politics of Normalcy: Governmental Theory and Practice in the Harding-Coolidge Era (New York: Norton, 1973).
—Robert Gordon
World History
