http://home.att.net/~history240/history100ww1.html
Progressivism 
and 
World War I
The Progressive Era (1890s to World War I) was a reaction to the problems and excesses of industrialism, urbanization, and notions of Social Darwinism. Progressivism was made up of a series of movements for social reform in urban areas where the social problems accompanying industrialization were most acute. 
Often led by women activists, these reformers made many successful efforts to attain municipal or public ownership of utilities, water systems, schools, hospitals, and other city services. Despite potent opposition from the corporations, urban reformers made some inroads, instituting greater taxes and regulations on the excessively powerful corporations, establishing tenement housing codes, child labor laws, workmen’s compensation minimum wages, and maximum working hours. 
This late nineteenth-century movement is known as progressivism, leading to the Progressive Era (1900-15), that also became associated with the Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive “Bull Moose” Party. As a reform movement, Progressivism sought an uneasy balance between “social justice” and “social control,” as widely divergent social, ethnic, and racial groups intensively organized like never before. 
Progressivism differed from the earlier agrarian and Populist movements, and their reaction to the social ills associated with industrialism, in that it centered in cities. Progressivism was a social and political reaction to urban crises; it primarily met urban needs. Progressivism was a movement led by intellectual social reformers (academics, journalists, social theorists and activists) rather than political radicals. 
Progressivism was motivated by two different (and often opposing camps theoretically): evangelical Protestantism and social science; but both shared the goal of ending the injustices wrought by poverty and greed. Part of such social reforms was the strict governmental regulation of business, and legislation favorable to labor and the protection of the poor; reformers insisted that such intervention was essential for the preservation of democracy. In addition to these goals, other reform programs were anti-immigration; others called for “moral reform,” to end prostitution and alcohol use (prohibition). Other progressive strategies included governmental reform, using business methods to run the nation’s governmental and administrative agencies, from the federal (top) to the municipal level of government (bottom). 
With the increasing tide of immigrants and the development of a new urban middle class, Progressivism met the increasing disparities between the rich, the bourgeoisie, and the poor with social reforms. Many of these reforms were related to labor conditions 
social reform:
social reformists were determined in their efforts to bring about change in the laissez faire policies of government that allowed big business to run riot and wreak havoc among the working class and poor of the United States. Some of their efforts were literary or artistic, reflecting the new recreational activities of the working classes (amusement parks, sporting events, and motion pictures, for examples). Other endeavors of reform were legislative in nature. Still others were noble in their service to people in need. 
Leaders of social reform generally rejected the widely held practice of private charity. Women like Jane Addams led the new humanitarian relief and reform movements with Hull House in Chicago, one of many urban “settlement houses” that cared for indigent women, offering housing, health care, child care, and education (including participation in the arts), helping them to prepare for life outside. 
Another such reformer was Florence Kelley (1859–1932), a Cornell graduate and lawyer who became a Hull House resident after her divorce. She was an ardent socialist and advocate for the legislation of ethics in government and business. Kelley successfully lobbied for legislative support of the settlement house movement (and women’s labor) in Illinois. Her report on the awful conditions of sweatshop labor and its social inequities resulted in the Illinois state legislature passing laws in 1893 that limited women to eight hour work days and prohibited children and persons under the age of eighteen from working. Working from the Henry Street Settlement in New York, as the general secretary of the National Consumer’s League with Lillian D. Wald, Florence Kelly was influential in the creation of the New York Child Labor Committee. 
Another Progressive reformer was Margaret Sanger (1883 – 1966), a socialist organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a forceful advocate for birth control in the first decades of the twentieth century. When she circulated her pamphlet on birth control, she faced 45 years in prison (on obscenity charges) for using the postal service for its distribution. Thus Sanger fled to Europe in October 1914 (she returned in 1916). Ultimately, due to Sanger’s activism, birth control was made available to the public for the first time through her working-class neighborhood Brooklyn, New York clinic in 1916, and from there, it spread across the nation. Despite arrests and imprisonment for working for her cause, she continued in her efforts, and established the Birth Control League in 1921. When the International Planned Parenthood Federation was formed in 1953, Margaret Sanger was its first president. 

Progressive interpretations of American History:
Progressive historians such as Frederick Jackson Turner, Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948), and his wife Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958) drew attention to the role of economics and the common people in the history of the United States, in contrast to late nineteenth-century “Whig history” and versions of American history as promoted by elitist organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). 
