Chapter 13: Postwar Confidence and Anxiety
• Demobilization – decreasing the man power in the
military by allowing service men and women to return
home
• GI Bill of Rights – Federal law that granted benefits to
veteran’s
1. A year of unemployment benefits if they could not find a job
2. Financial aid for college
3. Government loans for building and starting businesses
• Fair Deal – Truman’s legislative program that would
strengthen existing New Deal programs and establish
new programs, such as national health insurance.
• Fail! Congress has had enough of reforming.
Chapter 13: Postwar Confidence and Anxiety
• Interstate Highway Act
1. $$$ to build 41,000 miles of highway consisting of
multilane expressways that would connect the nation’s
major cities
2. Biggest public works expenditure in history
3. Modeled after the German Autobahn that Hitler built
4. Ike’s plan for rapid mobilization in times of
international crisis.
5. In 1990, became known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower
System of Interstate and Defense Highways
Chapter 13: Postwar Confidence and Anxiety
• Sunbelt – Name given to southern and western states during the
migration of the U.S population from eastern and northern cities
• Houston, TX - Benefited from boom in petrochemical and
aerospace business
• Migration had a heavy impact on the shift of
representative power in Congress
• California and Texas are now players in the Electoral
College game
Chapter 13: Postwar Confidence and Anxiety
Chapter 13: Postwar Confidence and Anxiety
• Multinational Corporation - Companies that produced
and sold their goods and services all over the world and
established branches abroad.
• General Motors, General Electric, International
Business Machines, Coca-Cola
• Consumerism – large-scale buying, most of it on credit
• Median Family Income – Average family income
• Nuclear Family – A household consisting of a mother
and a father and their children
• I’m Done! Here endith the lesson!