Post-World War I

Several amendments were added to the U.S. Constitution soon after the end of World War I. In 1919, the Prohibition movement (which had been active for decades) succeeded in ratifying the 18th Amendment, which banned the manufacture, sale, importation, and exportation of alcohol. Recall that the Prohibition movement was started by Christian women, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, who were upset at the enormous harm caused by alcohol to so many families. Other groups joined in the effort to ban alcohol, including the Anti-Saloon League, which was disgusted by the harmful effect of saloons on communities.

Congress quickly passed the Volstead Act in 1919 to enforce Prohibition, but lacked enough federal agents to enforce it. Many secretly ignored and violated the ban, and "organized crime" profited from the illegal trade in alcohol. After the Great Depression hit, power in the country shifted from the Republicans to Democrats in the early 1930s. Democrats led the effort to ratify the 21st Amendment to repeal Prohibition. But even now there are several "dry" counties which do not allow the sale of alcohol.

Debate: Was Prohibition desirable? Has alcohol caused more harm than good?

In 1920, women obtained the universal right to vote by virtue of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. Women already voted in many states by that time, but this amendment ensured they could vote everywhere.

Non-war-related developments in the decade of the 1910s had a significant impact after the war. In 1914, Congress passed the Clayton (Antitrust) Act, which expanded bans on anti-competitive activities and monopolization. It prohibited "price discrimination" (charging two identical customers different prices), tying agreements (a powerful company "tying" one product to another by requiring a customer to buy both), and interlocking directors among competitors (the same people serving as directors of UPS and Federal Express, for example). To help enforce laws against unfair business practices, Congress also passed the Federal Trade Commission Act in 1914. This established the Federal Trade Commission to investigate unfair trade practices and issue "cease and desist orders" to stop them.

In 1917, Congress created territorial status for Puerto Rico by passing the Jones Act. This also gave citizens of Puerto Rico full citizenship in the United States.

Social Darwinism

Intellectual thought in the early 1900s was dominated by an embrace of "social Darwinism." The theory of evolution was proposed by Charles Darwin in England in 1859 and was gradually promoted by atheists in schools. It was widely rejected by scientists in the first several decades, but pressure built to replace Christianity with Darwinism at universities and schools. The theory became more popular in England than in France, and was not widely accepted or taught in the United States in the 19th century. (To this day most Americans reject the theory of evolution as it is taught in schools.^[5])

In business, advocates of "social Darwinism" included Herbert Spencer in England and William Graham Sumner in the United States, and they felt that civilization depended on unregulated business activity so that only the fit would survive and thrive.

Intellectuals began expanding the "survival of the fittest" theory of evolution to social issues, and advocated that the "unfit" should be eliminated from mankind just as Darwin claimed they were naturally eliminated from the animal world. This led to the "eugenics" movement, which taught that those with the highest IQ or other advantageous traits should be favored, and those with low IQ or undesirable traits should be prevented from having children, or even eliminated themselves. These ideas became very popular in England and Germany. Planned Parenthood, which does abortions today, was founded by a believer in eugenics: Margaret Sanger. One of her many offensive views was that government approval should be required before a married couple can have a child.

In the United States, the eugenics movement and social Darwinism found its biggest following at universities like Harvard, which had already been drifting away from their Christian roots. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who served on the High Court for over 30 years, studied at Harvard and became a big believer in Darwinism. Previously he had fought against slavery in the Civil War, but then he abandoned his youthful morality and instead embraced the Darwinian utilitarianism, including eugenics. Justices Holmes thereby moved away from morality and logic, and towards his own view of the teachings of "experience". "The life of the law has not been logic, but experience," he famously said.

The State of Virginia implemented eugenics by forcibly sterilizing a woman without her knowledge or consent, rendering her incapable of having children, because she supposedly had a low IQ (actually, historians now say her IQ was not very low by today's standards). A lawyer sued on her behalf, and the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Justice Holmes wrote the decision, in which he declared, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927). Every other Justice, except one, agreed with this horrific decision, and it is considered one of the worst decisions in American history.

One person who stood up to the eugenics movement and the teaching of Darwinism in schools was William Jennings Bryan. The conflict reached its peak at the Scopes Trial in 1925, also known as the Monkey Trial.