Chapter 28-31
This is a brief on these chapters – for the sake of time on all our parts – I will be focused on the
test questions for now but will add to these chapters at a later date.
Chap 28
This chapter is on the Progressive movement. Reformers of the Progressive movement felt the
use of government as an agency of human welfare was a main focus. The political roots of the
progressives lay in the Greenback Labor party and the Populists. Progressives gave us many
social critics that opened the public’s eyes to many conditions, such as Thorstein Veblen
focused on “conspicuous consumption”, Jack London focused on destruction of nature, Jacob
Riis focused attention slum conditions, and Henry Demarest Lloyd wrote about “bloated trusts”.
Female progressives often justified their reformist political activities on the basis of their being
essentially an extension of women’s traditional roles as wives and mothers. Muckrakers wrote
exposés on many problems, such as David G. Phillips and the United States Senate, Ida Tarbell
and the Standard Oil Company, Lincoln Steffens and city governments, and Ray Stannard Baker
on the condition of blacks in America. Muckrakers signified much about the nature of the
progressive reform movement because they sought not to overthrow capitalism but to cleanse
it with democratic controls. The leading progressive organization advocating prohibition was
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Progressive reformers were mainly men and
women from the middle class. Political progressivism emerged in both major parties, in all
regions, at all levels of government. Progressives advocated initiative, referendum, recall, and
direct election of U.S. senators to regain the power that the people had lost to “interests”. In
Muller v. Oregon, the Supreme Court upheld the principle promoted by Florence Kelley and
Louis Brandeis that female workers required special rules and protection on the job. The public
outcry after the horrible Triangle Shirtwaist fire led many states to pass restrictions on female
employment in the clothing industry. On the contrary – Lochner v. New York represented a
setback for progressives and labor advocates because the Supreme Court ruling declared a law
limiting work to ten hours a day unconstitutional. The progressive-inspired city-manager
system of government was designed to remove politics from municipal administration.
Remember this had to do with the hurricane in Galveston, Texas – 1900. Teddy Roosevelt
helped to end the 1902 strike in the anthracite coal mines by threatening to seize the mines
and to operate them with federal troops to protect public safety. The Elkins and Hepburn acts
dealt with the subject of railroad regulation. Roosevelt believed that the federal government
should adopt a policy of regulating trusts. There were many laws passed aimed at resource
conservation, though the only one passed during Roosevelt’s presidency was the Newlands Act.
The panic of 1907 stimulated reform in banking policy. Roosevelt was most accurately
described as a middle-of-the-road reformer. President Taft’s foreign policy was dubbed dollar
diplomacy. The Supreme Court’s “rule of reason” in antitrust law was handed down in a case
involving Standard Oil.
Chapter 29 – this chapter is about Wilson’s presidency. As governor of New Jersey, Woodrow
Wilson established a record as a passionate reformer. In 1912 Wilson’s Democratic platform
included antitrust legislation, monetary reform, tariff reduction and support for small business.
Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism supported a broad program of social welfare and
government regulation of business this was in contrast to Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom
favored small enterprise and entrepreneurship. The 1912 election had many opponents –
Wilson ran as a democrat, T. Roosevelt ran as a progressive, Taft ran as a republican, and Debs
ran as a socialist. As a politician, Wilson was inflexible and stubborn. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson
broke with custom dating back to Jefferson when he personally delivered his presidential
address to Congress. The Sixteenth Amendment provided for personal income tax. The Federal
Reserve Act of 1913 guaranteed a substantial measure of public control over the American
banking system through the final authority given to the presidentially appointed Federal
Reserve Board. The Federal Reserve Act gave the Federal Reserve Board the authority to issue
paper money and increase the amount of money in circulation. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act
explicitly legalized strikes and peaceful picketing. The first Jewish person to be appointed to
the Supreme Court was Louis D. Brandeis. Wilson’s early efforts to conduct an anti-imperialist
foreign policy were first undermined when he sent American Marines to Haiti. From 1914 to
1916 trade between the US and Britain pulled the American economy out of a recession.