The National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution was established at Washington, D.C. in 1890. Its patriotic and nationalistic conservative elitist society took an active role in identifying and preserving historic places in the United States. Founded to maintain the remembrance of the Revolutionary War, and those persons who fought in it, the DAR requires prospective members to be able to trace their lineage to a veteran of the Revolutionary War and meet their particular standards for acceptance. Caroline Scott Harrison, the first wife of President Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901), who was in office (1889–1893) at the time of the DAR’s founding, was the society’s first president general. Historically, the DAR has been condescending and racist in its perspectives, and thus, the society has had its controversies. Nevertheless, it remains useful for its preservationist functions. 
Pursuing a Progressive approach, Columbia University history professor Charles Beard revolutionized the study of history by pointing out that the writers of the Constitution of the United States (1787) served the interests and purposes of the elite, moneyed class in America (see Federalist 10) in his attacks on big corporate capitalism. 
Likewise, Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910), an admirer of Jane Addams, supported progressive reforms as well. In his work Pragmatism, James asserted that “truth” is found through experience (knowledge and will) and not theory (the opposite of prevailing notions (Social Darwinism; progressivism, etc.). 
Progressives and the law:
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935), the “patrician” Bostonian law professor (at Harvard), stressed the importance of having a system of law that changed to meet the needs of the society it served; such a society was a changing society. Holmes declared: 
“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”
As a Supreme Court justice (appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902), Holmes regularly (and eloquently) dissented from the conservative majority on the bench on issues relating to social reform, including a minimum wage and maximum hours for labor. Because of his continued dissension in such cases, he came to be known as the “Great Dissenter.” 
Other Progressive reforms attacked the big political machines, including Tammany Hall, an association that regularly received bribes from prominent New York businessmen. New York Republican Party “stalwart” George Washington Plunkitt defended his party’s involvement in such activities, as being part “honest graft,” likening it to the activities of Wall Street investors. 
Other reforms sought cures for disease and promoted research into their causes. As self-appointed members of the “ethical elite,” advocates of social control believed in legislating behavior. The most prominent of such reform movements centered its efforts on curtailing the use of alcoholic beverages. The most controversial of Progressive reforms, it was known as prohibition. 

Prohibition was the focus of groups such as the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). The ASL organized in 1895, and unlike earlier temperance movements that encouraged people to take pledges not to drink, the ASL sought a legal remedy: the outright prohibition of alcohol. Supported by most Protestant and “Evangelical” churches nation-wide and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU – with 250,000 members, it was the largest women’s organization in the U.S.), the highly influential prohibition movement put forth a flurry of propaganda, garnered widespread support, until the Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1918, banning the manufacture, transportation, or sale of alcoholic drinks. The opposition to prohibition came from non-Protestant immigrants who had no real power. 
In addition to such sweeping social reforms of Progressivism was a dark side that revealed the general prejudices of the nation. Citing the problems of the inner cities, associations were made between such problems and the presence of large numbers of immigrants. Immigration increased to historic highs between 1905 and 1910. These new arrivals to America came primarily through Ellis Island in New York Harbor. 
Ellis Island:
beginning in 1892, this twenty-seven acre island in New York Harbor opened as an immigration terminal, to become the primary port of entry into the United States. By 1907, immigration through Ellis Island reached its height, when an average of 5,000 persons per day were processed there. Immigration into the United States declined during World War One, and afterward, most of the paperwork of processing for immigration was done at the ports of departure at American consulates. Ellis Island was decommissioned as an immigration station in 1943. 
anti-immigration: 
Beginning in 1894, the Immigration Restriction League was established in Boston by many of the city’s leaders. Many unions, including the American Federation of Labor supported the goals of such organizations, fearing the competition that immigration supposedly posed. 
Literary tests thus became a popular means to restrict immigration (when in actuality they revealed nothing more than the degree of education that a person had). literacy tests: Anti-immigration in purpose, literacy tests made American citizenship contingent on the ability to read English. Over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. Congress passed the Literacy Test Act of 1917, which forced immigrants to pass an English language reading exam, before being allowed to become citizens of the United States. 
