Minorities in Time of War: Blacks, Hispanics, and Indians 717health insurance were added benefits. The war effort
had almost no adverse effect on the standard of living
of the average citizen, a vivid demonstration of the
productivity of the American economy. The manufac-
ture of automobiles ceased and pleasure driving
became next to impossible because of gasoline
rationing, but most civilian activities went on much as
they had before Pearl Harbor. Because of the need to
conserve cloth, skirts were shortened, cuffs disap-
peared from men’s trousers, and the vest passed out of
style. Plastics replaced metals in toys, containers, and
other products. While items such as meat, sugar, and
shoes were rationed, they were doled out in amounts
adequate for the needs of most persons. Americans
had both guns and butter; belt-tightening of the type
experienced by the other belligerents was unheard of.
The federal government spent twice as much
money between 1941 and 1945 as in its entire previ-
ous history. This made heavy borrowing necessary.
The national debt, which stood at less than $49 bil-
lion in 1941, increased by more than that amount
each year between 1942 and 1945 and totaled nearly
$260 billion when the war ended. However, more
than 40 percent of the total was met by taxation, a far
larger proportion than in any earlier war.
This policy helped to check inflation by siphon-
ing off money that would otherwise have competed
for scarce consumer goods. Heavy excise taxes on
amusements and luxuries further discouraged spend-
ing, as did the government’s war bond campaigns,
which persuaded patriotic citizens to lend part of
their income to Uncle Sam. High taxes on incomes
(up to 94 percent) and on excess profits (95 percent)
convinced people that no one was profiting inordi-
nately from the war effort.
The income tax, which had never before touched
the mass of white-collar and industrial workers, was
extended downward until nearly everyone had to pay it.
To collect efficiently the relatively small sums paid by
most persons, Congress adopted the payroll-deduction
system proposed by Beardsley Ruml, chairman of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Employers with-
held the taxes owed by workers from their paychecks
and turned the money over to the government.
The steeply graduated tax rates, combined with a
general increase in the income of workers and farm-
ers, effected a substantial shift in the distribution of
wealth in the United States. The poor became richer,
while the rich, if not actually poorer, collected a
smaller proportion of the national income. The
wealthiest 1 percent of the population had received
13.4 percent of the national income in 1935 and
11.5 percent in 1941. In 1944 this group received
6.7 percent.
View theImageRation Stamps WWIIatwww.myhistorylab.comWar and Social Change
Enormous social effects stemmed from this shift,
but World War II altered the patterns of American
life in so many ways that it would be wrong to
ascribe the transformations to any single source.
Never was the population more fluid. The millions
who put on uniforms found themselves transported
first to training camps in every section of the coun-
try and then to battlefields scattered from Europe
and Africa to the far reaches of the Pacific.
Burgeoning new defense plants, influenced by a
government policy of locating them in “uncon-
gested areas,” drew other millions to places like
Hanford, Washington, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
where great atomic energy installations were con-
structed, and to the aircraft factories of California
and other states. As in earlier periods the trend was
from east to west and from the rural south to north-
ern cities. The population of California increased by
more than 50 percent in the 1940s; the population
of other far western states rose almost as much.
During the war the marriage rate rose steeply,
from 75 per thousand adult women in 1939 to 118
in 1946. A kind of backlog existed because many
people had been forced to put off marrying and hav-
ing children for financial reasons during the Great
Depression. Now wartime prosperity put an end to
that problem at the same time that large numbers of
young couples were feeling the need to put down
roots before the husbands went off to risk death in
distant lands. The population of the United States
had increased by only 3 million during the
Depression decade of the 1930s; during the nextfive
years it rose by 6.5 million.Minorities in Time of War: Blacks,
Hispanics, and Indians
The war affected black Americans in many ways.
Several factors helped improve their lives. One was
their own growing tendency to demand fair treat-
ment. Another was the reaction of Americans to
Hitler’s barbaric treatment of millions of Jews, an
outgrowth of his doctrine of “Aryan” superiority.
These barbarities compelled millions of white citizens
to reexamine their views about race. If the nation
expected African Americans to risk their lives for the
common good, how could it continue to treat them
as second-class citizens? Black leaders pointed out
the inconsistency between fighting for democracy
abroad and ignoring it at home. “We want democ-
racy in Alabama,” the NAACP announced, and this
argument too had some effect on white thinking.
Blacks in the armed forces were treated more fairly
than they had been in World War I. They were enlisted