Mobilizing for War
Lauren Seaton
Civilians
Fueless Mondays
Meatless Tuesdays
Wheatless Wednesdays
Gassless Sundays
Conserved coal
Hollywood produced propaganda films
The Kaiser
Beast of Berlin
Mutt and Jeff at the Front
Tom’s Little Star
Women started taking men’s jobs
- Assembly lines of factories, producing tanks, trucks and munition
- Other Anti-German propaganda
Laws
Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918
attempted to punish enemy activity and extended to the punishment expressions of doubt about America’s role in the war
Sedition Act: criminalized any expression of opinion that used “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government, flag or armed forces
Some believed they were unconstitutional-- Schenck vs. US
Help Labor Crisis
- Department of Labor
Soldiers
Started with 370,000 men
Conscription- forced military service
Selective Service Act 1917: required all men between 21 and 30 to enlist in army and then a lottery would randomly select men for service
Camps were created in order to prepare men for the armed forces
How US Paid
- Cost $44 million a day ($32 billion total)
- Rose taxes many different times
- taxed corporate profits
- taxing profits for arms factories
- selling Liberty Bonds and Victory Bonds
- Encouraged citizens to cut back on on goods, so they did not need to pay to produce more to send over
- Germany reparations