The advocates of such tests contended after 1900 that the great influx of southeast European immigrants came from monarchies and thus were unfamiliar with democratic republican government, and that they settled into large Eastern U.S. cities, where they congregated into ethnic neighborhoods and ghettoes, and thus “presented a serious obstacle to their Americanization.” According to such thinking, because these immigrants didn’t speak English, they overburdened the public schools. 
Presidents Grover Cleveland and William Howard Taft each successfully vetoed bills to establish literacy tests for immigrants. U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts led Congress in the passage of several literacy test bills (in 1896, 1913, and 1915), but each time they passed through the Congress, the President vetoed them. As stated above, when President Woodrow Wilson vetoed one such bill in 1917, it was over-ridden. Many Progressive intellectuals and scientists were often supportive of anti-immigration laws, offering “scientific” validation couched in racist terminology. For example, Sociologist Edward A. Ross denounced immigrants in 1914, describing them in racist language as “hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality.” 
Progressivism’s racist side was also evident in the eugenics movement that called for strict limitations on human reproduction, with the idea that “controlled breeding” (condemning miscegenation) of people would lead to a better society. Many eugenicists were openly racist (and anti-Semitic, asserting for example, that Jesus was not Jewish, but Norse, etc.); their published tracts and diatribes influenced state legislation that forced the sterilization of non-conformists, mentally ill persons, and criminals. These laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Buck v. Bell in 1927
Edward S. Curtis (1868 - 1952):
Eugenics seems also to have affected the science of anthropology and related expressions during the progressive era. Among these was the famous photographer Edward S, Curtis. For modern anthropologists, many issues related to the photographic representation of indigenous North American cultures by Edward S. Curtis center on the problems of ethnographic accuracy and the ethics of white-American depictions of Indians, made according to Anglo-Saxon self-perceptions and cultural world-views. Not only do these images conform to what white Americans have had to say about Indians at the turn of the twentieth century, but many present-day scholarly interpretations, though academic in nature, often perpetuate ethnocentric and paternalistic notions about Native Americans as well. 
Edward S. Curtis was one of many photographers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that sought to record the indigenous societies of North America before they “vanished.” In doing so, he perpetuated the “Noble Savage” and “Vanishing Race” myths that fed white American ideological notions of their own “ascendant” superiority. 
Having suffered the conquest and colonization of their cultures for hundreds of years, and having been subdued by the U.S. military and confined to reservations, Native Americans and their cultures were evidently disappearing by the turn of the twentieth century. Thus, it became obvious to persons interested in Native Americans that surviving forms of these aboriginal societies would soon lose their intrinsically Indian qualities and motifs, and the various meanings associated with them. 
Pursuing a similar vein as the ethnographers of the time, and following the early nineteenth-century example of George Catlin and his attempt to create a visual record of the lifeways of Native Americans nearly a century earlier, E. S. Curtis sought to visually represent Indians and preserve aspects of their culture and history. And, like Catlin, Curtis’ photographic representations have been criticized for their apparent ethnographic inaccuracies. Moreover, E. S. Curtis made past recreations rather than creating contemporary photographic representations of Indians, like his brother Aeschel Curtis. 
The problem, however, likely runs deeper that the superficialities relating to ethnographic accuracy. Because the “shared meanings” of mainstream white America, that are conveyed through artistic and photographic images, often run contrary to those of the people and cultures being described in them, such cultural renditions (as Curtis’ photographs) can create their own unique problems of interpretation. Traditional western approaches to such interpretations can reduce the potency of or negate indigenous cultural self-history, as anthropologists and historians are confronted with conflicting world-views from their own. 
In the end, the message is one that supports, and is supported by the dominant culture, white America in this case. Yale University professor Alan Trachtenberg, for example, asserts that the Curtis photographs have more to reveal about white America than they do about the cultures that they claim to represent. In addition to the ideas relating to “Noble Savage,” “Vanishing Race,” and “End of the Trail” motifs, erotic and political images (among others) that appear in the Curtis photos reveal American objectifications of Indians as an exotic Other. Nevertheless, the representations of Native Americans by Edward S. Curtis were important for their depictions of Native Americans in various cultural settings, contrived by the photographer (and subject) as they likely were, or not. Moreover, they had “value” in that they assuaged the guilt of the nation for its role in destroying the very thing that the photographs pretended to preserve. 