Chapter 30 - Wilson and WWI.
President Wilson broke diplomatic relations with Germany when they announced that they
would wage unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Wilson persuaded the American
people to enter WWI by pledging to make the war “a war to end all wars” and to make the
world safe for democracy. Wilson’s Fourteen points included reduction of armaments,
abolition of secret treaties, a new international organization to guarantee collective security,
and the principle of national self-determination for subject peoples. When the US entered
WWI it was poorly prepared to leap into a global war. During WWI, civil liberties in America
were denied to many, especially those suspected of disloyalty. Two constitutional amendments
adopted partly due to wartime influences were the Eighteenth which dealt with prohibition,
and the Nineteenth, which gave women the vote. The movement of tens of thousands of
southern black Americans north during WWI resulted in racial violence in the north. Most
wartime mobilization agencies relied on voluntary compliance to prepare the economy for war.
Most of the money raised to finance the war came from loans from the American public,
Liberty Loans. Russia’s withdrawal from WWI in 1917 resulted in the release of thousands of
German troops for deployment on the front in France, no longer making it a two front war.
John J. Pershing was the supreme military commander of American forces during WWI. The
US’s main contributions to the Allied victory were foodstuffs, oil, munitions, and financial
credit. The Germans were heavily demoralized by the US’s unlimited troop reserves. The
Senate likely would have accepted American participation in the League of Nations had Wilson
been willing to compromise with League opponents in Congress.
Chapter 31 – Life in the 1920’s.
The Red-Scare was provoked by the public’s association of labor violence with its fear of
revolution. Businesspeople used the Red Scare to break the backs of fledging unions. The Ku
Klux Klan of the 1920s was a reaction against the forces of diversity and modernity that were
transforming American culture. Immigration restrictions of the 1920s were a result of the
nativist belief that northern Europeans were superior to southern and eastern Europeans.
Enforcement of the Volstead Act had the strongest resistance from eastern city dwellers.
According to John Dewey, the Father of the modern high school, a teacher’s primary goal is to
educate a student for life. (How am I doing????) The trial of John T. Scopes centered on the
issue of teaching evolution in public schools. After the Scopes trial, fundamentalist religion
remained a vibrant force in American spiritual life. The prosperity of the 1920s was made
possible by rapid expansion of capital (money available for businesses to expand), increased
productivity of workers (make it faster it is cheaper), perfection of assembly-line production,
advertising and credit. The main problem faced by manufacturers in America was in developing
expanded markets of people to buy their products (tariffs complicate this). The prosperity in
the 1920s was accompanied by a cloud of consumer debt. 1920s gives us new mass media
sports figures these are Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. Frederick W. Taylor, a prominent
inventor and engineer, was best known for his promotion of industrial efficiency and scientific
management (efficiency expert). The automobile revolution resulted in the consolidation of
schools, the spread of early suburbs, loss of population in less desirable states, and altered
youthful sexual behavior. Automobiles, radios, and motion pictures contributed to the
standardization of American life. Margaret Sanger is most noted for her advocacy of birth
control. Job opportunities for women in the 1920s tended to cluster in a few low-paying fields.
Jazz music was developed by black Americans. Marcus Garvey founded the United Negro
Improvement Association and he promoted the resettlement of American blacks in Africa, he
advocated promoting black-owned businesses, he cultivated feelings of self-confidence and
self-reliance among blacks, and he was sent to prison after a fraud conviction and ultimately
was deported back to Jamacia. 1920s gave us many literary figures, such as, Ernest Hemingway
who wrote The Sun Also Rises, F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote The Great Gatsby, Sinclair Lewis
who wrote Main Street, and William Faulkner who wrote The Sound and the Fury. Buying stock
“on margin” meant buying it with a small down payment so in essence on credit. As secty of
treasury, Andrew Mellon placed the tax burden on the middle-income groups.
Whew – that took hours now study study study