Making Men Moral: Social Engineering During the Great War (The American social experience): 8 - Hardcover

Bristow, Nancy K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814712207 ISBN 13: 9780814712207

Publisher: NYU Press, 1995

Synopsis

On May 29, 1917, Mrs. E. M. Craise, citizen of Denver, Colorado, penned a letter to President Woodrow Wilson, which concluded, We have surrendered to your absolute control our hearts' dearest treasures--our sons. If their precious bodies that have cost us so dear should be torn to shreds by German shot and shells we will try to live on in the hope of meeting them again in the blessed Country of happy reunions. But, Mr. President, if the hell-holes that infest their training camps should trip up their unwary feet and they be returned to us besotted degenerate wrecks of their former selves cursed with that hell-born craving for alcohol, we can have no such hope.

Anxious about the United States' pending entry into the Great War, fearful that their sons would be polluted by the scourges of prostitution, venereal disease, illicit sex, and drink that ran rampant in the training camps, countless Americans sent such missives to their government officials. In response to this deluge, President Wilson created the Commission on Training Camp Activities to ensure the purity of the camp environment. Training camps would henceforth mold not only soldiers, but model citizens who, after the war, would return to their communities, spreading white, urban, middle-class values throughout the country.

What began as a federal program designed to eliminate sexually transmitted diseases soon mushroomed into a powerful social force intent on replacing America's many cultures with a single, homogenous one. Though committed to the positive methods of education and recreation, the reformers did not hesitate to employ repression when necessary. Those not conforming to the prescribed vision of masculinity often faced exclusion from the reformers' idealized society, or sometimes even imprisonment. Social engineering ruled the day.

Combining social, cultural, and military history and illustrating the deep divisions among reformers themselves, Nancy K. Bristow, with the aid of dozens of evocative photographs, here brings to life a pivotal era in the history of the U.S., revealing the complex relationship between the nation's competing cultures, progressive reform efforts, and the Great War.

About this title

Review:

"Rachel Rubin and Jeff Melnick show us the skinny on pop's melting pot. The cauldron does not burn off immigrant character, creating American sameness, but intensifies its many tastes. Ladle after ladle of ethnic infusions go into the pot--"Scarface" to "Gypsy Punks", pachuco zoot suiters to Ravi Shankar, Jimmy Cliff to "West Side Story". They compound the terms of race and place until they reform the mainstream. And, suddenly, that old wasp canon has become just another ethnic style."
- W. T. Lhamon, Jr., author, most recently, of "Jump Jim Crow: Lost Plays, Lyrics, and Street Prose of the First Atlantic Popular Culture"

"A sprawling and uniquely synthetic account of the role immigrants have played as performers, entrepreneurs, and as the subjects of the mass culture industry. Brings a stunning, transnational array of immigrant cultural forms, immigration policies, and cohorts together in new and important ways."
-Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

"In this eminently readable and insightful overview of U.S. cultural history in the last century, Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey provide a view into the roiling production of American culture."
-"Journal of American Ethnic History",

"A thought-provoking examination of immigration history"
-"Choice",

"Eloquently written"
-"Popular Music",

Synopsis:

In response to public demands, President Wilson created the Commission on Training Camp Activities in 1917 to ensure the purity of the military training camp environment. Bristow (history, U. of Puget Sound) provides a history of this federal program, originally designed to eliminate venereal disea

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0814712207
• ISBN 13: 9780814712207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 348