Category: Debate
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What’s Wrong With Labor?: Federation Threatened with I.W.W. Control from the Inside
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was a revolutionary socialist labor union. In 1919, a bitter debate brewed them and the more mainstream and moderate American Federation of Labor (AFL). One organization’s aim was to attain some method of cooperation between capital and labor and the consequent mutual benefit. The other aimed to eliminate capital. […]
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If the Treaty is Rejected — What Then?
Although WWI fighting ended November 1918, the Treaty of Versailles to formally end the war was registered in late October 1919. Requiring territorial changes and reparations, enough U.S. senators opposed it to prevent 2/3 passage by Congress. Here, two U.S. senators debated the pros and cons of the treaty: Nebraska Democrat Gilbert Hitchcock in favor and […]
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Self-Determination for American Red Man
A 1919 bill approved by a House committee would have given Native Americans full citizenship rights. Alas, it took another five years to be enacted into law. It is the position of those Indians who have attained citizenship after an arduous struggle for their rights that the shackles of paternalism have been on their race […]
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The World Metropolis: New York or London?
In 1919, London’s long-held title as “the world metropolis” was threatened by the sharp rise of New York City. Which would win out? There are a few ways to measure this. By population, it looked like greater New York would soon overtaken Greater London around 1932. Indeed, today the NYC metropolitan area is much larger […]
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Can the United States Get 500,000 Volunteers?
In the months after WWI ended, could the military still recruit the same number of volunteers they had during wartime? Secretary of War Newton D. Baker argued yes: “He has stated not only that such an army [of 500,000 men] could be raised by voluntary enlistment in peace time, but that to raise it would be […]
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No German Music — Lest We Forget
Eleonora de Cisneros, a major opera singer in 1919, argued that April of that year was too soon to enjoy German music, coming so soon after WWI: There are 800,000 Germans in New York City who want German music! But you men and women who listened to that music, if you have a drop of […]
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Shall We Deport the Interned Aliens?
Several thousand Germans and Austrians were interned during World War I, suspected of being agents or spies. ANow that the war had ended a few months prior, it was time for most of them to be released: But the department believes that the greater number of the persons now behind the wire fences should be […]
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Is the Czar Dead?
Was the czar dead? It was February 1919 and seven months had elapsed since anyone had heard from Russia’s Czar Nicholas II. Turns out, yes: he was executed. The tsar abdicated the throne in March 1917 after the February Revolution, then he and his family were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House. More than a year later […]
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Why Most American Jews Do Not Favor Zionism
29 years before Israel was founded, Jewish Congressman Julius Kahn (R-CA4) advocated against forming a Jewish state, arguing four main points. Here’s how his four points hold up (or don’t) today. First — It creates a divided allegiance, as between our country and its Stars and Stripes and Zion with its white flag with the […]
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Winged Warfare and the League of Nations
100 years ago this week, the the League of Nations was agreed to at the Paris Peace Conference. Formally launching a year later in January 1920, the League was tasked with setting laws and norms for the increasingly international post-WWI world order. In 1919, former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Charles Warren discussed all the intricacies […]
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