0.3 Great war (part ii)  (Page 2/16)

Gregory and Burleson targeted thousands of suspected enemies of the state to include such prominent Socialists as Eugene Debs, Mary Harris Jones (aka “Mother Jones), Emma Goldstein and Max Eastman because of their use of the US mail to distribute what Gregory and Burleson considered to be un-American literature. Besides Socialist newspapers such as The Call , Burleson prohibited the delivery of what he considered to be anti-British publications such as The Irish World and The Gaelic American .

Anti-German fervor during the Great War resulted in the renaming of German (or German-sounding) food. Sauerkraut became liberty cabbage. Frankfurters became hot dogs, and Salisbury Steak turned into meat loaf. The American Defense Society (an organization established to protect the US in the wake of the Lusitania sinking), with President Teddy Roosevelt as its honorary president, petitioned Congress to prohibit the study of German in all public schools. They also called for compulsory military training for all men between 18 and 21, and for “greater activity in the internment of enemy aliens and sympathizers.”

Extralegal organizations, such as the Wisconsin Loyalty League sought to control their relatively large German population as well as their own elected officials who questioned the war. For example, Wisconsin Senator Bob LaFollette, a Progressive Democrat, decried American entry into the war on the basis that the US had indeed been breaking international law by shipping explosives on civilian ships (such as the Lusitania ) and thus going to war to protect neutral rights was absurd. Ex-president Teddy Roosevelt called LaFollette a “shadow Hun” and “the most sinister enemy of democracy in the United States.”

Wisconsin voters from the industrial southeast part of the state seemed to side with LaFollette because the voters of Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, elected a string of Socialist mayors to include Emil Seidel (1910-1916) and the longest sitting Socialist politician on US history, Daniel Hoan (1916-1940). They also sent this nation’s first Socialist congressman to the US House of Representatives: Victor Berger (1910-1912, 1918-1920, 1922-1928). Wisconsin voters seemed to be out of step with the majority of American leader such as Gregory. “May God have mercy on [dissenters],” said the US Attorney General, “for they need expect none from an outraged people and an avenging government.”

In early September, Congress passed a bill that required all German-language newspapers published in the United States to print an English translation “of any comment respecting the Government of the United States, or of any nation with which Germany is at war, its policies, international relations, the state or conduct of the war, or any matter relating thereto,” according to Senator William King (D-Utah) in his attempt to rid this country of newspapers that spread, as he called it, “the blackest treason.”

In 1919, the US Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage and Sedition Acts. Charles Schenck was one of the leaders of the Socialist Party of America and as such oversaw the distribution of pamphlets, to include tens of thousands sent to men of draft age, urging them to not serve if drafted arguing that the draft violated the Thirteenth Amendment. In a unanimous decision, the thrice-wounded Civil War veteran Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, stated “[w]hen a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.” In other words, the needs of the state supersede the needs of the individual and thus dissent was codified.