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"Moore History" 1920s Post War America · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We've been talking about America at war and the last
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: time we visited we sort of wrapped up World War One.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Did we ever really leave the war? Because it almost
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: feels like there's a segue from one to two, a
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: lot of the same players.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there is different players though, but similar activity. We
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: really haven't left World War two. I mean, if you
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: want to value where we are. One of the things
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: I found when I really started looking at I was
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out what was our country, What was
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: the United States like in nineteen twenty, what was going
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: on post war? And you got to keep in mind
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: from its beginning, say seventeen eighty eight, seventeen eighty nine,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: with the US Constitution. Now we got America on the
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: global map, we were an isolationist country, really trying to
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: take care of business, manifest destiny, all that stuff spreading
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: the country. Late eighteen hundreds, you know, the Industrial Revolution
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: began and you started seeing some growth. We sort of
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: got dragged into the Spanish American War. And when you
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: think about the US fighting Spain, think about that in
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: today's terms. You know, no, not really going to fight Spain. Really,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: they don't even want to be part of NATO. Anymore. Yeah,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: So it was a very different world. And then we
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: reluctantly got dragged into World War One. You know, Woodrow Wilson,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: one of the things I kept thinking. You know, we
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: had almost all Republicans from the eighteen eighties until FDR
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: got elected. Woodrow Wilson was the only Democrat in that
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: whole time span of people. It was one Republican after another.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: In the Republican theories back then, the philosophy was largely isolation, growth,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: industrialization of America, those kinds of things, and then looking
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: for markets. We didn't want to go into World War One.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: We were letting Europe fight it out with the Kaiser
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: in the Austro Hungary Empire and the Ottomans. I let
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: them fight it, it's not our problem. Foolishly, the Germans
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: decided with using U boats for the first time to
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: start sinking merchant ships going across, and they sank the Lusitania,
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: which is eleven hundred and something. People died, a number
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: of large number of Americans. Wilson sort of changed. He
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: had been we're not getting into war. He got actually
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: got re elected in nineteen sixteen. I believe under that
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: he kept us out of war. That was the big
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: deal at the time. Well, we within a year and
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: a half or so, we were in war. We were
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: part of the war, and then from that point forward
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: the United States was different for a couple or three years.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: But when the war ended, we didn't really want to
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: be part of that anymore. We wanted to go back.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: There was a longing to go back to the eighteen
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: hundred isolation, this kind of mentality. Wilson pushed initially the
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: League of Nation and then we didn't join it, you know,
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Harding and got elected, and then after Harding, Coolidge and
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: then Hoover, and we didn't want any part of that stuff.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: We wanted to be ourselves. And the next segment we'll
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: kind of go get into some of the terror fissues
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: and all the stuff we're talking about today. The huge
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: issues at the time were tariffs, immigration, oddly different, a
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: lot of bigotry, and the immigration issues back then it
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: wasn't because of terrorism or crime and the stuff you hear.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: The underlying issues and the outfront issues was bigotry. I mean,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: they didn't want people from those places. And a couple
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: of bills that Congress passed that we'll talk later about
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  Speaker 2: actually put quotas on people coming from certain countries and
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: had areas that no go, You're not coming here from
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: those countries. If you think time wise, you look at
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: the entirety of it all, the Russian Revolution had occurred,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Communism was on the rise in a lot of places,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: and there was a great fear here about having communism come.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So lots of different things at play. The map of
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: the world changed dramatically because of World War One. The empires,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: the old empires that have been around for a long time,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: the Austro Hungarian, the Ottoman Empire, the German with the
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Kaiser and was gone. All of that was gone, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: interesting the map of Europe and a big part of
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Eastern Europe changed. I was shocked when I went back
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: and looked at this the number of countries that came
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: out of World War One that didn't exist prior to that.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: When they started breaking up, these empires and the Ottoman
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Empire at that point in time went all the way
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  Speaker 2: down to Israel. I mean, it was huge, the influence
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: of Turkey what became Turkey in that area. But new
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: countries then were Poland, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Romani and the Soviet Union. All this was a big
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: boom for map makers. I mean, it's a huge change,
