The Eisenhower Adminstration Essay Research Paper The

The Eisenhower Adminstration Essay, Research Paper

The Eisenhower Administration

In 1952, General Dwight D. Eisenhower became president of the United States of America. With Richard Nixon as his Vice President, Eisenhower had won 57 percent of the popular vote and 442 to 89 of the electoral vote.

Moderation of Eisenhower.s policies and the influence of Democratic supporters led Eisenhower to coin, “Modern Republicanism” as his maxim for the day. Being conservative with money and liberal with people was a policy meant to sway as many supporters from both wings or schools of thought as Eisenhower could manage. Using this influence Eisenhower discouraged the repealing of The New and Fair deals.

In 1959 Alaska and Hawaii were admitted into the Union as the Forty-ninth and fiftieth states. Both states were the first to be non-continental and had great value in industry and agriculture. Alaska had been purchased from Russia in 1867 while Hawaii had been annexed in 1898.

Eisenhower was a pro-labor president who pushed congress to raise the minimum wage to a dollar as well as encouraging Ford and GM to Promote unemployment benefits. During the Fifties many unions set up welfare funds to aid unemployed, Disabled, and retired workers. In 1959 Congress passed the management labor act, which banned secondary boycotts and picketing by groups not directly associated with the Union in question. Also, Congress passed the Taft Hartley act of 1947, This legislation allows a president to order striking workers in crucial industries back to work for 80 days while the government investigates the dispute. For example, The U.S. Steel Industry workers began a strike for higher wage benefits and President Eisenhower ordered the workers back in to service and worked out a step by step pay increase for all those involved. Eisenhower.s injunction did not solve the problem but did allow for continued progress of steel production while negotiations could take place.

During the Fifties Small farms and private land owners were declining their prosperity, with the exception of large commercial farms. From 1952 to 1956 farm income dropped 26 percent due to a loss in foreign markets. So as a solution to the problem Eisenhower proposed the soil bank, This bank pumped millions of dollars to farms that reduced or withdrew from productions of surplus goods and planted trees or built dams.

The Eisenhower administration inherited a difficult problem of constitutional rights. Congressional committees who were accused of handling suspects of subversion wrongly without due process. For Example, Jo McCarthy accused many government officials, without proper evidence or documentation, of conspiring against the American people. Later, McCarthy was revealed to be a fraud who utilized public paranoia to further his own career.

Keeping with classic Republican doctrine, Eisenhower believed in a small government and the idea of a president having limited powers and abilities. Furthermore, Eisenhower believed that the federal government should be less active in the affairs of the state governments and there one can make the connection to Jo McCarthy who exploited Eisenhower.s hands off approach to begin his investigations.

A common saying for the time was, “Get in the Eisenhower prosperity” which referred to Eisenhower.s support of the New and Fair deals. Eisenhower tried to expand moderately on both the New and fair deal. During this time the stock market reached new highs.

As The United States felt secure in it.s technological superiority, The Soviet Union Launched the world.s first artificial satellite and is considered to be the catalyst for the American space program.

During the fifties, Congress passed (1958) the National Defense Education act, which provided millions of dollars in low cost loans to college students and with significant reductions in payments if they became teachers.

Responding to Eisenhower.s moderate recommendations, congress in 1954, increased social security and exerted benefit coverage to an additional 10.5 million persons. Congress also voted for additional funds for medical research. In 1955, congress, authorized 500 million dollars for urban renewal.

In Brown vs. Board of Education, Oliver Brown sued the Topeka Kansas board of Education, to allow his eight year old daughter, Linda, to attend a previously all-white school. The case reached the Supreme Court and had been ruled in favor of Brown. As another strike for Civil freedoms Thurgood Marshall was the first black man to become a Supreme Court justice.

A Black spot in the history of America is the Termination policy for reserved lands meant for Native Americans. This policy was the government policy of fifties which intended to assimilate Native Americans into mainstream American life.

When it was ordered to desegregate schools, a large and riotous protest began in Little Rock Arkansas. Eisenhower placed national guard under federal command and to protect the nine African American Students. But The governor of Arkansas, Faubus, Dispatched additional National Guards to prevent the students form entering the school and stirred a the public for a violent reaction hoping to further himself to a third term in office.

A land mark achievement for civil rights in America was The Montgomery bus boycott, which began