Talk:History of the United States (1917–1945)

Old talk

It should be noted that the failure of the gold standard after World War 1 was not due to a fundamental failure of the gold standard. We were taken off the gold standard for World War 1 for the explicit purpose of using inflation to fund the war. When we went back on the gold standard after the war, we went on it using the exchange rate that had been established before we went off of it rather than adjusting it to the post-inflationary price of gold. This of course doomed the gold standard.

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Large parts of this article are identical to large parts of the New Deal article. This article is also triggering the over-size warnings. Can someone familar with the content please consider trimming the redundant material out of this article? (I might yet try it myself but I really don't know this area of history well enough to trust that I'll get it right.) Rossami 23:32, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do would be to break the article in two, perhaps 1918-1930 and 1931-1945. Any objections? -- Infrogmation 00:31, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Some of this article doesn't seem to express a neutral point of view.

For example - "Although the New Deal did not end the depression, all in all it helped to prevent the economy from decaying further by increasing the regulatory functions of the federal government in ways that helped stabilize previous trouble areas of the economy"

That is probably the majority view but there is also a reasonable alternate point of view that the New Deal lengthened the depression. Taxes and government regulation where kept higher than ever before in US history and you had the longest depression in US history. Perhaps this POV should be recognized (even as a minority or alternate POV) or perhaps conclusions like "it helped to prevent the economy from decaying further" could be dropped.

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I changed the Legacies of the New Deal in as mimimal of way as I could to make the POV more neutral in relation to the part covered in the last comment. I changed "all in all it helped to prevent the economy from decaying further" to "many believe it helped to prevent the economy from decaying further".

That looks fine to me, thanks. -- Infrogmation 06:43, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

major changes

This page is mostly a single article about The Roosevelt administration... It is incredibly of poor quality that this article portrays that most everything in this era happened or stemme from the The Roosevelt administration... Sections like Prohibition are GREAT, in that they show what was happening in the era, as opposed to some ripped content from The Roosevelt article...

Major changes need to be made, cut out much of The Roosevelt sections and add important events which happened during this time such as the Red Scare. Obviosuly more needs to be covered about the Great depression...

Finally, this article is mostly of the format (and should remain so):

some event or perdiod

Main article: article

Brief paragraph about main article.

next event or period

Main article: article

Another brief paragraph about main article.

Instead most of this article is....

(a few events/periods)

(large sections of the Roosevelt article cut into this article)

Just make a link to the Roosevelt article! It is ridiculous of what is going on here...

Academic peer-reviewed criticism of this article

From Rosenzweig's article: "He might start by complaining that the essay on the United States from 1918 to 1945 inaccurately describes the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 as in part a response to the “dissident challenges” of Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin—a curious characterization of a law enacted when Coughlin was still an enthusiastic backer of Roosevelt and Long was an official (if increasingly critical) ally. But he would be much more distressed by the essay’s incomplete, almost capricious, coverage than by the minor errors. Dozens of standard topics—the Red Scare, the Ku Klux Klan, the Harlem Renaissance, woman suffrage, the rise of radio, the emergence of industrial unionism—go unmentioned. And he would grind his teeth over the awkward prose and slack analysis (“the mood of the nation rejected Wilson’s brand of internationalism”) and the sometimes confusing structure (the paragraph on legislation passed in 1935 appears in the section on Roosevelt’s second term)."

Amendments

"It did represent the first instance of a U.S. constitutional amendment that directly regulated social activity."

This is misleading. The amendment didn't directly affect a social activity. It regulated business activities closely related to social activities. There's a stronger case that the 13th amendment, which prohibited the ownership of slaves, is a better example of an amendment directly regulating a social activity. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.208.130.98 (talk) 23:07, 15 March 2007 (UTC).

Gangsters

Comment: One aspect of this era that seems to be essentially ignored is the growth of organized crime and vice. Certainly it is not one of the more auspicious aspects of our history but this was a tremendously important facet of American society during this era. Whereas gambling, liquor, and prostitution had always been a part of American society throughout the 1800s, the rise of Progressivism (particularly the onset of Prohibition) combined with the unparalleled wealth in the U.S. during this period engendered vast organized crime networks throughtout the country (and not just the ones they make movies about; there were huge operations in Florida, Texas, California, and lots of other places). Indeed most people don't realize that the rise of casinos didn't start with Las Vegas. Casinos (illegal but often operating openly) hit a local peak during the Roaring 20s due to lax law enforcement in a lot of communities around the nation. There was subsequently a major wave of repression against all these activities during the 30s, 40s, and 50s which mostly wiped them out except in Nevada and a few other pockets.

I think all of that history deserves a section in this article at minimum.

--Mcorazao (talk) 18:24, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

P.S. One interesting thing to mention is that the KKK was one of the major groups that spoke out against the growth of the casinos and brothels during this era. I don't know a lot about that history but the irony of it all might be interesting to explore. --Mcorazao (talk) 21:07, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Neutrality

The text seems to be biased mainly due to changes by 67.214.28.241. Too lazy to revert stuff myself. 173.181.51.58 (talk) 05:08, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is very biased, and it qualifies as Revisionist History. BigMitchAK (talk) 03:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Robber barons and federal government

I changed the first sentence of the "Federal government" section from:

While, in retrospect, the 1920s are sometimes seen as the last gasp of unregulated "robber-baron" capitalism, there was actually an increasing role for the federal government.

to:

In retrospect, the 1920s are sometimes seen as the last gasp of unregulated "robber-baron" capitalism. The federal government took on an increasing role in business affairs.

because it didn't make sense to me the first way. The former seems to imply that the federal government supported the robber barons. Such a connection isn't obvious to me, nor did I see it established earlier in the article. Without any specifics, I don't believe we can make this implication. I added source-request tags to the unsourced statements. I can't easily check the source cited for broadcast regulation, but I expect it doesn't cover anything else mentioned in the paragraph. I invite editors to clarify or expand the rest − but please include specific sources for any claims made. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:History of the United States (1776–89) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:00, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Should World War I be moved here?

I've noticed that, while this article mentions the aftermath of WW1, it doesn't mention the war itself, which is in the article for the preceding era of 1865-1918, the majority of which is more dedicated to Reconstruction, Urbanization, Progressivism, etc., all 19th century processes. I feel as if World War I, which many would consider to be America's true entry into the 20th century, should be included on this page instead. I understand that the war could be considered part of America's "New Imperialism" period, the beginnings of which are discussed in the previous article, but then again some of it is mentioned in this article as well. 2600:4040:9E16:3200:A8DB:19CD:BF9A:CEE3 (talk) 19:18, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree--almost all the US fighting took place in 1918. Rjensen (talk) 22:49, 27 May 2023 (UTC)