I
In light of the byzantine alliances and swollen arsenals
that had been building across Europe for years, the
outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 seemed almost
inevitable. President Woodrow Wilson spent the next two
years urging Americans to remain impartial in both thought
and action, and for good reason. While the United States
had longstanding ties with England and France, millions of
immigrants at the turn of the century held loyalties of their
own that complicated any immediate support for the Allies.
The German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 horrified
Americans, and prompted at least one to join the British
Army on the Western Front (page 178). Yet Wilson steadfastly
maintained an official policy of neutrality. The German
decision to resume submarine warfare in early 1917 was partly
a response to Wilson’s hypocrisy in claiming neutrality while
the United States deepened its trade links with the Allies.
Once the United States declared war on Germany in April,
the president authorized a bold and unprecedented drive
to generate support for the Allies through its Committee on
Public Information (CPI). In countless pamphlets, maps,
newsreels, posters, lectures, and press releases, the CPI
valorized the Allied cause and demonized the German enemy.
The map on page 180 is one of the most widely circulated
examples of that elaborate propaganda campaign.
Americans made up less than 1 percent of the 18 million
killed in the war, yet World War I indelibly shaped the nation’s
future. Wartime mobilization demonstrated the power of
the state to coordinate production, regulate industry and
labor, control transportation, and expand taxation. This
mobilization extended to all areas of American life: just as the
CPI fostered patriotism and support for the Allies, Congress
outlawed any criticism of the war or the draft. This crackdown
on dissent created a climate of fear that was compounded by
the harrowing Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 (page 182). The
training and deployment of troops actually accelerated the
spread of the disease, which killed far more people than died
in the entire war.
To frame the United States’ mission in the war, Wilson
proposed a new world order grounded in democracy, open
trade, freedom of the seas, self-determination, and an end
to secret alliances. European leaders greeted this vision
with skepticism, noting more than a little arrogance inWilson’s determination to instruct the world in freedom and
democracy. Yet Wilson’s ambitious attempt in the “Fourteen
Points” to align these ideals with national interests became
an abiding theme in American foreign policy.
More immediately, World War I ushered in a nationwide
ban on the production and sale of alcohol, and stimulated
a tremendous demand for labor in Northern industry. With
wartime curbs on immigration, that demand was largely
met by African Americans: from 1910 to 1920, 500,000 blacks
left the South for opportunities in New York, Philadelphia,
Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. In the
1920s that number reached 1 million. The mass migration of
blacks into Harlem generated a rich culture that attracted
some of the leading musicians, artists, and writers of the
interwar period (page 190). But urban density also brought
new forms of crime and delinquency, which social scientists
energetically investigated through maps (page 188).
The economic activity jump-started by the war was further
accelerated by aviation, electronic, and communication
technologies. Refrigeration, for example, brought about
an era of competition and consolidation in the American
meatpacking industry (page 184). Radio and telephone
inventions integrated the population in entirely unexpected
ways. But the most consequential of these innovations was
the automobile, which proved to be far more than a means
of transportation. The automobile changed the organization
of work with the rise of Henry Ford’s assembly line. It
changed the relationship of the individual to the landscape
by liberating travelers from rail routes and schedules. And it
facilitated a new kind of “city” that was organized less around
a dense urban core than its periphery.
The automobile in turn generated new products and
services. With increased highway travel came a market not
just for glass, rubber, and metal but also for billboards, the
motor lodge, and diners. Even during the Great Depression,
Americans hit the road in startling numbers. They sought out
spots touted as cultural destinations and even obligations
of citizenship, such as national parks, state capitals, and the
“real” landscapes that lay beyond the main highways
(page 196). The road trip quickly became an essential
feature of American life, even a rite of passage. Yet if
automobile travel was a hallmark of American culture,Prosperity, Depression, and Reform