754 ★ CHAPTER 19 Safe for Democracy: The United States and WWIwar, and the American economic sys-
tem, while antiwar sentiment, labor rad-
icalism, and sympathy for the Russian
Revolution became “ un- American.”
Local authorities formally investigated
residents who failed to subscribe to Lib-
erty Loans. Throughout the country,
schools revised their course offerings
to ensure their patriotism and required
teachers to sign loyalty oaths.
The 250,000 members of the newly
formed American Protective League
(APL) helped the Justice Department
identify radicals and critics of the
war by spying on their neighbors and
carrying out “slacker raids” in which
thousands of men were stopped on
the streets of major cities and required
to produce draft registration cards.
Many private groups seized upon the
atmosphere of repression as a weapon
against domestic opponents. Employ-
ers cooperated with the government in
crushing the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW), a move long demanded
by business interests. In July 1917, vigilantes in Bisbee, Arizona, rounded up
some 1,200 striking copper miners and their sympathizers, herded them into
railroad boxcars, and transported them into the desert, where they were aban-
doned. Few ever returned to Bisbee. In August, a crowd in Butte, Montana,
lynched IWW leader Frank Little. The following month, operating under one
of the broadest warrants in American history, federal agents swooped down on
IWW offices throughout the country, arresting hundreds of leaders and seizing
files and publications.
The war experience, commented Walter Lippmann, demonstrated “that
the traditional liberties of speech and opinion rest on no solid foundation.” Yet
while some Progressives protested individual excesses, most failed to speak out
against the broad suppression of freedom of expression. Civil liberties, by and
large, had never been a major concern of Progressives, who had always viewed
the national state as the embodiment of democratic purpose and insisted that
freedom flowed from participating in the life of society, not standing in opposi-
tion. Strong believers in the use of national power to improve social conditions,Florine Stettheimer’s New York/Liberty, painted
in 1918, depicts the Statue of Liberty, war-
ships, and airplanes in an exuberant tribute to
New York City and to the idea of freedom in the
wake of World War I.