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TABLE OF CONTENTS Pg 3…
The Return to Normalcy- Good or Bad?
Group Editorial Pg.7…
...Pg. 5 Deregulation in America
Deregulation drawing
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Isolationism Turned to Disaster? Kellogg- Briand Pact drawing
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Who is really scaring us?
Who but Hoover drawing Pg. 13…
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Bibliography 2
Republican President effects on the Economy Have the Republican Era Presidents of the 1920s been effective? (Izzy Jimenez, Vivian Gibson, Jenna Saunders, Rachel Spence)
Prior to the outbreak of World War I, life was quite grand in the town of Foxfair. People were living in a utopian society. Everyone had jobs, everyone was making money, there was no fear of people from other countries. Suddenly World War I broke out and life changed for everyone living in Foxfair. Life got hard for Americans in this small town. Young men went off to fight the war leaving behind their beloved friends and families. Women were forced to enter the workforce and even small children had a role in war effort. Normalcy was now no longer a thing in this town. Citizens now had fears of outside political parties with different opinions on government. New foreign policy goals have changed how the United States views these other countries. Once war was over, citizens of Foxfair wanted to go back to the idyllic lifestyle of pre-World War. Warren G. Harding offered all Americans a “return to normalcy.� The Harding administration started a decade of immigration restriction, deregulation and isolation from foreign affairs. While this return to normalcy was intended to help Americans, we believe that the Republican
Presidents in this era have affected American lives negatively. Immigration restriction affected the town Foxfair which lies on the edge of California. It is known as a gold and oil mining town. With immigration restriction they have less people to fill these jobs. In many towns across America, immigration restriction is affecting big industries because they have less people to fill jobs. The result is that these towns are becoming bankrupt from the shortage of workers. Isolationism also affected this town negatively. After the war, President Warren G. Harding wanted to return to isolationism. Isolationism was bad because it kept our country from helping any other countries which put us in a position where we could only sit back and watch. In some towns this affected immigrants with family ties to other countries. Deregulation on the other hand, had a positive influence on this era because industries now had more freedom to do what they wanted. With less rules we could now produce more goods and faster than ever before. This helped Foxfair because more jobs were available. Nearly
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all families could afford a car which lead to hotels, restaurants, and repair shops popping up all over. Although there were positives of this era such as deregulation with industries. There were also many negatives going with isolationism and immigration restrictions. All of the decisions that the republican presidents made had more negative effects rather than positive. Even some of the positive effects had negative repercussions. Overall we feel that the Republican Presidents have had a negative effect on not only the town of Foxfair but also all of America.
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The Return to Normalcy-good or bad? (What is the “return to normalcy” promised by President Harding, and will it be good for America?)
By- Izzy Jimenez
World War I was hard on Americans. Americans were fearful of future wars and wanted to live in a world similar to the one they lived in before World War I. Warren G. Harding promised Americans just that. He promised Americans a “return to normalcy.” But not all Americans believed the United States needed to live the idyllic lifestyle that existed prior to World War I. I believe that the return to normalcy is bad for our country because it was kind of pointless to attempt, basically impossible, by trying to change the way that we live which would alter our already booming economy. Americans need to realize that the United States emerged from World War I as a world superpower and we can not change the fact that we are targets for new attacks and wars. President Harding promised a “return to normalcy” to America in a long speech before he was nominated as the republican presidential candidate. America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums [ineffective remedies], but normalcy; . . . not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate [calm]; not experiment, but equipoise [balance]; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. —Senator Warren G. Harding, speech in Boston, 1920