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  Speaker 2: and it became culturally driven because each as each of
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: these countries, they were different than they were part of
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  Speaker 2: the empire. These are so they all had their own
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: self interests and the United States used that for marketing
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: and exporting. However, we had huge issues here in our
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: country at the time because during World War One, farmers
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Europe was a mess, so we had all these new
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: markets for farm goods that we could produce and send
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: over there. Well, after the war, the European farmers got
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: back to business and started working, and farmers were getting clobbered.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: So we started messing around with tariffs, and they thought
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: this was a real good idea, we're going to put
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: We'll put tariffs on foreign goods. Well, of course, the
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: response was they put tariffs on American goods, and we
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: had as much as twenty five percent tariffs on goods
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: from certain countries. Didn't work real well, and we could
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: spend a whole show talking about how that led to
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: the depression and the issues surrounding that. But democracies grew
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of these new countries were kings and monarchs
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: and cizars were no longer around. So now we started
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: having actual electoral democracies.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: In many places, not all though, no, but in what.
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  Speaker 2: At that point was the focus of what was going
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: on in the world, because that's where most of the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: trade is economically driven. Asia was getting kind of ignored,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: you know, in the south part of India and that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: area it was you had the British Empires still at
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: that point. There's so many interesting little points. I mean,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: if you think about Australia and New Zealand Canada at
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: the beginning of World War One, they were automatically part
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: of the war because they were a strong part of
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: England or Great Britain at the time. At the end
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: of World War One when they signed the Armacists, each
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: of those countries signed independently and by then had developed,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: over a period of four years, had developed a national identity.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: And so now you were Australian, you weren't really part
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: of the British Empire. You were from New Zealand. I
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: mean it was Canada. Canada had troops in the war
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: from the beginning, providing on behalf of England. By the
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: end of the war, Canada was Canada. So I mean
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: this national identity really grew during that timeframe. One other
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: good point quick is the Balfour Decoration. In nineteen seventeen,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary of Britain, wrote a letter
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: stating that he thought that Jews should have a homeland
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: in Palestine in nineteen seventeen. It took to nineteen forty
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: eight for this to occur, and Great Britain actually kind
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: of monitored and governed that region up until that point
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: in time. But all the issues that we're seeing now
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: and all the problems that we're seeing now, I'll go
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: back to the changes that occurred between nineteen seventeen nineteen
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: twenty five. The Balfour Declaration was a big deal at
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: the time, and it changed the whole orientation ast Okay,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: what do we do with Jews around the world? Very
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: different than it is.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I think it goes back a little further.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Well, of course, yeah, yeah, I would recommend actually on
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: that there. Simon Montefiore wrote a book called Jerusalem the Biography.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It's about a nine hundred page book that I've read
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: that's the entire history focused on one city or town
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: or whatever you want to call it, way back when
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  Speaker 2: for about two thousand years, and who came and went
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  Speaker 2: from that area and who ran it. That's what I
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  Speaker 2: said earlier in nineteen seventeen. So it was part of
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: the Ottoman Empire now that was running were Jerusalem Rusalem
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: is So you know, it's just studying that part of
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  Speaker 2: the world is absolutely fascinating.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: I'll give you some behind the scenes inside here with
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: doctor ed Moore. Five pages of notes and so here
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  Speaker 1: we are in the third and final segment, and we
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: are in paragraph two, page one, but I have them
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: in my head, he said, Okay, I'm gonna skip page two, three, four,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get to page five.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Go ahead, page God's going through my head, Paul Hervey. Here,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: let's talk about immigration, because immigration again in our country
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: is a huge issue.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: But we're talking about post World War One.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it was a big deal. Okay, Okay,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five years ago, immigration was scary
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: to everybody. You got to think about what was going
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: on in the world. You have the Russian Revolution going on,
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: the rise of communism going on. People didn't want anybody
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: from that part of the world. Don't worry. I'm here.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: We don't need them. Now we're electing the mayors of
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: big cities. But back then it was like, oh no,
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  Speaker 2: we don't want them. You had certain parts of the
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: world it was bigotry driven a large part back then.