In the final analysis, it is evident that images of Native Americans as depicted in the work of Edward S. Curtis have much to say about the social needs and world-views of turn-of-the-century white America, providing the pretext for accessing and possessing cultural information and associated materials. Whether or not modern academe will let go of its equally prejudiced guiding mythologies and relinquish its hold on cultural “knowledge,” and “repatriate” displaced cultural elements to the people from whom they were taken, may prove to be a greater challenge than that of trying to preserve, or recreate the vestiges of a vanished people. 
Eugenics was an idea that received wide support in the South, and was used to justify the continuation of “Jim Crow” there. Needless to say, southern Progressives (including Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman and U.S. Senator from South Carolina Benjamin Ryan Tillman: 1847–1918) supported the continuation of “Jim Crow” laws in the South. Tillman in particular, defended the use of force to keep African-Americans from voting. 
Southern literature supported such political claims. The militant racist novelist Thomas Dixon (1864–1946) from North Carolina glorified racist arguments and terrorist campaigns against African-Americans in his novels published between 1902 and 1907, including The Negro a Beast, The Negro, A Menace to American Civilization, Leopard Spots and The Clansman (1905). No longer appealing only to southern readers, these novels were widely received by a nation-wide audience. Even President Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924: b. Virginia: President 1913–1921) praised David Wark “D. W.” Griffith’s (1880 – 1948) film Birth of a Nation (1915: based on Thomas Dixon’s “The Clansman”) that glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Not surprisingly, the Wilson cabinet advocated Congressional legislation that required racial segregation in all levels of government. 
THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN RESPONSE TO PROGRESSIVISM'S RACISM:
Throughout the Progressive period Booker T. Washington (1856–1915; the son of a slave woman and her white master) led the African-American movement for social reforms. Having received his own education at a freedmen’s school in Virginia, Washington founded a successful black vocational school at Tuskegee, Alabama (that later became the Tuskegee University). In October 1901 President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919 President: 1901–1909) invited Booker T. Washington to a dinner at the White House, angering the “lilly white” element of his own Republican Party. Nevertheless, despite his seeming friendliness to blacks, Roosevelt’s own sentiments towards African Americans are expressed in a letter to his friend, the novelist Owen Wister, wherein the President states: 
“Now as to the Negroes; I entirely agree with you that as a race and in the mass they are altogether inferior to whites.”
He goes on to further state that as a group, blacks “are bad enough by nature. Race purity must be maintained.” Nevertheless, the President considers Booker T. Washington a unique member of the “Negro race.” To that end, Teddy Roosevelt makes the following observation about Mr. Washington, stating that he is one of the “occasionally good, well-educated, intelligent and honest colored men.” In their time such assertions were not thought of as out-of-the-ordinary. Such statements were typical of almost all upper and middle class white Americans; racism pervaded the entire culture. 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):
This organization, dedicated to the end of racial discrimination, sprang from the Niagara Movement (Niagara Falls, Ontario, July, 1905) and was formally established at New York City in 1909, following the lynching of two African American men at Springfield, Illinois. Led by prominent African-American civil rights leaders, especially Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois (1868 – 1963) and the lawyer Moorfield Storey (1845–1929), the NAACP grew to become a significant force for civil rights during the mid-twentieth century. 
William Edward Burghardt (W. E. B.) du bois (1868 – 1963): 
This African American civil rights advocate, Harvard University graduate (the first African-American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard), writer, and professor of economics, history, and sociology, co-founded the Niagara Movement in 1905, from which sprang the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. For the next twenty-four years, he edited the association’s journal, Crisis, using it as his means to publicize his views, which changed from an early advocacy of black and white integration, to that of complete segregation, emphasizing a doctrine of African-American separatism. Calling for the worldwide liberation and independence of black people, he organized the first of many Pan African Congresses in Paris, in 1919. For his efforts on behalf of African independence from European colonialism, Du Bois won the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal in 1944. By 1948, however, the views of W.E.B. Du Bois were too radical for the NAACP, and he withdrew his participation in the organization. In 1961, W.E.B. Du Bois joined the American Communist Party. Feeling frustrated that changes for the African-American community were not happening quickly enough, Du Bois finally abandoned his citizenship in the United States, and moved to Ghana in 1962, where he died the following year at the age of 95. 
The Election of 1912:
president Theodore Roosevelt split from the conservative pro-business Republican party in promoting reforms that “exercise[d] . . .responsible [governmental] control over the business use of vast wealth.” Secretary of War William Howard Taft succeeded Roosevelt to the presidency, and rather than continuing Roosevelt’s progressive agendas, he took a moderate stand, between progressive and conservative interests. 

