The Year in 1917

In 1917 the U.S. was still maintaining its neutrality and President Woodrow Wilson speaking out for a peace without victory. But the year would end with the U.S. embroiled in the conflict it had sought for nearly three years to avoid. In 1917 and 1918 over 24 million men in the United States had completed draft registration cards and 2.8 million were drafted to serve. Soldiers and those left on the homefront were singing along to songs like Over There, Goodbye Broadway, Hello France and Back Home Again in Indiana.

By the time the U.S. had entered the war the world food supply had been severely cut. Farms throughout countries that had formerly been leading agricultural producers had been abandoned as farmers left the fields to take up arms. Fields of wheat became fields of battle and crops were burned, trampled and destroyed. The burden of feeding stricken countries in Europe fell to the U.S. A month before the U.S. officially entered the war, the National War Garden Commission was formed to promote the building of gardens and preservation of produce through canning or drying. War gardens were created across the country; the city of Rochester, New York had more than 15,000 war gardens in 1918.

On March 2, citizens of Puerto Rico received full U.S. citizenship and this island would send 20,000 soldiers to the U.S. Army to serve in WWI.

Also in March, the Russian Revolution began with the overthrow of the Czarist regime of Nicholas II and the creation of a provisional government. Later that year the Bolsheviks would seize control in what is known as the “October Revolution.”

In movies, Mary Pickford starred in The Little Princess, the story of a little girl left in a boarding house when her father went off to war. In another film, Charlie Chaplin’s “Tramp” character came to America in The Immigrant.

Information from above is courtesy of Ancestry.Com.