The Red Scare
- Created by: mel.maharjan
- Created on: 09-12-14 19:38
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- The Red Scare (1919-1920)
- Strikes
- Workers becoming more militant
- January 1919 - Seattle steelworkers
- Striking for better pay and shorter hours
- Spread to more than 100,000 workers
- By September 1919, 350,000 steelworkers on strike
- Followed by coal miners.
- Steelworkers often working 12-hour days, 7 days a week
- Wanted better working conditions and recognition of their union, the AFL
- Management didn't want to give in and wanted to smash the union
- Management won, strike crushed, union destroyed and demoralised for years
- September 1919 - Boston police strike
- President Wilson: "A crime against civilisation"
- Riots and looting by Irish in Boston
- Total of 3,600 strikes involving 4 million workers
- Bosses rich so could hold out - also had support from the police, the courts and the government
- Mayor of Seattle, Ole Hanson, thought the purpose of the strikes was to start a revolution
- Bombings
- Began in April 1919 and was Communists and socialists wanting to overthrow capitalist system
- Threat to the American way of life - the American Dream
- Bombs planned to go off on May Day (1st May) at houses like Mayor Hanson and J. D. Rockefeller
- May Day is the traditional celebration of socialist parties and unions
- 2nd June - bombs went off at same time (11pm) in 8 cities
- Included home of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer
- Bomber killed and evidence that he was Italien
- Anarchists and communists throughout the US made up less than 0.1% of population
- 32 states made it illegal to join the Industrial Workers of the World
- November 1919 - January 1920 - Palmer Raids
- Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover organised raids against radicals in 33 cities
- Search and arrest warrants were dispensed with and civil rights ignored
- In Boston paraded those arrested through the streets in chains
- Between 4,000 and 9,000 arrested
- 250 people who were not American were deported on suspicion
- The National Associations of Manufacturers supported Palmer's tactics
- Began in April 1919 and was Communists and socialists wanting to overthrow capitalist system
- A series of strikes and bombings in 1919
- Led many Americans to fear that their country was on verge of Revolution
- Strikes
- Sacco and Vanzetti case
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