On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the war that that took 8.5 million military casualties had finally ended. World War 1, the bloodiest conflict in human history ended without a surrender, just an agreement to stop fighting. The armistice was the fastest way to end the war's misery and carnage. Finally, America's soldiers were coming home. Something truly worth celebrating. But as the soldiers came home to America, would their welcome be more than just an embrace? America called them out to service and was now calling them back. Secretary of Interior Lane asked President Wilson, “What answer is due them, and what answer is worthy of us?" What would become of the "Returning Soldier".
Both Secretary Lane and President Wilson were keenly aware that the current economy was not in a position to "provide immediate employment for all of the men of our returning armies". Prior to the war, the nation was in a recession but entry into the war unleashed massive U.S. federal spending which shifted national production from civilian to war goods. Between 1914 and 1918, some 3 million people were added to the military and half a million to the government. Unemployment dropped from 7.9% before the war to 1.4% in part because workers were drawn into new manufacturing jobs and because the military draft removed from many young men from the civilian labor force. During the war, American factories had produced 21,000 airplane engines, over 300 million pounds of explosives, 3.5 million rifles and 20 million artillery rounds. But with the war now over, there was now a surplus of workers and a deficit of production plans, and Secretary of Interior, Franklin Lane asked the question, "What shall be done with the Returning Soldiers?" In his annual report to the President, Secretary Lane inquired, "What shall that welcome be? Is it to be merely one of glad greetings, the emotional outburst of at the moment, or shall it take on a more permanent form, one which will be adequate in its largeness and lasting in its nature?" Lane wrote of the many soldiers coming home, all with the same question in their minds, "What is to be my chance?"
"They will be looking at us too! And in their look will be a query, one thought over in the trench at night and on the long slow 'slog, slog, slog' of the day's march: 'What is my life to be when I get home? Am I to go hustling for a job or will the old place be mine? But if a girl has that place and wishes to be her own mistress in the future -- what then? School? Oh, I can't go back to school. When I left, I was only 21, but now I'm 31. And I have lived with men, fought with them, been sometimes bested by them, learned to know them in all their many littlenessess and their great goodesses. Responsibility has been mine, and the still silhouettes of the night have given me chance to think and wonder why I am and why it should make any difference whether I saw home again or not. I am back now, back for a man's life. This America that called me out has called me back, and it will have something for me to do. Now, what is to be my chance?
This will all be implied in the look that they give us as we hold them by both shoulders to find the mark of war upon their faces.
And what is to be our answer? What answer is due them, and what answer is worthy of us?”
-Secretary Franklin Lane, Department of Interior 1918
President Woodrow Wilson did not want to leave these men to chance. In his State of the Union address he urged Congress to welcome the soldiers with a job. Wilson urged Congress to focus not on those highly skilled or connected men who could easily find work, but the others who find it difficult to obtain work. Those young men who offered their lives to save the world and protect our freedoms. For these young men who may find it difficult to find work every public works project should be renewed to put these men to work.
"The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not, however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the farms, all those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers will find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and employment. But there will be others who will be at a loss where to gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in the way of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor which should not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me important, therefore, that the development of public works of every sort should be promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should be created for unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should be made for such developments of our unused lands and our natural resources as we have hitherto lacked stimulation to undertake."
The President urged Congress to consider the Secretary of Interior's plan to offer each soldier a farm with nothing more than the expectation that they pay back the government out of the profits they make. Wilson argued that if the "States were willing and able to cooperate", then about 300 million acres of land could be made available for these new farms. Forests could be cleared; swamps could be drained and aid lands could be irrigated. All over the union there was land that could be given to the thousands of returning solders.
"I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report and before your Committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and cutover lands which might, if the States were willing and able to cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but enlarge the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted to the Department of the Interior. It is possible in dealing with our unused land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help themselves' and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the possible methods out in a way which is worthy of your most friendly attention."
In the Secretary's report, Lane explained that in doing so, the country could solve several problems America faced. Besides helping the soldier, himself, it would protect the labor market from being swamped with a surplus of labor. Other advantages included spreading out our population across the rural lands of our nation and "affixing to our soil a large number of the best-proved Americans". Lane believed that soldiers would make good farmers and that would be a blessing to the country. To make this happen, the Secretary urged Congress to expand the land Reclamation Service on a large scale. Congress had already appropriated $200,000 for an examination into the reclaimable land resources in our country including existing swamp land and tracts of land which had been recently deforested. The annual report included a list of each state and the number of acres available. The opportunity for a man to make a living on a small farm consisting of 10 to 30 acres seemed endless.
In 1919, debate over the Secretary's plan commonly known as "Homes for Soldiers" was debated in House hearings. Committee's debated the cost of providing homestead agreements for 640,000 soldiers to be about 125 million in the first year. The details of these debates are well beyond the scope of this article. Unfortunately, by 1920, the United States was in a severe recession, and the plight of the returning soldiers worsened. Veteran found it difficult to work and complained of distant and unhelpful counselors. For black veterans the transition to civilian service was even worse. Military service emboldened their claims to the rights of citizenship, and many black veterans suffered and were harassed by white racists. Lynching doubled between 1917 and 1919, and cities across the country experienced horrible race riots that resulted in much damage and death. Veterans felt as though the government both state and local was doing nothing to address their needs. Realizing they needed a political voice, a group of military officers established the American Legion in 1919. The Legion quickly became one of the most politically powerful veterans lobby in the nation, drawing 843,000 members in its first year.
Armistice day remained a national holiday, not only to remember the end of World War I, but also to honor those returning soldiers. In 1954, the holiday was changed to "Veterans Day" to honor veterans of all wars. In 1915, Punch magazine published a poem by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae about all the fallen soldiers buried under the hardy poppies, entitled "In Flanders Field". Moina Michael red the poem and it inspired her to make and sell red silk poppies to raise money to support returning veterans. In the 1920s, the American Legion adopted the poppy as its official U.S. national emblem of remembrance. Today, Americans wear a poppy on Memorial Day with the leaf at 11:00 to remember the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. On Veterans day and hopefully every day, we remember all those who have returned by asking "What answer is due them, and what answer is worthy of us?"
References
Presidency.ucsb.edu. (2019). Sixth Annual Message | The American Presidency Project. [online] Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/sixth-annual-message-6 [Accessed 11 Nov. 2019].
HISTORY. (2019). Why World War I Ended With an Armistice Instead of a Surrender. [online] Available at: https://www.history.com/news/world-war-i-armistice-germany-allies [Accessed 11 Nov. 2019].
Lane, F. (1919). Work and homes for returning soldiers. Washington: G.P.O.
Maloney, W. (2019). Veterans Day: Struggling to Build a New Life after War | Library of Congress Blog. [online] Blogs.loc.gov. Available at: https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2017/11/veterans-day-struggling-to-build-a-new-life-after-war/ [Accessed 11 Nov. 2019].
Reclamation Era, Volumes 9-10. (1918). U.S. Department of the Interior, Water and Power Resources Service, p.3.
ThoughtCo. (2019). How the War Changed the Economy for Good. [online] Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/world-war-i-economy-4157436 [Accessed 11 Nov. 2019].
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