20. MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE

POST-WAR AMERICA

Meanwhile, on the American home front, the country had prospered greatly during the war.  Hopes were high that this economic picture might continue on into the post-war years.  Yet there was also fear that with the war ending and the need for military industry drastically reduced, the nation might sink back into the Great Depression.  The memories of the post-World-War-One depression that hit in the years immediately after that war – especially in rural America – were still fresh in the minds of many Americans.  The Truman government was quite aware of this potential for post-war economic crisis. But so also was the American work force.

The labor movement had accelerated greatly during the war, with union membership at an all-time high.  But the unions had been highly cooperative with American capitalist industry during the war years, they earned a number of material benefits, and as part of the patriotic spirit of the times labor strife had been minimal.  But now the war was over, and old highly negative attitudes about American capitalism still lay just below the surface in the thoughts of the industrial worker.  Alongside those sentiments were the rapidly rising expectations among American workers – who had served their country sacrificially – that they were now entitled to a greater share in the American economic dream.  These attitudes would become explosive in the immediate post-war period.

American industrial workers (especially miners and low-skilled industrial workers) did not yet see themselves as part of Middle-America, although that would eventually change during the 1950s.  In the immediate post-war period they still lived in a Socialist world of class conflict, and were ready to play their part in a great class struggle that Socialism had long called for.  Consequently, in just the period 1945-1946, around five million workers went on strike, much of that about labor cutbacks brought on by the post-war downscaling of American industry.  Hard hit were the coal mining, steel, auto and railroad industries.

Such behavior over the next few years by the American Labor movement, however, seemed to appear similar to the actions in Europe that Communism employed in order to advance itself – even violently – as in the well-known labor rebellions in France and Italy in 1947 which were called by Stalin in an effort to bring those nations under Communism, which ultimately failed.  Then in early 1948 in Czechoslovakia, the same labor unrest did indeed pull the country into Stalin's Communist orbit, shocking Americans who found it easy to make the connection between the militancy of American labor and these events in Europe going on at the same time. This did not serve the American labor movement well.  Even elements of the blue-collar working class began to distance themselves from the militancy of their own labor movement.

Meanwhile, on the industrial owners' side of the picture, the war had called for America's capitalist-based industrial system to swing back into full operation in order to defeat the huge industrial empires of Germany and Japan.  Many of the businessmen had done their share as "dollar-a-year men" in directing their companies in this massive war effort.  They thus felt entitled to an end to the previous shaming of capitalism that they had suffered under during the years leading up to the war.  And indeed, they did occupy a place of respect in the national social picture again.

They also still remembered how they had fared under the New Deal's rapid expansion of the national government, the government budget, and most notably the extensive government regulation and control of the nation's economic life.¹ And with the war over, big government seemed not only unnecessary, but now almost un-American by these industrial leaders.  Actually, this view was also shared increasingly by a large number of Middle-Class American voters.

Riding this wave of general feeling, the Republican Party campaigned heavily against the Democratic Party in the 1946 congressional elections, claiming that a vote for the Democrats was a vote to continue big government, whereas a vote for the Republicans constituted a vote for a dramatic reduction in the size of government activity and a balancing of the federal budget (heavily in debt due to war-time expenses).

Republicans also played on the growing fear of Middle America about the militancy of the American labor movement – which Republicans were quick to identify with the growing evil of Communism, or at least Socialism.  Gauging the mood of the country correctly, the Republicans swept the Democrats from office, taking control of both Houses of Congress, and shattering the Liberal-Left wing of the Democratic Party.

Then the newly-seated Republican-controlled Congress went on to pass the Taft-Hartley bill (1947), which put the labor unions under a number of restrictions – reversing provisions of the Wagner Act of 1935 which had sided deeply with the labor unions against American business.  Truman vetoed the bill, but Congress then overrode his veto, to bring the bill into force as federal law.²

But one piece of legislation put together by the war-time Democratic Congress and Roosevelt Presidency which the Republicans dared not to touch was the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the G.I. Bill.  Rather than offer war veterans a pension (remembering the 1932 fiasco over the matter), the government offered instead to pay for tuition and living expenses for veterans to undertake post-war education, whether technical school or college. And it offered low-interest-rate mortgages for veterans to buy housing, and low-interest rates to start businesses of their own.  This was not welfare but instead capital investment, increasing greatly America’s industrial talent and underwriting a huge consumer market for goods withheld from general manufacture during the war (cars and housing).  It helped solve the problem of post-war unemployment, and put in the hands of young American adults the means to achieve the American dream.

The American economy, partly as a consequence of this wise investment in American talent, remained active, with consumer confidence high, and with the general standard of living continuing to grow tremendously for the Middle American.

Automobile production had come to a virtual halt during the war – Detroit and elsewhere producing only military trucks, tanks, planes and other war products. Thus at the end of the war there was a huge demand in place for new automobiles, leading manufacturers to convert back quickly to automobile production to answer the need.

But even more revolutionary in its impact on American culture was the explosion of low-cost, mass-produced, single-family homes built by the hundreds of thousands in the land surrounding America's cities (the suburbs), small houses by traditional housing standards, but inexpensive and ready for immediate purchase thanks to the G.I. Bill – and very inviting as a place to start up a young family.

Of course, having such a family was a matter that young Americans had been forced to put off during the war years.  But now peacetime presented the opportunity for young men and women to make up for that lacking.  They rather quickly married in massive numbers, and soon began to produce the next generation.  Babies were thus born in massive numbers in the period of 1946 and after, the beginning of the Baby Boom. And those babies, soon children (the 1950s) and eventually young adults (1960s) would develop into a very distinct generation of Americans, known appropriately as the Baby Boomers.  They would come to rock the nation to its core.

Maybe the boys overseas had not seen Paree (Paris) while serving in the military during the war (as many had during World War One).  But during military mobilization and training during the course of this Second World War, farm boys from Minnesota had seen sunny California, workers from Detroit had seen Florida, laborers from Massachusetts had seen Arizona or New Mexico (or California, or Florida), and were quite comfortable with the idea of moving with their new families to the West or South to take up new jobs when the war was over.  After all, there would be a familiar-feeling Presbyterian or Methodist Church in town where they could attend and make friends, their jobs and new neighbors would add to their social circle and they could start life anew, without having to depend on traditional family connections.

Besides, America's moving on from its original agricultural roots occurred massively during the war, and even picked up additional momentum after the war. Farming was becoming more a huge industrial enterprise for large-scale agricultural companies, forcing the American family farmer to have to close operations and look for work elsewhere.

And too, even the old up-East industrial world was being outpaced by changes which were employing people much more rapidly in white-collar rather than industrial jobs – white-collar jobs also widely available in the rising cities of the West and Southwest.

America was changing rapidly, becoming even more Middle Class as it developed, finally even beginning to draw the American worker away from his identity as Working-Class into the image of being an integral part of fast-rising Middle America, complete with car (often two), house in the suburbs (with a power mower to trim a large lawn), and backyard barbeques on the new patio.

Like no other people in the world at the time, the average American was living like royalty, and was quite aware of the fact as well. It was a great time to be American.

¹The national government counted nearly 2 million civilian employees during the war and a nearly 3½ times increase in the size of the population of the nation's capital city of Washington, D.C., during Roosevelt's Presidency.

²But then Truman himself during the remainder of his presidency would use the Taft-Hartley Act twelve times in his own confrontation with American unions.