Беликова Е.К., Саратовская Л.Б. - The United Kingdom and United States of America in Past and Present (1268141), страница 22
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Rockefeller, the “king” of the growingoil industry. As the corporations grew bigger and more powerful, theyoften became “trusts”. By the early 20-century the trusts had controlledlarge parts of American industry. The biggest trusts were richer than most85other nations. By their wealth and power - and especially their power todecide wages and prices - they controlled the lives of millions of people.The United States was created as a land of equal opportunities toeveryone. Yet half the American people had hardly enough finance tobuy sufficient food and clothing.
In the industrial cities of the North, suchas Chicago and Pittsburgh, immigrant workers still labored long hours forlow wages in steel mills, factories and slaughter houses. The workers’homes were over-crowded slums. In the South thousands of poor farmers,both black and white, worked from sunrise to sunset to earn barelyenough to live on.The handful of rich and powerful men bribed politicians to pass laws,which favored them.
Others hired private armies to crush any attempts bytheir workers to obtain better conditions. Their attitude to the rights ofother people was summed up in the words of a famous the railroad“king” William H. Vanderbilt. When he was asked whether he thoughtthat railroads should be run in the public interest, “The public bedamned” he replied.Progressive Americans were alarmed by the power of the trusts and thecontemptuous way in which leaders of industry like Vanderbilt rejectedthe criticism. In the early years of the twentieth century a stream of booksand magazine articles drew people’s attention to a large number ofnational problems. Novelists like Mark Twain and Henry James analyzedthe impact of wealth and ambition on social life.
Herbert G. Wells in hisnovel “The War in the Air” (1908) sharply criticized “the unprecedentedmultitudousness of the thing, the inhuman force of it all…” He wrote: “Isee it, the vast rich various continent, the gigantic process ofdevelopment, the acquisitive successes, the striving failures, themultitudes of those rising and falling who come between, all set in atexture of spacious countryside, of clangorous towns that bristle to theskies, of great exploitation, of district and crowded factories, of widedeserts and mine-torn mountains, and huge half-tamed rivers”.The Progressive movement found a leader in the Republican TheodoreRoosevelt.
T. Roosevelt who became president in 1901 got particularlyconcerned about the power of the trusts. His idea was to give the USA thebest of both worlds. He wanted to allow the businessmen enough freedomof action to make their firms efficient and prosperous, but at the sametime to prevent them from taking unfair advantage of other people (thepolicy of so-called “square deal”). However the “square deal” of86Roosevelt’s administration (1901-1909) failed to bring the trusts undercontrol.President Woodrow Wilson who won the presidential elections in 1912started his policy “The New Freedom”.
One of Wilson’s first steps was toreduce the powers of the trusts, give more rights to labor unions andmake it easier for farmers to borrow money from the federal governmentto work their land.The Progressive movement changed and improved American life inmany ways, but did not help unemployed or unprivileged very much. Theideals of equal opportunity, proclaimed in the USA, were often denied toAmericans who were non-white. Millions of the Blacks still lived in greatpoverty. Most of them still lived in Southern farms.
In cities they lived inso-called “black ghettos”, because many whites resented their movinginto white neighborhoods.The First World War and the Roaring Twenties. The World War 1contributed to the USA to become even more powerful. While the warstarted on the continent of Europe, brought death and sufferings tomillions of European people, the USA, physically untouched by combatand greatly enriched by wartime profits, quickly became the mainsupplier of weapon and capital to the countries of theAnti-German allies. The entire railroad system cameunder government supervision; the demand forindustrial production grew fast.
Guns, ships, shells,and other essential goods were made for the war.When in May 1919 the Versailles Peace Treaty wassigned in Europe, the USA met it as the country witha primary world economy, with enormous productivecapacity and extensive markets for manufacturedgoods. Having less than 10% of the world’s population, the USAproduced about 25% of the world’s goods and more than 40% of theworld manufacture. Business boomed. Automobiles and truckstransformed the life of the nation. Airplanes, used during the war, werenow geared to peacetime purposes.
Chemical and electrical processes,together with light machinery made of alloyed metals, were changing thecharacter of factories. Mass production proved itself in building ships andairplane motors. Electricity also speeded the revolution in production: in1914 some 30% of manufacturing was electrified, in 1929 70% of allfactories benefited from the power sources.
In the field of finance, New87York began to replace London as the hub of the world’s finance market.Businessmen became popular heroes in the 1920s.There were widespreadbeliefs in the USA that individuals were responsible for their own lifesuccess, and that unemployment or poverty were the result of personalfailings. The newspaper and magazine writersmaintained that although not all Americans couldbecome rich, at least middle-class Americans oughtto be rich.
Journalist L .Allen wrote that at that time“business had become almost the national religion ofAmerica”. Men like automobile-maker Henry Ford,steel industry owner Andrew Carnegie, oil andfinance tycoon Rockefeller, Gamble and others werewidely admired as the creators of nation’s prosperity,the models of so-called “American Dream.” In 1913 Ford began usinginterchangeable parts and assembly-line method in his plant.
By 1920 thehalf of the cars produced in the world had been his cars, by 1930 therehad been over 26.7 million cars, registered in the USA. Cars in Americabecame the “family horses, used for more than commuting to work ordriving for leisure. The automobile revolution started the consumerrevolution. Appliances-radios, telephones, electric refrigerators, washingmachines, vacuum cleaners led the parade.
The consumer boomstimulated advertising. Americans had to be convinced to spend theirmoney, to buy all-electric kitchen, “to keep up with the Joneses” (to livebetter than the neighbors). “Live now, pay tomorrow” was the generalmotto. Incredible number of Americans began to buy goods on theinstallment plan (monthly payments).
Thousands of Americans investedmoney in successful firms so that they could share their profits. Therewas also an orgy of speculation in real estate and stocks, buying andselling shares - “playing the market” became a national hobby and a sortof fever. Many Americans borrowed the large sums of money from thebanks to buy shares on credit and to get “easy money” on selling themlater “on the margin” (a higher price).The first two decades of the 20th century came into American historynot only as the years of industrial and manufacturing boom. On thesurface it seemed that prosperity would continue forever but below thesurface there were already a lot of troubles.
Bank debts were mounting.Low wages of most workers led to underconsumption. Excessiveindustrial profits and low industrial wages distributed one third of a88personal income to only 5% of the population. Theagricultural sector was also plagued withoverproduction.One of the serious problems of the 20s was theterrible growth of crime.
“The Roaring Twenties”was the general name which many historians calledthat time. After adoption of the 18th Amendment tothe USA Constitution, prohibiting selling ofalcoholic drinks, so-called “speakeasies” (illegal bars) were opened inbasements and backrooms all over the country. The drinks were obtainedfrom criminals, united in gangs or mobs, called “bootleggers”. One of thebest-known mobs worked in Chicago. It was led by the gangster“Scarface” Al Capone, who turned into the great celebrities of the 1920s.His income was over 100 million dollars a year.
He had a private army ofnearly a thousand thugs and was the real ruler of Chicago. Competitionbetween rival mobs sometimes caused bloody street wars, fought out witharmored cars and machine guns. The winners of the gangster warsbecame so powerful that they bribed police and other public officers.Organized crime opened the way for the new kind of American business.And American newspaper headlines and crime stories bespeak America’sfascination with these new celebrities.Depression and the Policy of New DealIn October 1924 stock prices dropped dramatically. The nationsuccumbed to panic.
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