In 1909 President William Howard Taft appointed Richard Achilles Ballinger (1858–1922), the former Seattle mayor to the position of Secretary of the Interior, as part of the conservative Republican presidential cabinet. During his term as Interior secretary, the nation’s Chief Forester, and prominent conservationist, Gifford Pinchot accused Ballinger of participating in fraudulent dealings involving private claims on coal deposits in Alaskan public lands. Defending Secretary Ballinger, President Taft fired Louis R. Glavis of the Interior department’s Land Office (who made the original complaint), and Gifford Pinchot. 
In response to this move from the administration, Pinchot and Glavis wrote an exposé on the issue for Collier’s Weekly magazine, resulting in public furor that widened the political division between conservatives and progressives in the U.S. government and inflamed conservationists to take action. The Congressional examination into Secretary Ballingers’s activities exonerated him and found the President innocent of any involvement, but nevertheless, Ballinger was forced to resign and President Taft lost his most important political support over the incident, including that of former President Theodore Roosevelt. 
When Roosevelt returned from touring Africa and Europe in 1910, he decided to challenge Taft for the leadership of the Republican Party and the nomination of the presidency. When the Republican “old guard” backed Taft at the national convention in June 1912, the pro-Roosevelt faction walked out and formed the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party, with Roosevelt as their candidate. With the Republican Party split between liberal “progressive” and conservative factions, Woodrow Wilson won the presidential election of 1912. 
As President, Woodrow Wilson continued the anti-trust efforts began under Roosevelt; Wilson replaced the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) with the Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) that favored union activities and protected strikers from federal court injunctions. Wilson also oversaw the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1914. Following Roosevelt’s lead (when he expanded the National Park System (est. 1872) in 1906), Wilson oversaw the creation of a separate division in the Department of the Interior that became the National Park Service (1916). 
The Wilson administration and the Mexican Revolution:
beginning in 1910, Mexico entered a lengthy period of political and social turmoil of its Revolution. This crisis was perhaps more of a civil war than anything else, and when Woodrow Wilson came to power in the U.S., he shared the concerns of American business leaders that their interests might be threatened. The United States closely watched the series events of the ensuing conflict that rapidly unfolded in Mexico, with a keen desire to protect its own interests. Reflecting the overall U.S. awareness of the instability in Mexico and the ineffectiveness of the new government of President Francisco I. Madero (1873 – 1913), lame-duck President Taft wrote on December 16, 1912: 
“I am reaching the conclusion that we should place some dynamite, with the goal of waking up that dreamer that seems incapable of solving the crisis in the country of which he is President.”
In early 1913, President Woodrow Wilson was also critical of the Madero government, accusing him of discrimination against U.S. citizens who were fleeing Mexico en masse. Unable to bring about the reforms he desired, and continually dogged by conflicts between rival governmental factions, President Madero was met with increasing opposition. He was literally a hostage in the Presidential “Castle” in Mexico City. Madero sent Victoriano Huerta to crush an anti-Madero rebellion northeast of Mexico City. Huerta succeeded, and Madero was seen as the nation’s new “strongman.” 
Huerta then seized the opportunity to exercise his own opposition against the President, declaring himself the provisional leader of Mexico, and had Madero arrested. President Francisco I. Madero, his brother Gustavo Madero, and Vice-President José Pino Suarez were captured and held by General Victoriano Huerta’s troops. By 1:30 P.M., on February 18, 1913, Huerta had assumed power as Mexico’s interim President, and Gustavo Madero died from being slowly tortured. 
Supporting Huerta, the United States ambassador, responding to Huerta’s request for suggestions as to what would be the best thing to do with Franciso Madero, exile or incarceration, suggested that he do “whatever he thought best for the country.” That precisely is what Huerta did: the next day, Madero and Pino Suárez were removed from their prison cells and shoved up against the penitentiary walls where they were summarily shot by two low-ranking men of national police force and the army. 
Mexican General Victoriano Huerta then assumed the leadership of Mexico. In doing so, he eliminated his opponents, placing his henchmen into key governmental positions. Nevertheless, he only had control of central Mexico. 
