World War and the Growth of Global Power 289The war, coming at the same time as the global economic depression, cre-
ated huge forces that changed the world and American society. Abroad, the
U.S. was now overwhelmingly the world’s greatest power, with military
strength and the ability to force the Open Door on much of the world, and
in the postwar years American strength and wealth would grow to astounding
levels. At home, the corporate class that was hit hard by the depression
rebounded with the war and also gained more power and wealth than ever
before. But in that process, “the people,” the workers, women, Blacks and so
forth, did not make the same gains. In many wives, their lives were much
better, certainly an improvement over the deprivations of the depression.
But if American democracy implied some level of equality, the war did
not bring that. In fact, the aggressive struggles for rights, liberty, and mate-
rial needs decreased after the war. The great profits that came from the
immense production of the war years meant that workers would get more
pay, women would get jobs, African Americans could move north to find
work, and other groups would get a small piece of the economic pie. But
in return for those improvements, these same groups would not challenge
Capitalism in the ways that many had in the late 19th or early 20th Centuries.
There would be no more national uprisings as in 1877, no more Populist
movements, no more programs to create a separate Black economy or move
back to Africa, no attempt to adjust the system of private ownership of the
economy by a small number of truly wealthy men who had government
support. From World War II onward, Americans would still speak out on
particular issues—civil rights for blacks, women’s rights, Mexican-American
progress, and others—but these would be movements for “inclusion,” to get
access to the same rights that most White people had simply by being born
in the U.S. They were not radical movements to redistribute wealth or chal-
lenge Capitalism or seize power or redistribute wealth. Many saw no need
for radicalism because the vast economic growth had made their lives better,
and in those infrequent cases when challenges to the power elite did rise,
accusations of Communism in the red scare or simply an educational and
cultural system that taught them to be obedient was all that was needed to
keep the people in line. In the late 1930s, Americans stood on the edge of
disaster, with a decade-long depression that made them hungry, homeless,
and jobless and was not ending despite various government policies. Less