First Red Scare Project
Research Links
First Red Scare and World War I
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. The Committee on Public Information
3. Wilson's Propaganda Machine
4. First Red Scare Notes
First Red Scare and the Russian Revolution
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. Red Scare
3. Russian Revolution and American Repression
4. First Red Scare Notes
Sacco and Vanzetti Trial
1. Sacco and Vanzetti
2. Ben Shahan
3. First Red Scare Notes
Seattle General Strike
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. The Seattle General Strike Project
3. Labor's Most Spectacular Revolt
4. First Red Scare Notes
First Red Scare and World War I
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. The Committee on Public Information
3. Wilson's Propaganda Machine
4. First Red Scare Notes
First Red Scare and the Russian Revolution
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. Red Scare
3. Russian Revolution and American Repression
4. First Red Scare Notes
Sacco and Vanzetti Trial
1. Sacco and Vanzetti
2. Ben Shahan
3. First Red Scare Notes
Seattle General Strike
1. Overview: First Red Scare
2. The Seattle General Strike Project
3. Labor's Most Spectacular Revolt
4. First Red Scare Notes
Google Doc: First Red Scare Addendum
FEAR OF RADICAL IDEAS
Fear
In the closing decades of the 19th century, ideas associated with the writings of Karl Marx and the 1848 European revolutions were carried to the United States by immigrant workers. Trade union organizers and sympathizers with the effort of workers to fight for better pay and conditions were denounced as “communists” or “socialists” who wanted to overthrow the established order. From its earliest years, the century-long “war on communism” had the ulterior motives of curbing the trade union movement and stifling dissent.
The first major “Red Scare” coincided with a real war – World War I. Once war was declared against Germany in April 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act, making it a crime to interfere with military recruitment. The Sedition Act of 1918 – repealed three years later – prohibited saying or printing anything “disloyal…scurrilous, or abusive” about the government, or saying anything to bring the military into contempt or disrepute. Soon the prisons filled up with anti-war protesters, striking workers and immigrants seen as dangerously radical.
But when the Tsar was overthrown in 1917 and the Soviet Union was established a few years later, American fear of the Russians began to manifest in human form: namely, the Bolshevik agitator. Paranoia about Russian communists gripped the nation in what came to be known as the First Red Scare. In 1919 alone, anti-communist films included Bullin’ the Bullsheviki, Bolshevism on Trial and The Red Viper. That same year, U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered the arrest of more than 4,000 alleged communists, many of them Russian immigrants (the Union of Russian Workers was raided in 12 American cities).
In the following years, a spate of films depicted in detail the horrors of Russian communism; for instance, Red Russia Revealed (1923) showed Lenin and Trotsky (two Bolshevik leaders) feasting lavishly while ordinary Russians starved. Russians in the American imagination were either poor, abject victims of Bolshevism abroad, or they were diabolical Bolshevik extremists intent on consolidating power and obliterating freedom and prosperity right here in America. The term “Russian reds” was as popular as “Islamic extremists” is now and inspired a similar sense of revulsion and dread for many Americans.
Repression, part I
The mindset of the period was captured by these words of former President Theodore Roosevelt: “He who is not with us, absolutely and without reserve of any kind, is against us, and should be treated as an enemy alien.” These words were echoed by Attorney General John Ashcroft soon after the 9/11 attacks.
A few examples show what the atmosphere was like in 1917. Rose Pastor Stokes wrote a letter to a St. Louis newspaper that stated: “I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers.” She was convicted of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison. In the same year, 1917, Robert Goldstein of Los Angeles made a film about the American Revolution entitled “The Spirit of ’76.” It depicted British soldiers committing massacres and shooting women. The government argued that because the United States and Britain were allies in WWI in fighting the Germans, this film undermined the war effort. The government seized his film and the courts refused to order it returned to him. Goldstein was given ten years in prison for violating the Espionage Act.
The end of World War I did not bring about the end of repression. The fear of “Bolshevism” was manipulated to crush the growing trade union movement and to scare people into silence. In 1919, race riots broke out in two dozen American cities, as returning veterans came home to find a lack of jobs. They blamed African-American men, who had taken over much of the war work while they were away. The violence was horrific and the newspapers blamed “Bolshevik agitators” for stirring up racism amongst both white aggressors and black victims. White and black Americans who fought for racial equality were often denounced as “Communists” regardless of their political beliefs; Martin Luther King Junior would later be attacked a Communist for his emphasis on equality.
Repression, part II
As the country endured strikes, race riots, and bombings, the sense of hysteria grew. States passed sedition laws, and courts convicted people for criticizing the government, the Constitution or the flag. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer denounced “criminal aliens” for importing “Red” ideology and insisted that it was necessary to “tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories.” He pushed vigorously for an Immigration Act to allow for the deportation of aliens who were active in certain trade unions and compiled a list of 12 proscribed “subversive” organizations.
