Economic Organization during WWI
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Ronald Schaffer in America in the Great War describes the system of economic organization devised to mobilize the economy during World War I. The need for this was evident as America faced an economic crisis. The government was using an antiquated supply system that would clearly hinder the necessary mobilization of millions of men for the war effort. Money was poured into the economy by the War Department, but the manufacturing sector could not keep up with the demand. prices were rising, and no one could be sure what the costs might be in the future. What followed were strikes, inflation, and a snarled army procurement system. By the summer of 1917, it was evident that food shortages would soon result. Schaffer notes that the administration had to solve a number of problems. It had to mobilize men for the war effort both in the armed forces and at home, keeping a work force on the job, preventing strikes to keep from disrupting production, and at the same time working to prevent inflationary wage increases. The way the various problems were addressed was through the creation of a number of organiZations given responsibility for coping with these issues. Bureaus were created to handle labor issues. An employment service helped unskilled workers find jobs in war industries. The Selective Service System directed men into essential occupations by offering draft exemptions. Several labor boards were created independently and at first acted without coordination,
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in getting everyone working in the same direction. Progressivism had also promoted the use of government power to control the economy, promote popular interests, and reform business. The ar effort helped create the sort of bureaucracies that progressives had been trying to encourage for some time, and after the war many of these agencies continued their tasks and maintained a control and a guiding hand on the economy and other matters. Schaffer notes, "The result was a war welfare state" (xii), and this would become the norm for the rest of the century. The war thus contributed to a change in the way government related to other institutions in society, and in time this would contribute to the growth of big government as the same sort of solutions were used for problems in the Great Depression and World War II.
Work Cited
Schaffer, Ronald. America in the Great War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
In the Introduction to his book, The Modern Temper, Lynn Dumenil finds that in some ways the impact of World War I has been misstated by historians and others, but at the same time he finds that the war served as a watershed in terms of helping us understand the decade that followed. First, says Dumenil, the war c
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1556
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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