The newly inaugurated Woodrow Wilson administration was largely anti-Mexico, and anti-Huerta. Wilson was nationalistic and moralistic in his judgments of Mexico and its revolution. On April 19, 1914, the U.S. instigated what became known as the Veracruz Incident. The U.S. consulate in Mexico had made a formal complaint about the supposed ill treatment of American citizens by the government of Mexican President Huerta government, and by using a minor incident at Tampico between Mexicans and American servicemen as a pretext for retaliation, Wilson ordered U.S. forces (“progressive insertion”) to blockade the harbor of Veracruz, and shell the city, in an effort to “establish peace among the Mexican factions.” There were about 500 Mexican casualties in the incident. Due to the blockade of Mexico’s most important port, Huerta’s economy suffered. On August 14, 1914, amid growing opposition, the Huerista regime unconditionally surrendered to constitutionalist forces in Mexico, and the nation’s civil war resumed. Huerta resigned his leadership, and went to the United States, where he died two years later of alcoholic poisoning in a Texas jail. 
By 1915, wanton violence was rampant throughout the nation. The railroads no longer transported needed food and supplies, but only soldiers. Hunger became widespread. Moreover, the forces of Revolutionary Pancho Villa (1877 – 1923), having been sorely beaten by forces loyal to Venustiano Carranza (1859 – 1920) who rose to power after Huerta’s removal. 
Villa remained a thorn in Carranza’s side, crossing into the United States to raid border towns, and aggravating the United States which petitioned the Carranza government for en end of Villa’s assaults. When a gun deal when sour at Columbus, New Mexico, Villa and his men “tore up” the town, prompting U.S. President Wilson to send General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing (1860 –1948) after him, in an unsuccessful “punitive expedition” (1916 – 1917) inside the borders of Mexico (as far as 300 miles South). Pershing’s forces skirmished with those of Carranza, as the two nations perched on the brink of war against each other. 
The United States did not recognize the revolutionary government of Mexico until 1923, when President Plutarco Calles came to power, and assured the U.S. that its investments (particularly oil) would remain secure. 
The “Great War” – the “War to End All Wars”:
European alliances (beginning in 1871) were shaky at best but sufficient to keep small conflicts from flaring up into large ones. By 1907, two main alliance divisions emerged: the Triple Alliance involving Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary; and the Triple Entente (Allies) involving Great Britain, France, and Russia. Economic and imperial competition between Great Britain and Germany heightened the tensions between these two great alliances. The Achilles-heel of this alliance system was the potential for drawing many nations into small conflicts; this situation is what happened at Austro-Hungarian-controlled Sarajevo, Bosnia, on June 28, 1914, when the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian nationalist. 
Austro-Hungary sought German assistance, while Serbia called on its ally, Great Britain for help. By early August, declarations of war had been made on all sides, and Germany invaded Belgium, preparing for an invasion of France, but was halted in its advance at the Marne River. Thus began an entrenched and lengthy stalemate situation in northern France, wherein 5 million persons would be killed over the following two-and-a-half years. 
Reflecting the widespread desire for American neutrality on the part of the U.S. populace, President Wilson formally proclaimed the neutrality. Meanwhile, propaganda campaigns in the United States carried British and German polemic arguments of both sides of the conflict. U.S. neutrality was challenged by a continuing British blockade of German shipping, and while it could technically trade with Germany, its primary trade activities were with Britain, as the values of such trade rose from $824 million in 1914 to $3.2 billion in 1916. The U.S. thus enjoyed an economic boom. 
In an effort to break the blockade, Germany used submarines (U-boats) to sink British vessels, and issued a warning to the U.S., that continued shipping around the British Isles was at risk. On May 7, 1915, the Cunard liner Lusitania was sunk of the coast of Ireland by a German U-boat; 1,198 people perished including 128 Americans. In response, President Wilson condemned Germany’s action while the American press attacked German “barbarism.” Fearing the emerging war-hawk stance of the U.S., a discouraged Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned his office, rather than have to participate in the likely prosecution of war. 
When four Americans were injured in a U-boat attack on the French passenger vessel Essex, Woodrow Wilson threatened to cut of diplomatic relations with Germany unless it ceased such attacks. Germany agreed to board vessels first, but the Wilson government began preparing for war. In June 1916, the Congress passed the National Defense Act that dramatically increased military spending and doubled the size of the U.S. armed forces. Led primarily by American women, anti-war activists organized huge protests in the major cities. 