All around the country, the strikes of 1919 involving millions of longshoremen, stockyard workers, shoe workers, subway workers, steel workers, coal mines and members of the Boston Police were depicted in The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers as “Bolshevik” or “Soviet-inspired” or as a kind of “terror.” Anti-union fever was solidly bipartisan, with Democrats and Republicans both stridently denouncing labor organizing as an attack on America and its way of life. The Massachusetts Secretary of State Albert P. Langtry stated about political radicals: “If I had my way, [I would] take them out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty.” The US Senate passed a resolution urging the Attorney General to arrest and deport radical aliens, giving rise to what were called the Palmer Raids.
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted by A. Mitchell Palmer against labor unions, political radicals, socialists, communists, and others deemed “anti-American.” Over 10,000 Americans were arrested in broad, wildly undemocratic raids. Torture and illegal wiretaps were used to arrest people, with many innocent Americans being caught up in the raids.
Workers, Unions, and Strikes
The years following the end of World War I were a period of deep social tensions, aggravated by high wartime inflation. Food prices more than doubled between 1915 and 1920; clothing costs more than tripled, while wages did not rise. A steel strike that began in Chicago in 1919 became much more than a simple dispute between labor and management. The Steel Strike of 1919 became the focal point for profound social anxieties, especially fears of Bolshevism. Many American leaders believed that Bolshevik agents had infiltrated the country and were stirring up problems.
Organized labor had grown in strength during the course of the war. Many unions won recognition and the 12-hour workday was abolished. An 8-hour work day was instituted on war contract work and by 1919, half the country's workers had a 48-hour work week.
The war's end, however, was accompanied by labor turmoil, as labor demanded union recognition, shorter hours, and raises exceeding the inflation rate. Over 4 million workers--one fifth of the nation's workforce--participated in strikes in 1919, including 365,000 steelworkers and 400,000 miners. The number of striking workers would not be matched until the Depression year of 1937. The year began with a general strike in Seattle. Police offers in Boston went on strike, touching off several days of rioting and crime.
But the most tumultuous strike took place in the steel industry. Then some 350,000 steelworkers in 24 separate craft union went on strike as part of a drive by the American Federation of Labor to unionize the industry. From management's perspective, the steel strike represented the handiwork of radicals and professional labor agitators. The steel industry's leaders regarded the strike as a radical conspiracy to get the company to pay a 12-hour wage for eight hours' work.
At a time when Communists were seizing power in Hungary and were staging a revolt in Germany, and workers in Italy were seizing factories, some industrialists feared that the steel strike was the first step toward overturning the capitalist system.
The strike ended with the complete defeat of the unions. From labor's perspective, the corporations had triumphed through espionage, blacklists, and the denial of freedom of speech and assembly and through the complete unwillingness to recognize the right of collective bargaining with the workers' representatives.
During the 1920s, many of labor's gains during World War I and the Progressive era were rolled back. Membership in labor unions fell from 5 million to 3 million. The US Supreme Court outlawed picketing, overturned national child labor laws, and abolished minimum wage laws for women.
Fear
In the closing decades of the 19th century, ideas associated with the writings of Karl Marx and the 1848 European revolutions were carried to the United States by immigrant workers. Trade union organizers and sympathizers with the effort of workers to fight for better pay and conditions were denounced as “communists” or “socialists” who wanted to overthrow the established order. From its earliest years, the century-long “war on communism” had the ulterior motives of curbing the trade union movement and stifling dissent.
The first major “Red Scare” coincided with a real war – World War I. Once war was declared against Germany in April 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act, making it a crime to interfere with military recruitment. The Sedition Act of 1918 – repealed three years later – prohibited saying or printing anything “disloyal…scurrilous, or abusive” about the government, or saying anything to bring the military into contempt or disrepute. Soon the prisons filled up with anti-war protesters, striking workers and immigrants seen as dangerously radical.
But when the Tsar was overthrown in 1917 and the Soviet Union was established a few years later, American fear of the Russians began to manifest in human form: namely, the Bolshevik agitator. Paranoia about Russian communists gripped the nation in what came to be known as the First Red Scare. In 1919 alone, anti-communist films included Bullin’ the Bullsheviki, Bolshevism on Trial and The Red Viper. That same year, U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered the arrest of more than 4,000 alleged communists, many of them Russian immigrants (the Union of Russian Workers was raided in 12 American cities).
In the following years, a spate of films depicted in detail the horrors of Russian communism; for instance, Red Russia Revealed (1923) showed Lenin and Trotsky (two Bolshevik leaders) feasting lavishly while ordinary Russians starved. Russians in the American imagination were either poor, abject victims of Bolshevism abroad, or they were diabolical Bolshevik extremists intent on consolidating power and obliterating freedom and prosperity right here in America. The term “Russian reds” was as popular as “Islamic extremists” is now and inspired a similar sense of revulsion and dread for many Americans.
