Decentralizing the Railroads after the Great War

Although the Great War had ended and the Treaty of Versailles had been signed more than a year earlier, the United States was still working to return to a state of pre-war normalcy and peacetime production by the end of 1920. Manufacturing of war goods was scaled down and private businesses that were commandeered for wartime production purposes, were slowly being turned back over to their respective owners. Soldiers returning home were re-integrated into the working-class society, and women were cast back into their traditional pre-war homemaker roles. Despite this attempt at reestablishing the prewar societal structure, the US government received a great deal of pushback on several of its post-war policies from the general population ("Where Labor is Unfair" 8). These policies were seen by the public as concessions to big business from the national government, and thus warned that an end to the decades of heightened government regulations, trust busting, and union memberships seen in the Progressive Era of American politics before the war may have been approaching. A key example of this new-found public distrust in post-war American policy is presented in the Chicago Tribune on October 29, 1920, where the author of "Where Labor is Unfair" addresses and condemns the public outcry against the Transportation Act of 1920. This act's main function was to facilitate the return of railroads back into private hands, and thus appeared to many as a drastic reversal of pre-war Progressive politics by the government. Despite the unprecedented actions taken by the US government during World War One to implement heavy wartime production and subsequent return of industry to private ownership, the public's fears of returning to the days of the R...

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.... After examining the terms laid out in the act itself, the actions taken by Congress in the early 1920's, and the views of President Wilson during his tenure, it is concluded that the public's fears were largely unfounded, and that the Transportation Act of 1920 served to benefit railroad workers and consumers alike.

Works Cited

Rich, Edgar J. "The Transportation Act of 1920" The American Economic Review 10:3 (1920): 507-27. Print

Splawn, Walter M. W. "Railroad Regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission" The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 201 (1939): 152-64. Print.

Transportation Act, 1920. Boston: Old Colony Trust Conpany, 1920. Print.

"Where Labor Is Unfair." Chicago Daily Tribune 29 Oct. 1920: 8. Print.

Wilson, Woodrow, and Edward S. Corwin. Division and Reunion. New York: Longmans, Green, and, 1921. Print.