scholarly journals Veterans as a Social Movement: The American Legion, the First Hoover Commission, and the Making of the American Welfare State

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-354
Author(s):  
Olivier Burtin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Veterans Affairs ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
American Legion ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
National Debate

ABSTRACTThis article challenges the conventional view of veterans’ politics in the United States as an “iron triangle” or a “subgovernment,” terms that connote a low-profile field dominated by a small number of elite actors operating consensually behind closed doors. It shows instead that veterans’ affairs were at the center of a heated national debate to which both grassroots activists and national leaders contributed as part of a larger social movement, as demonstrated by the controversy over the First Hoover Commission. Created by Congress in 1947 to find ways to make the executive branch more efficient, the commission’s proposals to reform veterans’ affairs were all defeated by the countercampaign of the largest and most influential veterans’ group of the era, the American Legion. Former soldiers were not alone (they benefited from the assistance of key state actors such as the heads of the Veterans Administration and of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs) but their mobilization proved decisive. This episode shows that even veterans of World War II, traditionally seen as the most deserving cohort of former soldiers in US history (the “Greatest Generation”), had to organize to defend their benefits against attacks. The privileged position of veterans in the US welfare state is therefore less the result of their exalted cultural status (as is often presumed) than of their ability to mobilize politically and to override the preferences of significant numbers of public and private actors—just like any other group making claims on the state.

Wheat Breeding and the Exercise of American Power, 1940-1970

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Perkins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Agricultural Science ◽  
World War ◽  
American Power ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Foreign Governments ◽  
Natural Resource Base

American power at the end of World War II was paramount. The usual image of this might, however, is formed more by the array of military and industrial components of American culture than by something as seemingly mundane as wheat breeding. Nuclear-tipped missiles, airplane and tank factories, engineering prowess, and motivated soldiers are more generally assumed to be the components of military strength, not scientists patiently crossing one strain of wheat with another and searching through the progeny for a better variety. In the direct exercise of military power, of course, the weapon systems and soldiers are the most important elements of power. Armies, however, exist only on the foundation of food supplies that are adequate for both the military personnel and their civilian support force. American strategists in both world wars were acutely aware of the role of agriculture in the projection of military might, and they considerably amplified agriculture’s importance in the aftermath of World War II. Specifically, through a variety of public and private initiatives, wheat breeding and other lines of agricultural science became an integral part of postwar American strategic planning. Put somewhat differently, after 1945, wheat breeding by American scientists became more than just an exercise in the modernization of agriculture. Old motivations for seeking new varieties did not disappear, but new motivations arose to justify expenditures. In addition, American scientists came to do their work not only in the United States for American farmers but overseas for foreign governments. Wheat breeding acquired ideological dimensions more elaborate than simply “the promo tion of progress.” Instead, wheat breeding and other agricultural science became part of the “battle for freedom.” In the process, many countries moved to new relationships with each other and with their own natural resource base. How did wheat breeding get caught up with strategic and national security considerations? It is necessary to follow a somewhat convoluted trail to answer this question, and the story can begin with the status of the United States after the collapse of Germany and Japan in 1945.

A Historical Overview of Music Teacher Education in the United States

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip M. Hash
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Music Education ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Music Teacher ◽  
Music Teacher Education ◽  
Public And Private

This chapter examines the history of music teacher education in the United States from its humble beginnings in the 19th century through the varied preservice and advanced programs offered today. The chapter describes the evolution of the field over the past 200 years and speculates on the future of the profession through a historical lens. Most music teachers of the 18th and early 19th centuries received little formal preparation in either music or pedagogy and earned most of their living in a trade. Around 1830, music teacher education began on an institutional basis in singing conventions, teacher institutes, and private academies. State normal schools and some conservatories extended this work in the mid-19th century by offering instruction in pedagogy and “public school music.” Colleges and universities followed suit around 1900 and, two decades later, began awarding undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education. These programs expanded a great deal through World War II and continued to develop in response to changing needs, values, and priorities of society. Today, initial preparation is highly accessible through public and private colleges and universities throughout the country. The same is true of graduate-level instruction, which will likely become more prevalent as institutions continue to develop fully online master’s and doctoral programs.