The “return to normalcy” meant trying to go back to how life was before World War 1.. From his point of view, America needs to lose, in order to gain better lives for us Americans. In his eyes we need world peace and to remain isolated from foreign affairs. Well, yes of course world peace is always a want but the problem is, that it is never going to come because our country is not perfect so we make mistakes. And those mistakes mess with our chances at world peace. All human beings want world peace because that means no war, no fighting, and that we can all finally get along. But by him giving this speech basically about “World Peace,” he won over 60% of the vote for presidency. Secondly, World peace is especially difficult to achieve. After WW1 we did not have any recovering to do as a nation unlike others, but how are we supposed to change our now full of action life styles and try to “chill” out? It just does not work like that. President Harding wants for us to transform our lifestyle that we have right now and change it to a previous one. Okay, in theory that sounds okay- but in reality it can not necessarily happen just
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like that in a snap. Stuff like this would take time, Americans want this but will they still want it at the sake of all the time it will take? NO! I know that I will not. How are we supposed to try to relax more, because once we do, everyone will start to slack off and we can not afford that as a nation. We need to keep our butts moving so that when a new war comes we are prepared for it. President Harding wants to scale back government regulations on businesses. But by doing that, our production will slow down dramatically and our economy will just get worse and worse by the day. We need to stick with the roaring ‘20s with our big and booming economy. Mainly because by having a good economy, means that our country has good resources and good wealth. We have so many people working in factories getting paid decent, now why would we want to stop that and have people relax more but then get paid less so than suddenly you can not afford lunch? Exactly, you do not! We need to keep our economy growing and to do that we need to stay working hard and going strong. Deregulation will help our country grow
tronger. Overall, President Harding’s opinions and wants were not up to the goods of our country, it might have been what some of us Americans wanted to hear; that we will finally have world peace along side of a more relaxed country. But that does not create the greater good that we need right now. We need our industry to keep climbing and building so that we have a great economy, we can not slack off and get more relaxed because then all of that will start to decline and then our country sucks. We need to learn to function as a country, as a family, and become united. Otherwise there is no America, at least not the one that I want to see.
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Deregulation in America Has deregulation under the republican presidents benefited America?
By- Jenna Saunders
I believe deregulation under the republican presidents has benefited America. Some of the ways are through mass production, birth of new industries and the plastic craze. Mass production of cars is just one way Americans have benefited. In 1910 fewer than 200,000 cars had been built and only the wealthy could afford them, but as of last year at least half of all Americans owned a car. The cause for this increase of cars was the assembly line that Ford designed. The time to make cars has decreased from 14 to 6 hours and the amount of money has decreased from 950 dollars to 290 dollars. Ford has doubled his workers pay and has shortened their hours. Ford has now produced 20 million cars.
The birth of new industries is partially due to the production of cars. Restaurants and hotels have sprung up along new roads for motorists. Cars have also created new service industries such as gas stations and repair shops. As a result, the highway construction industry is now booming. The airplane industry is booming now, as well, due to WWI. Until now, no mail had been flown but now that the Boeing Airplane Company won the U.S Post Office Contract. Now mail and passengers are flying from Chicago to San Francisco and back. The Plastic Craze has revolutionized the clothing industry. Bakelite is the first plastic that doesn’t burn, boil, melt, or dissolve and is vital to the production of radios. Radios were first used for wireless communication among ships at sea. Now radio stations have sprouted up all over U.S cities. Radio production is soaring.
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Isolationism Turned To Disaster?
Scoop Question: Have the foreign policy goals of the republican presidents made america safer, and is the war over?
Rachel Spence
Republican presidents had the best interest in Americans when they set the foreign policy goals. Little did they know, it would backfire. The economy, peace, and the American family have suffered greatly in a battlefield of their own. First, the economy. Did you know that America’s war loans to be “neutral” could cause disaster in the future? Our government gave eleven billion dollars in loans to Great Britain and France that they refuse to pay back! They are relying on Germany’s payment to them for starting the war will help them to pay. It is called “Circular Payment”. This is not good, because Germany won’t be able to reimburse us! Our economy is declining faster than moving picture tickets when Charlie Chaplin is on the screen! These debts could lead to devastating effects to our economy if we don’t resolve the issue. We thought that we were getting peace, but we were wrong! This supposedly good treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact claims to end wars. However, in the small print it says that defensive wars are still allowed. So in the end, it doesn't really change anything at all!
