Joseph R. McCarthy was born in 1908 on a family farm in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, the youngest of nine children. . His parents were devout Catholics who always told him "You shall live by sweat of your brow." He went to country school till eighth grade. Even though he was the best in his class, he dropped out of school at the age of 14 because he wanted to be a farmer. When he was eighteen years old he started a chicken business which went very well till a disease struck and he lost his business. At the age of nineteen he became manager of a grocery store in Manawa, a town thirty miles away from his home town. He decided to return to school. He crammed four years of high school into only one year and still managed to be at the top of his class. He graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee in the fall of 1930, when he was 21. He set up a law practice in Waupaca, but took only four cases in nine months. He worked as a lawyer for only three years because he won a judgeship for the Tenth District of the Wisconsin Circuit Court. McCarthy joined the Marines in 1942 without quitting the judge position, even though he was exempt from service. He stayed in the Marines for 2 years, and won the image back home as a heroic tail-gunner. In 1946 he defeated Republican Robert M. LaFollette for the position of senator in Wisconsin. He was a very quiet and unknown senator for three years until his first speech on February 9, 1950 at the Republican Women's Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. He started by saying "I have in my hand a list of 205 cases of individuals who appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist party." Because of the beginning of the Cold War, the Russian Expansion, the end of World War II and the fall of China to Communism, Communism was a very popular issue in the fifties. McCarthy became very popular. From 1950 to 1954 he was on the top. A simple sentence would ruin one's career. A few good words would help his fellow Republicans be elected to office. McCarthy caused the blacklisting of many people. The time of McCarthy is called the Climate of Fear because everyone in the US feared being mentioned in any of the hearings. People who were accused worked in government positions as low as cafeteria and coat room and as high as army officers. But McCarthy crossed the line when he accused the US Army of being negligent towards Communists. That was the end. At the Army-McCarthy Hearings the Army came back with a powerful attack. Because the hearings were televised the whole US got to know the real McCarthy.
The Fight for America: Senator Joseph McCarthy
http://sirius.com/~mcjester/writings/joemccarthy.html
McCarthyism
http://www.cae.wisc.edu/~smithz/texts/paper-mccarthyism.shtml
The Impact of McCarthyism
http://www.crocker.com/~blklist/biblio3final.html