The Better America Federation: A Case Study of Superpatriotism

Abstract

FOUNDED in May, 1920, at Los Angeles, the Better America Federation was one of the superpatriotic societies which sprang up during the Red Scare following the First World War. Though it confined its activities to the state of California, the federation was noteworthy because of its large size, systematic organization, and ample financial backing. At the height of its influence in 1920 and 1921, the Better America Federation flooded the state with its propaganda and its speakers, lobbied vigorously at the state legislature, and crusaded against whatever it considered un-American. More important than its local influence, the Better America Federation provides an excellent opportunity to examine the historical origins and inner mechanics of postwar superpatriotism. Was the Red Scare caused by the war and the Russian Revolution, or was it a logical consequence of three decades or more of domestic political debate and social strife? Was it produced by external events impinging on American society, or was it an integral phase in the dynamics of American social development? The case of the Better America Federation serves to emphasize the importance of domestic forces of long standing in producing the upsurgence of superpatriotism which characterized the years immediately following the First World War. The Better America Federation was conditioned by the war chiefly in the area of methods. The federation represented an attempt to continue in peacetime certain techniques of social control that had been perfected during wartime. Its campaigns for members and money employed the same sort of patriotic appeal which had been used to sell Liberty Bonds. Indeed, the federation tried to recruit the former bond-sellers. The first membership drive of the newly formed Better America Federation was begun at a banquet to honor those individuals who had made the local Liberty Bond campaign a success.' The federation wished to continue the forcible suppression of radicals which had been a notable feature of the war effort. As a step in this direction, the federation provided financial support for three witnesses-two of them ex-convicts-