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  Speaker 2: You see a little bit of that now now a
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: lot of it's they used crime or fear or terrorism
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: is background issues for all this, but a lot of
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: it tends to be end up. We've got too many
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: of those kinds of people. I mean, that's how the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: way it was back then. The Irish had swarmed over
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: here in the eighteen hundreds. Then the Italians swarmed over here,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: and they were kind of running the cities. Back then
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: you had a lot of Irish mayors and firemen and policemen,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: and then you had a lot of Italians run stuff
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: so well.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: I mean they are the Irish and the Italians were
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the centerpiece of organized crime in the northeastern part of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the Utua.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: The Irish way before the you know, the mafia and all. Yeah, yeah,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the Irish mafia. They were pretty bad. Dudes. Encourage people
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: to read about it because it's a fascinating part of
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: big city history in America. But we had areas back
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  Speaker 2: then that they just closed off. They just said we
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: don't we're not taking anybody from there. And it was
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: partially driven philosophically by like communism. We don't want to
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: take anybody from Russia, even people fleeing, we don't want them.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Eastern Mediterranean Area, North Africans, we don't want them. Not
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: going to happen Asia. You know. The only big acts
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: that we had had related immigration back in the eighteen
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: hundreds were like the Chinese Exclusion Act, and which was
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: bigotry driven. We had enough Chinese, we don't want anymore
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: of them, so that's what drove it. But then they
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: started nineteen oh seven, one point three million people passed
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: through Ellis Island in that year. One point three million
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: in one year through that island. Now you've got to
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: go back to Ellis Island didn't start functioning to what
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: was it eighteen ninety one January when anymore and our
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: two brothers got the gold coin, you know, they were
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: coming from Ireland, and it was that this is how
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: we're going to do it now. They started tracking from
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: that point forward where people were coming from prior to that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: If you got off the boat in Boston or Philadelphia
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: or wherever you came from. You're here and nobody really cared.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I mean that's the way it used to be.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Get off the pier, hang a left in good life.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: You get a job, go to family, whatever you did,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: You're not our problem. But then once I started creating
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: bureaucracies and counting people and all that, it became a problem.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: So in nineteen seventeen, they had an immigration Act that
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: had literacy tests, they would tax immigrants, They banned undesirables,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: which were sick, disabled, criminals, and then that's soon morphed
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: into races and ethnicities. They had an Asiatic bard Zone
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: where nobody from these areas India, Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: any part of Southeast Asia and the Asian Pacific islands,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: we don't watch. You can't come here. I mean, that's
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: what it all turned into. That created a lot of
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: urban problems because we had been letting in people from
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: these areas, and you had these growing ethnic populations all
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: across the country. Obviously it started eastern seaboarding in California,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: but like Chicago became a very ethnic city. I lived
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: there for a time you had neighborhoods that were highly ethnic.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Post War War One, the recession occurred because you had
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: all this going on during the war. It drove a
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: lot of industries, and now it's not happening anymore. The
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: immigrants all got blamed for there's no jobs for me
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: because they're all coming and taking jobs, so we don't
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: want them anymore. We ended up having a nineteen twenty
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: one Emergency Quota Act. We had the Johnson Redact in
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty four. They introduced border patrol. The whole approach
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: to what we did with immigrants changed during this timeframe,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and that.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Leads us to World War.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Two nineteen thirties, and so we're going to set the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: stage for World War two in our next next time, Yeah,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: we're talking about Germany and how it evolved in the
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: bad things that were done to Germany post World War
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: One that created Germany.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Basically more to come with Doctor ed Moore next month.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: More history on The Morning Show with Preston Scott. Thanks