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Draft act
a draft was necessary to raise the large army that was to be sent to France. Congress passed the draft act in 1917. It required the registration of all males between the ages of 18 and 45, and it did not allow for a man to purchase his exemption from the draft.
For the first time, women were allowed in the armed forces. -
War by act of Germany
German foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann secretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance with the Zimmermann note. News of the Zimmermann note leaked out to the public, infuriating Americans. -
The prohibition experiment
The 18th Amendment, passed in 1919, banned alcohol. It was enforced by the Volstead Act. Prohibition was popular in the South, where white southerners wanted to keep stimulants out of the hands of blacks, and in the West, where alcohol was associated with crime and corruption. -
KKK
The Ku Klux Klan (Knights of the Invisible Empire) grew in the early 1920s out of the growing intolerance and prejudice of the American public. It was most popular in the Midwest and the South. The Klan was antiforeign, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Jewish, antipacifist, anti-Communist, anti-internationalist, antievolutionist, antibootlegger, antigambling, antiadultery, and anti-birth control -
Cars
The automobile industry started an industrial revolution in the 1920s. It created a new industrial system based on assembly-line methods and mass-production techniques. Detroit became the motorcar capital of the world. -
Raising tariffs
Because businessmen did not want Europe flooding American markets with cheap goods after the war, Congress passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Law in 1922, raising the tariff from 27% to 35%.