USA BEFORE THE WALL STREET CRASH



ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR




From 1913 to 1921 the President of the United States was Thomas Woodrow Wilson, he kept the United States neutral during the first years of the war. After increasing pressure, the United States declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. Although the US entered the conflict militarily in 1917, it had participated financially since 1915, issuing war funding, especially to France and England.



CONSEQUENCES OF PARTICIPATION IN WAR




The United States won the war, but they also had other advantages. The war was not fought in America, so they did not have to rebuild infrastructures and there were not so many deaths. Many other states had to rebuild their cities due to the bombardments. America, thanks to their advantages, became the world leaders for the first time, overtaking England.


ISOLATIONIST POLITICS




In 1920, following the sacrifices of the First World War, the population of the United States voted for the first time by universal suffrage so also women voted. The winner of these elections was the republican Harding. He restored the isolationist policy and had a socially conservative thought that favored the richest classes without providing interventions in favor of the poor. The Republican administration adopted protectionist measures, imposing high customs tariffs to defend home products, favoring the big industries and financial companies. His successors, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, also maintained an isolationist policy. American isolationism came to an end during World War II, particularly after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese enemies in December 1941.

IMMIGRATION ACT




The Immigration Act of 1924, was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern hemisphere, and provided funding and an enforcement mechanism to carry out the longstanding ban on other immigrants.
The 1924 act took the place of earlier acts to effectively ban all immigration from Asia and set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere, an 80% reduction from the average before World War I.
According to the US Department of State's Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity." Congressional opposition was minimal. Americans in the 1920s began to be very intolerant of everything that was not American and wanted to limit interactions between the US and abroad.
The act reduced total immigration from 357,803 between 1923 and 1924 to 164,667 between 1924 and 1925.

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