Chapter 2: From the end of WWII to the end of the golden years/era
1.The truman years: 1944-1952
1944: presidential election: Roosevelt was running for the 4Th time. Anyone could see he was exhausted but they reelected him and of course he has chosen Harry Truman, who was not well-know.
He died in april 1945, and the constitution was .. on that day Truman was the new president. The tasks would be hard.
What he would had to do at home: soldiers, he would have to deal with them come back home and in 1945 America is still under a war time economy he had to convert that to a peace time economy. They had to deal with foreign relationship.
Abroad we have Europe which is destroyed and weak while communism looked more and more has growing threat for freedom.
What Truman did at home:
The GI bill, nickname for the Service Men's readjustment act. It was planned by Roosevelt. It was voted in 1942 and signed by R. it is important because of the budget 13 billion dollars (huge) to be spent on veterans, spent on education, vocational training medical treatment, unemployment insurance, lawns for going into business and laws for building or buying houses. It marked american history because some came back to school or.. and ranks the middle class? Some access to university. The number of men in the armed forces declined. In 1947, it down to 1.5 million and the begining of the 1950 down to about half a million soldiers doing their military service.
What about the economy
The government was a bit worried. Because... no longer needed. It knew it could led to problems and unemployment. But it didn"t thanks to the pent up demand for consumer good unable the economy to survive. It means that during the war people wanted to buy goods, cars, clothing but it was not easy because everything was for the army. After the war they were back on the market, people had the money and so they bought. They started spending the money they had .. during the war. It help for the transition into....
There was a danger: inflation.
During the war, prices had been controlled and limited but now prices were no longer controlled and the workers wanted higher wages. Sometimes they wanted a 30% increase which the management refused. Truman said okay but for reasonable wages. We have strikes in 1945 and 1946, strikes for higher wages. It took place in important industries → the car, the steel, the meaning, the oil and the rail road industry. So to solve the problem, companies increased their prices to let workers have increases too and it became the solution to solve strikes. The coast of living increased in America and we have inflation.
America is going to fight for a long time...
Then came the election of 1946 mid-term election, it was a problem for Truman, victory in congress for the republican and so he had tied hands. He was forced to give up the fight against inflation and now the republican congress felt free to act against trade unions (to limit the power of trade unions). They voted an act in 1947: the taft-hartley act. : closed shops → if you wanted to have a job in an industry before you went for an interview you had to belong to the industries union. The act banned closed shops.
Union shop: you have to join the shop immediately, the union when you are hired.
They were still accepted except in the states where there had been banned by state laws.
It goes against the bill of rights: union leaders had to swear they were not members of the communist party. Two years later we have the presidential election. Truman was candidate and he was reelected and he wanted for the american citizen what he called a "fair deal" (Echo to Roosevelt's "new deal"). Congress was back into the hands of democrats. It consisted on a higher minimum.. more people could get access to social security. There was an extension of rent controls, there was a farm price support, more money was given for the TVA, rural electrification was more developed, also help for farm housing and for towns there was a slum clearance program. It doesn't mean everything was voted, congress refused to vote a civil right bill because it is controlled by the southern democrats. Congress also refused to vote a federal health insurance bill. There was an increase in government spending. Voting of funds for the building of motoways. 18 thousand miles of motorways. Private inv...
