America Turns Inward After World War One

VOICE TWO:

Cox supported the ideas of President Wilson. He believed the United States should take an active part in world affairs. Harding opposed the idea of internationalism. He believed the United States should worry only about events within its own borders.

VOICE ONE:

Young Americans had grown up with presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Both Wilson and Roosevelt had active foreign policies. Both helped start the nation on the road to becoming a major world power.

Most Americans did not want to hear about Europe and international peace organizations any more.

Instead, Americans became more concerned with material things. During World War One, they had lived under many kinds of restrictions. The federal government had controlled railroads, shipping, and industrial production. At the end of the war, these controls were lifted. Industries that had been making war supplies began making products for a peacetime economy.

VOICE ONE:

In the early years of the twentieth century, automobiles were very costly. Each one was built separately by a small team of skilled workers. Most Americans did not have the money to own an automobile.

VOICE TWO:

They were rough and full of holes. Few bridges connected roads across rivers and streams. America's new drivers demanded that these problems be fixed. So, local and state governments began building and improving roads as they had never done before.

VOICE ONE:

For example, families with cars no longer had to live in noisy, crowded cities. They could live in suburbs -- the wide-open areas outside cities. They could use their car to drive to work in the city.

Cars also made life on farms less lonely. It became much easier for farm families to go to town on business or to visit friends.

Cars helped Americans learn more about their nation. In the nineteen twenties, people could drive all across the land for not much money. Places that used to be days apart now seemed suddenly closer.

VOICE ONE:

Automobile accidents became more common and deadly. Other forms of transportation, such as railroads, began to suffer from the competition. Some railroads had to close down. Horses and wagons -- once the most common form of transportation -- began to disppear from city streets.

VOICE TWO:

The first radio station opened in the state of Pennsylvania in nineteen-twenty. Within ten years, there were hundreds of others. There were more than thirteen-million radio receivers. Most of the radio stations were owned by large broadcasting networks. These networks were able to broadcast the same program to stations all over the country.

Most programs were simple and entertaining. There were radio plays, comedy shows, and music programs. But there also were news reports and political events. Millions of people who never read newspapers now heard the news on radio. Citizens everywhere could hear the president's voice.

VOICE TWO:

Automobiles and radios were not the only new technologies to change American life in the days after World War One. Still one more invention would have a great effect on how Americans spent their time and money. That was the motion picture.

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You have been listening to THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English by the Voice of America. Your narrators were Maurice Joyce and Kay Gallant. Our program was written by Frank Beardsley. Join us again next week at this same time, when we will tell more about the social and political changes in America in the nineteen twenties.