How did the United States mobilize a strong military during World War 1?
The United States’ 1917 entry into World War I represents one of the crucial turning points in American history. Its significance, however, scarcely exceeds modern America’s collective ignorance of it. The war began for corporate America long before it started for the common man. Within two months of the conflict’s August 1914 beginning, Charles Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel, one of the world’s largest arms merchants, took a profitable trip to London. There, he secured orders from the British government for millions of artillery shells, as well as ten 500-ton submarines. Though the construction of such foreign vessels broke the law, Bethlehem proceeded with it and the Wilson administration did not stop them. The company earned $61 million in 1916, more than its combined gross revenues for the previous eight years. “The Bethlehem story is a pithy summary of the evolution of the United States into a branch of the British armament industry during the thirty-two months of its neutra
