The United States' first and second Red Scares set the stage for a long-standing fear of communism and proved to be one of the greatest periods of mass hysteria of America. Over the years, authors and analysts have studied and written explanatory, albeit argumentative, books and articles in an attempt to better understand this period; The state of mind adopted during this period, however, is completely different from that of today. The first Red Scare, which followed the end of World War I and the start of America's Great Depression, was major and still significant. With the drastic increase in food and living expenses, some propaganda began to appear. Perhaps one of the most notable of these is Lenin's "Letter to the American Workers", which appeared in the United States in 1919. The same year, Ludwig Martens appeared, later in the year, as a representative foreign countries, but it is strongly attributed to the problem. Foreign Affairs Commission. (Murray, p. 46-47) Faced with these figures imposing a certain form of pressure on the American people to rise up, the American government found it a good measure of retaliation by launching a a sort of reverse propaganda claiming that the Bolshevik movements encouraged chaos and anarchy. This proved very true when Americans experienced working class riots and strikes during the steel and coal strikes of 1919 as well as the Boston police strike. These events revealed and provided a seemingly terrifying insight into the influences of present-day Soviet Russia. It was in this context that America found it even more necessary to spread more propaganda; it was with this new propaganda that targeted children and made them aware of the problem with very little concern. ...... middle of paper ...... everyone feared that communism would engulf the world at any moment. Was the problem really a hidden Soviet spy system or just a number of men united to accuse people in the same way as during the Salem witch trials? Yes and no, in a sense, personally, it doesn't worry me. Works Cited • Murray, Robert K. Red Scare. Denmark. Museum Tusculanum, 2000. Print.• Brody, David. Steelworkers in America: The Age of Non-Unionism. University of Illinois, 1998. Print.• Fitzgerald, Brian. McCarthyism: the red scare. Minneapolis. White-Thompson, 2007. Print.• Faragher, John Mack. Among many others: a history of the American people. 5th ed. Flight. 2. Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.• Fried, Albert. McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History. New York: Oxford UP, 1997. Print. • Heale, The Americans by MJ McCarthy. Athens. Georgia UP, 1998. Print.