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| 1917–18 |
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| When some Americans resisted the draft, officials broke up antidraft meetings, arrested several individuals, and imprisoned such activists as Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, A. Philip Randolph, and Chandler Owens. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld such limitations on free speech in the case of Schenck v. United States. | 1 |
| Great Migration. Nearly a million African Americans moved into American cities of the north, south, and west. At the same time, many Hispanic Americans moved not only into cities of the South and West, but into the urban Midwest as well, particularly the steel cities of Indiana and Ohio, as well the meatpacking centers of Illinois. | 2 |
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| 1917, June 15–1918, May 6 |
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| The Espionage Act, the Trading-with-the-Enemy Act (Oct. 6, 1917), and the Sedition Act (May 6, 1918). Radical groups like the Industrial Workers of the World became special targets of this legislation. In Bisbee, Arizona, local officials rounded up over 1,000 striking miners, one-third of them Mexican Americans, and about 50 recent members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and shipped them into the desert of New Mexico without food or water. | 3 |
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| July |
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| War Industries Board created and placed in complete charge of all war purchases. | 4 |
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| Aug. 10 |
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| The Lever Act, establishing control over food and fuel. Herbert Hoover, food administrator. | 5 |
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| Sept. 1 |
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| Grain Corporation inaugurated, which fixed price of grain and financed the 1917, 1918, and 1919 crops. | 6 |
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| Oct. 3 |
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| War Revenue Act, greatly increasing income tax and imposing an excess profit tax on business earnings of corporations and individuals. | 7 |
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| Nov. 2 |
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| Lansing-Ishii agreement, reaffirming the assurances of the Root-Takahira agreement (1908), with the admission by the U.S. that “territorial propinquity” gave Japan special interests in China. | 8 |
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| Dec |
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| William G. McAdoo, secretary of the treasury, made director-general of the railroad administration. | 9 |
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| Dec. 18 |
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| Under stress of war conditions and the need for food conservation, Congress had in Aug. 1917 prohibited the use of food products in the making of distilled beverages. Ownership of large numbers of breweries and distilleries by persons of German origin accentuated popular resentment against liquor traffic. As a result Congress adopted the Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic liquors, and sent it to the states for ratification. It became part of the Constitution on Jan. 29, 1919. | 10 |
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