Not Ozzie and Harriet: Postwar Divorce and the American Liberal Welfare State

1998 ◽  
Vol 23 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine L. Caldwell
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Preservation ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
State Regime ◽  
Twentieth Century America

This article analyzes divorce as a technology of governance in twentieth-century America in order to examine the emergence of a rights-based liberal welfare-state regime during the postwar era. The author offers an interpretation of the post–World War II “divorce boom” that challenges prevailing notions of postwar domestic tranquillity and highlights the legal formalization of family relations and the administration of the developing welfare state. The article posits an important shift in postwar public policy regarding divorce from the policing of public morality through family preservation to the regulation of public welfare through family structures. The legal consequences of this shift are explored at the local level by focusing on the “problem” of the Chicago divorce courts and the frustrated attempts of postwar reformers in Illinois to employ the traditional methods and rhetoric of Progressive Era reform. At the national level, the author examines the formulation of new governmental objectives and individual rights in the liberal welfare-state regime through an analysis of the United States Supreme Court's decisions regarding migratory divorce.

Trances, Myth, Bachelor Machines, and Abstractions: Queer Experimental Film in the Cold War Era (1943–1962)

2021 ◽  
pp. 280-307
Author(s):  
Juan Antonio Suárez
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Body ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
World War ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Space ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Experimental Cinema ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter surveys the emergence and development of a queer experimental cinema in the United States between the early 1940s and the early 1960s. It locates queer experimental film within post–World War II culture, explores the conceptions of sexuality that subtend it, and discusses its main thematic concerns, stylistic gestures, and subgenres. Against earlier readings that stress the subjective, introspective character of this body of work, the chapter argues that these films are also forms of subcultural material practice: they sexualize public and private space, upend traditional myths, articulate heterodox conceptions of the body, and make peculiar uses of everyday objects and substances. In the process, they cast sexuality and desire as a series of unclassifiable impulses and affects that attach to varied gender and corporeal configurations indiscriminately. The chapter considers well-known filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos, Harry Smith, and Marie Menken, along with lesser-known figures such as Willard Maas, Theodor Huff, Sara Katryn Arledge, and Jim Davis.

Some contributions of the Department of Veterans Affairs to the epidemiology of multiple sclerosis

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 1007-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
JF Kurtzke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Multiple Sclerosis ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Veterans Affairs ◽  
Department Of Veterans Affairs ◽  
World War ◽  
Class 1 ◽  
Main Series ◽  
The Military

The first class 1 treatment trial ever conducted in multiple sclerosis (MS) was a Veterans Administration Cooperative Study. This led us to explore MS in the military–veteran populations of the United States in three main series: Army men hospitalized with final diagnoses of MS in World War II, all veterans of World War II and the Korean Conflict, and veterans of later service up to 1994. In each series, all cases had been matched with pre-illness military peers. These series provide major information on its clinical features, course and prognosis, including survival, by sex and race (white men and women; black men), as well as risk factors for occurrence, course, and survival. They comprise the only available nationwide morbidity distributions of MS in the United States. Veterans who are service-connected for MS by the Department of Veterans Affairs and matched with their military peers remain a unique and currently available resource for further clinical and epidemiological study of this disease.

The Synthetic Liquid Fuels Program: Energy Politics in the Truman Era

1980 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. K. Vietor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Liquid Hydrocarbon ◽  
The United States ◽  
Liquid Fuels ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Production Techniques ◽  
Question Today

As the end of the era of abundant natural petroleum oils approaches, the United States finds itself heavily committed to a way of life based on cheap liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Whether such fuels will be available at any price in adequate quantities in the future, is the question today. Professor Vietor shows that it was also a serious question for some years after World War II, and that the United States carried a long way towards definitive demonstration a program for the development of high-volume synthetic liquid fuels production techniques. What that program accomplished; how the interests, public and private, who were responsible for the American fuel supply reacted to it; and why it was shelved for 25 years are among the points Vietor covers. The reader is left to weigh for himself the several reasons why this program was sidetracked, but he can hardly fail to conclude that where such fundamental matters as energy policy are concerned, American planning has been distressingly short range.

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