America's politicians are embarrassed to be in this situation. We were so caught up in being “neutral” that we missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime, the League of Nations. After a long time of squabbling, American ambassadors wanted to join, but it was too late. We missed out on peace for our dear lady liberty. Finally, this “good” isolationism has taken our safety away! Remember all that fighting our forefathers did to get us the freedom we deserved? That could be taken away in an instant. Our government has cut our aviation program in half to two million dollars. Japan’s program is thirty million! In other words, our government can’t advance like everyone else and the military will be small. The American Family needs the protection they deserve. As you can see, American foreign policy goals have not made the positive impact on our country that we thought that they would. We now have debts, a lack of real peace and loss of opportunities In the future, we should try to be more social with other countries.
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Who is Really Scaring Us? Have the republican presidents gone too far to combat the red scare?
By- Vivian GIbson
Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding have taken measures beyond the extreme to keep the Red Scare under control. I think they have gone too far when it comes to defending off the Red Scare. The Red Scare is people's fear of radicalism. Radicalism is a point of view favoring extreme changes especially in social or economic structures. Radical groups are socialist, communist and anarchist. People are mostly affid of these these groups because of the violent acts the groups have committed and the difference in belief. The presidents have gone too far in multiple ways to try to solve this problem. In 1918 just before World War One ended President Woodrow Wilson created the anti-anarchist Sedition act of 1918. The Sedition act was put in place to prohibit the speech and expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative way. This act was an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917. The Sedition Act of 1918 was put in place to protect wartime morales. They did this by deporting putatively undesirable political people. That meaning deporting people that believe the government should be different than it is; that includes socialist, communist and anarchist. They took this to far because they are deporting people who haven’t done anything besides have different beliefs. After this in April of 1919 the authorities discovered a plot to mail 36 bombs to members of the U.S. political and economic system. Then on June 2nd in 1919, 8 bombs exploded at the safe time in 8 different cities. One of the targets was Attomey General Mitchell Palmer’s house. After the explosions Palmer blamed the Subversives. The Subversives are people who wanted to overthrow the government. So from this incident he conducted the Palmer Raids on subversives that sought weapons, explosives or other evidence of violet activated. When entering a home or place they never had warrotes and they would seize records without permission. These raids were a violation of a human right. With little or no cause they arrested over 6,000 suspected radicalist.
Foreign born were deported if they were suspected to be a radicalist and most times they were sent away without a court hearing. Palmer Raids were a violation of human rights and a violation a privacy and to most of these people they didn’t do anything wrong. Out of all this the only evidence they found was three pistols. These raids went from 1919-1921. Lastly Politicians gave speeches about how we shouldn’t have different beliefs in our government. That there should only be one way to control the government and every other way is prohibited to talk about because it is talking about the government in a negative way. To have a different opinion: the government believe that it will weaken our country, that if we don’t all have the opinion on the government the country can’t work. Well how do they think our government was created it wasn’t by one person or people that all had the same opinion; it was created by many people who all had different opinions on how the government should be ran. It has worked for this long. Our country will not be broken by less than 1% of the adult population having a different view on our government even if it is extreme.
I believe the government is taking to extreme measures to get rid of Red Scare. Violating other people's right, does not benefit for anybody. These acts just made people angry and didn’t help the situation. The invaded innocent people houses, arrested and deported innocent people because they government suspected that they were Radicalist or subversives. The Presidents have not done anything to stop the situation, if anything they have made the fear of these people worse and have just aggravated the 12 Subversives. So stop the Extreme ways of ending thing because it's not working and Americans are getting worried.
Bibliography Hart, Diane, and Bert Bower. History Alive!: Pursuing American Ideals. Teachers' Curriculum Institute, 2013.
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