Repression, part I
The mindset of the period was captured by these words of former President Theodore Roosevelt: “He who is not with us, absolutely and without reserve of any kind, is against us, and should be treated as an enemy alien.” These words were echoed by Attorney General John Ashcroft soon after the 9/11 attacks.
A few examples show what the atmosphere was like in 1917. Rose Pastor Stokes wrote a letter to a St. Louis newspaper that stated: “I am for the people and the government is for the profiteers.” She was convicted of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison. In the same year, 1917, Robert Goldstein of Los Angeles made a film about the American Revolution entitled “The Spirit of ’76.” It depicted British soldiers committing massacres and shooting women. The government argued that because the United States and Britain were allies in WWI in fighting the Germans, this film undermined the war effort. The government seized his film and the courts refused to order it returned to him. Goldstein was given ten years in prison for violating the Espionage Act.
The end of World War I did not bring about the end of repression. The fear of “Bolshevism” was manipulated to crush the growing trade union movement and to scare people into silence. In 1919, race riots broke out in two dozen American cities, as returning veterans came home to find a lack of jobs. They blamed African-American men, who had taken over much of the war work while they were away. The violence was horrific and the newspapers blamed “Bolshevik agitators” for stirring up racism amongst both white aggressors and black victims. White and black Americans who fought for racial equality were often denounced as “Communists” regardless of their political beliefs; Martin Luther King Junior would later be attacked a Communist for his emphasis on equality.
Repression, part II
As the country endured strikes, race riots, and bombings, the sense of hysteria grew. States passed sedition laws, and courts convicted people for criticizing the government, the Constitution or the flag. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer denounced “criminal aliens” for importing “Red” ideology and insisted that it was necessary to “tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories.” He pushed vigorously for an Immigration Act to allow for the deportation of aliens who were active in certain trade unions and compiled a list of 12 proscribed “subversive” organizations.
All around the country, the strikes of 1919 involving millions of longshoremen, stockyard workers, shoe workers, subway workers, steel workers, coal mines and members of the Boston Police were depicted in The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers as “Bolshevik” or “Soviet-inspired” or as a kind of “terror.” Anti-union fever was solidly bipartisan, with Democrats and Republicans both stridently denouncing labor organizing as an attack on America and its way of life. The Massachusetts Secretary of State Albert P. Langtry stated about political radicals: “If I had my way, [I would] take them out in the yard every morning and shoot them, and the next day would have a trial to see whether they were guilty.” The US Senate passed a resolution urging the Attorney General to arrest and deport radical aliens, giving rise to what were called the Palmer Raids.
The Palmer Raids were a series of raids conducted by A. Mitchell Palmer against labor unions, political radicals, socialists, communists, and others deemed “anti-American.” Over 10,000 Americans were arrested in broad, wildly undemocratic raids. Torture and illegal wiretaps were used to arrest people, with many innocent Americans being caught up in the raids.
Workers, Unions, and Strikes
The years following the end of World War I were a period of deep social tensions, aggravated by high wartime inflation. Food prices more than doubled between 1915 and 1920; clothing costs more than tripled, while wages did not rise. A steel strike that began in Chicago in 1919 became much more than a simple dispute between labor and management. The Steel Strike of 1919 became the focal point for profound social anxieties, especially fears of Bolshevism. Many American leaders believed that Bolshevik agents had infiltrated the country and were stirring up problems.
Organized labor had grown in strength during the course of the war. Many unions won recognition and the 12-hour workday was abolished. An 8-hour work day was instituted on war contract work and by 1919, half the country's workers had a 48-hour work week.
The war's end, however, was accompanied by labor turmoil, as labor demanded union recognition, shorter hours, and raises exceeding the inflation rate. Over 4 million workers--one fifth of the nation's workforce--participated in strikes in 1919, including 365,000 steelworkers and 400,000 miners. The number of striking workers would not be matched until the Depression year of 1937. The year began with a general strike in Seattle. Police offers in Boston went on strike, touching off several days of rioting and crime.
But the most tumultuous strike took place in the steel industry. Then some 350,000 steelworkers in 24 separate craft union went on strike as part of a drive by the American Federation of Labor to unionize the industry. From management's perspective, the steel strike represented the handiwork of radicals and professional labor agitators. The steel industry's leaders regarded the strike as a radical conspiracy to get the company to pay a 12-hour wage for eight hours' work.
At a time when Communists were seizing power in Hungary and were staging a revolt in Germany, and workers in Italy were seizing factories, some industrialists feared that the steel strike was the first step toward overturning the capitalist system.
The strike ended with the complete defeat of the unions. From labor's perspective, the corporations had triumphed through espionage, blacklists, and the denial of freedom of speech and assembly and through the complete unwillingness to recognize the right of collective bargaining with the workers' representatives.
During the 1920s, many of labor's gains during World War I and the Progressive era were rolled back. Membership in labor unions fell from 5 million to 3 million. The US Supreme Court outlawed picketing, overturned national child labor laws, and abolished minimum wage laws for women.