Red Scare
The climate of repression which developed during
World War One continued after the end of the war: The government interest
focused on communism and Bolsheviks. These people were disrespectfully called
the "reds". The time period of this anti-communist mood occurred between 1918
and 1921. A. Mitchell Palmer, Wilson's Attorney General, believed communism was
'eating its way into the homes of the American workmen.' In his essay
'The Case Against the
Reds,' Palmer claimed that 'tongues of revolutionary heat
were licking the alters of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school
bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace
marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.'
1919, the passage of both
Prohibition and Woman Suffrage, and the Chicago race riot, made everything even
worse. Followed by a series of terror acts of anarchists began in summer 1919;
on June 2, bombs went off in eight cities, including the Capital of the States,
where Palmer's home was almost completely destroyed. The terrorists names were
never discovered. Although there were only about 70, 000 Communists in the
United States in 1919, Palmer viewed them as responsible for a wide range of
problems in America, including the bombings. Encouraged by Congress, which had
refused to seat the duly elected socialist from Wisconsin, Victor Berger, Mitchell
began a series of propaganda raids against communists and anarchists. Striking
without warning and without warrants, Palmer's men smashed union offices and
the headquarters' of Communist and Socialist assemblies down. Foreigners who had less rights were blamed.
The 'Red Scare' also
strengthened the Americans belief in their freedoms by comparison to other
nations. Two happenings show the
absurdity of some of these fears. One is the case of the Connecticut clothing
salesmen who were sentenced to sixth months in jail simply for saying that
Lenin was clever. Another example was a case in Chicago. A navy member shot a
man because he forgot to rise during the American national anthem.
