American Legion Founded with Corporate Backing as Anti-Radical Force

The American Legion holds its founding convention in Minneapolis on Armistice Day 1919, emerging as a major force in the Red Scare and anti-labor campaigns of the 1920s. Founded by Army officers including Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Hamilton Fish III in Paris earlier that year, the organization quickly enrolls nearly one million members and establishes itself as a pillar of “100% Americanism.” While presenting itself as a nonpartisan veterans’ service organization, the Legion receives substantial financial support from corporate interests and becomes a reliable ally in anti-union campaigns, anti-radical activities, and deportation drives.

Corporate sponsors recognize the Legion’s potential as an anti-labor force. Companies donate funds, provide meeting spaces, and offer jobs to Legion members. In return, Legionnaires provide strikebreaking muscle, intimidate labor organizers, and participate in vigilante actions against suspected radicals. During the 1919 steel strike, Legion posts organize “Americanization” committees that break up union meetings and harass immigrant workers. The organization lobbies for deportation of “un-American” elements and supports Attorney General Palmer’s raids. Legion members participate in raids on IWW halls and Communist Party meetings throughout the country.

The Legion’s Americanism Commission becomes a permanent apparatus for anti-radical surveillance and propaganda. Local posts compile files on suspected subversives and share information with the Bureau of Investigation and state authorities. The organization promotes mandatory flag ceremonies, patriotic education programs, and loyalty oaths while opposing any criticism of American institutions as “Bolshevism.” This conflation of labor organizing with foreign subversion serves corporate interests by delegitimizing workers’ demands as un-American. The Legion’s model of corporate-funded patriotic organization anticipates later astroturf campaigns, where grassroots appearance masks elite coordination. Throughout the 1920s, the Legion serves as reliable shock troops against labor organizing while maintaining its image as a benevolent veterans’ organization.