When Germany announced (February 1, 1917) its intention to pursue open submarine warfare in an effort to finally end the war, President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with that nation. On March 1, 1917, the infamous coded Zimmerman Telegram (sent to Arthur Zimmerman, Germany’s ambassador to Mexico) was intercepted. This message laid out a plan whereby Mexico would join Germany in the war, and in return, Germany would help Mexico to regain some of its lost territories from the Mexican War of 70 years earlier. 
The U.S. responded by arming its merchant ships and sanctioning them to fire upon German submarines. German subs sank seven U.S. merchant vessels resulting in a heavy loss of life, while Americans demonstrated en masse in favor of war. On April 2, 1917, President Wilson addressed the Congress in pursuit of a formal declaration of war against Germany, and on April 6, he signed the declaration. Immediately, the American media campaign against the “bestial” and “monstrous” German “Huns” began. 
Wall Street financier Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870–1965) led the War Industries Board (WIB), managing contracts (worth $14.5 billion) to support the war effort. He successfully coerced reluctant big businesses (including U.S. Steel and Ford Motor Company) to comply with the wartime prices offered for their products by the federal government. 
President Wilson appointed General John J. Pershing as the chief commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Pershing insisted on establishing a distinctly separate identity for the Americans in the European conflict. He also demanded that the American receive six month’s training before entering combat; these “doughboys” finally did engage German troops in the Spring of 1918. By September, over two million Americans were in Europe, hastening the end of the war. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed, ending the war. 
Because volunteerism for the war was small, the Wilson Administration initiated the Selective Service Act (1917), and by early June of that year, about 10 million men had registered. In August 1918, the age limits for the draft were expanded to include all men between the ages if 18 and 45. 2.8 million men were called to serve during World War I, and of those, 12% didn’t show up. An additional 2 million men volunteered. 
African-American men were segregated and forbidden to enter the Marines or the Coast Guard. 200,000 African-American men served in France, and many, (particularly the entire 369th U.S. Infantry) were decorated by France with the Cross of War/ Croix de Guerre for their service and bravery. For the first time, African-Americans realized the different reception (complete acceptance) given to them by the French people, as opposed to white attitudes expressed to them at home in the United States. 
Losses in World War I: 
United States: 52,000 dead from battle 
60,000 dead from influenza and pneumonia (1/2 of 
these deaths ocurred while the men were still in 
training) 
Great Britain: 2,000,000 dead 
France: 5,000,000 dead 
Russia: 9,000,000 dead 
Germany: 6,000,000 dead 
Italy: 2,000,000 dead

In addition to the human cost, he cost to the U.S. to prosecute the war was tremendous (at $33 billion). The bulk of the money to finance the war came from Liberty Bonds. Bond drives generated $23 billion. The government also used the new Federal Reserve System (1913) of banks to expand the paper money supply during the war, which in turn increased the national debt from $1 billion in 1915 to $20 billion in 1920. 
During the war, the Federal government expanded its influence in business and the lives of Americans, forming precedents that would remain throughout the century. The federal income tax, passed in 1913, was expanded dramatically. The Food and Fuel Act (1917) regulated the production, prices, and distribution of these products for the war effort. Overall, businesses profited greatly from the war, as corporate profits tripled between 1914 and 1919. The power of organized labor also grew during the war years. AFL president Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) pledged union support for the war, and was appointed to the National War Labor Board by President Wilson in 1918. 
Nevertheless, Wilson did not support all unions; his administration initiated the Espionage Act (1917) to quash subversive acts by the IWW, that condemned the profit making of big business in the war. Under the pretext of enforcing this law, the government broke into IWW offices nationwide and arrested hundreds of Wobblies, setting a precedent for a new wave of anti-union action in the U.S. 
Women suffragettes/ suffragists took advantage of the opportunities for getting their message out that the war provided. More women worked in behalf of the war effort, and they demanded that they should be given the right to vote. Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947), a pacifist and head of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) directed her organization’s support for the war, an action that doubled its membership. Responding to Catt and the militancy of Alice Paul (of the National Woman’s Party, that took its cues from British advocacy groups), President Wilson called for the women’s vote in 1917. In August 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution was ratified, legalizing women to vote nationwide for the first time. Catt went on to organize the League of Women Voters soon afterward.