Period 7: 1890–1945: Economic Dislocation and Reform in the Age of Empire and World War

Alfred Thayer Mahan

Alfred Thayer Mahan

He advocated for the United States to develop a strong navy, maintain military bases and coaling stations, and administer an overseas empire in his book, “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History”, 1660–1783 (1890).

The White Man's Burden

Rudyard Kipling's famous poem ___________ argued that the "Anglo-Saxon race" had a responsibility to "civilize and Christianize" the world, and the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 displayed a sideshow of the "exotic" peoples of the world.

Sanford Dole

He urged the United States to intervene, leading to a coup in 1893 and the establishment of a provisional government.

American Anti-Imperialist League

This league was a coalition of conservative Democrats (or Bourbon Democrats), more progressive elements.

Mark Twain

He who became increasingly radical as he grew older; he was vice president of the league from 1901 to 1910 and wrote some of its more scathing condemnations of imperialism.

Valeriano Weyler

He used cruel tactics to suppress the rebellion, and thousands of Cubans were crowded into concentration camps.

yellow journalism

Mass-produced newspapers used sensationalist journalism, known as “_______” to build support for war with Spain, often disregarding journalistic objectivity and truth.

USS Maine

The Spanish-American War was sparked by the destruction of an American battleship, the _______, in Havana, Cuba.

Admiral George Dewey

Fighting in the Philippines lasted just days, and ______ led American naval forces in an alliance with Filipino rebels to take Manila.

Treaty of Paris

This treaty was signed in 1898 between the United States and Spain to cede the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the United States.

Platt Amendment

It limited the Cuban government's ability to conduct its own foreign policy and to manage its debts, and allowed the US to lease a naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

Insular Cases

In 1901, the Supreme Court settled the issue in the _____, agreeing that democracy and imperialism are not incompatible. The decisions were based on the racist assumption that the colonial subjects were of an inferior race, and the colonial power had the responsibility to upli these peoples before granting them autonomy.

Emilio Aguinaldo

The Philippine-American War was a three-year long conflict, led by _______, and lasted until after World War II.

open door

U.S. secretary of state John Hay enunciated this goal in a note to the major powers, asserting an "_______" policy for China.

The policy was begrudgingly accepted by the major powers.

Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty

Panama became an independent country and agreed to the _______ with the United States to build the canal. Roosevelt later boasted that he "took Panama."

San Francisco Board of Education

The _______ decided that Japanese-American students would be segregated and sent to racially specific schools, similar to segregated schools established for Chinese-American students.

Gentleman's Agreement

Roosevelt negotiated a "_______" in which Japan agreed to limit immigration to the US and Roosevelt agreed to pressure California authorities to end discriminatory practices.

dollars for bullets

Taft sent troops to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to coerce them into signing commercial treaties, and tried to substitute "______" in pursuing American interests, but failed to stem the Mexican Revolution.

domestic concerns

Woodrow Wilson's presidency (1913-1921) was focused on _______, but he also became increasingly drawn into foreign policy matters, driven by both a desire to secure American economic interests and a strong moral compass.

William Jennings Bryan

Wilson appointed anti-imperialist ______ as secretary of state and authorized the occupation of Nicaragua by American Marines to suppress a rebellion.

General Victoriano Huerta

In 1914, Wilson challenged the legitimacy of the new Mexican leader, _____, and sent 800 troops to overthrow him.

Progressive movement

This is a middle-class response to the excesses of rapid industrialization, political corruption, and unplanned urbanization. It was led by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, but was more of an amalgam of interests, ideas, groups, and individuals than a cohesive ideology.

Pragmatists

They argued that the value of an idea lies in its ability to positively impact the world, exemplified by the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

Reform Darwinism

Progressive activists rejected Social Darwinism and embraced ______, which called for active intervention and cooperation in the evolution of society.

muckrakers

Progressives believed in the power of mass print media to shed light on social ills and inspire action, leading to the emergence of "________" who wrote articles detailing the corruption and scandals of the modern world.

The Shame of the Cities

Progressive activists were alarmed by the inefficiency and corruption of municipal government in the early twentieth century, highlighted by the Democratic Party machine in New York City and Lincoln Steffens' 1904 muckraking book, “____________“.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911

a tragic event that led to the creation of fire safety laws in New York and the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union.

W. E. B. Du Bois

He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, which had first met in 1905 on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.

National Woman's Party

This party was founded by Alice Paul in 1916.

The Jungle

The novel follows a Lithuanian immigrant family through the stockyards of Chicago and brings to light the unsanitary and dangerous conditions of the industry.

Standard Oil Company

a giant trust assembled by John D. Rockefeller that dominated the petroleum-processing industry by the end of the 19th century.

The History of the Standard Oil Company

Journalist and teacher Ida Tarbell detailed the rise of the company in her articles and book, “__________” (1904).

Muller v. Oregon

In 1905, the Supreme Court ruled a New York State law restricting hours for bakers unconstitutional, but in 1908, ______ upheld an Oregon law limiting the number of hours women could work.

Louis Brandeis

The case is significant because of the brief written by future Supreme Court justice ______, which cited scientific, psychological, and sociological studies to bolster the case for limiting women's hours of work.

Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916)

This act addressed the issue of child labor by prohibiting the sale of goods produced by factories that employed children under fourteen years of age.

Hammer v. Dagenhart

in the case of _____ (1917), the Supreme Court found that the goods being regulated were not inherently "immoral" and were subject to state, not federal, law.

trust buster

Roosevelt moved the Republican Party and nation in a progressive direction with the "Square Deal" and conservation of natural resources, known as the "_____".

Sherman Antitrust Act

President Roosevelt saw the concentration of economic power in a few hands as potentially dangerous to the economy, and the ______ (1890) was passed to limit monopolistic practices.

Progressive Party

Roosevelt and his loyalists founded the _____ and nominated Roosevelt to run as a third-party candidate in the general election.

Socialist Party

The election was further complicated by the candidacy of Eugene V. Debs of the ______, who won the majority of the electoral votes despite winning only 41 percent of the popular vote.

Woodrow Wilson

He was the first southerner elected to the White House since 1844 and had been governor of New Jersey and president of Princeton University before assuming the presidency.

Federal Reserve Act

a partly privately controlled and partly publicly controlled central banking system that regulates economic growth by expanding or contracting the currency supply.

Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

Wilson strengthened the antitrust powers of the federal government with the ______ , which exempted labor unions from being targeted by antitrust actions.

Federal Trade Commission

This act regulate business practices and enforce provisions of the Clayton Act.

Anti-Saloon League

In the first decades of the twentieth century, saloons were seen as parasites on working-class communities, and the ______ (founded in 1893) saw the saloon industry as profiteering off alcohol abuse.

Prohibition Movement

The movement to limit or eliminate alcohol consumption in American society was a major reform movement in the nineteenth century.

Gifford Pinchot

Theodore Roosevelt appointed _____ to head the U.S. Forest Service in 1905 to lead the government's conservation efforts.

Yellowstone Park and Yosemite Valley

The federal government began the National Park System in 1872, creating _______.

John Muir

He was an early preservationist, while conservationism focused on regulation and responsible economic utilization of resources, tapping into progressive thinking.

Hetch Hetchy Valley

The destruction of the _____ in California illustrates the divergent approaches to the environment during the Progressive era.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

The long-term causes of World War I were the assassination of ________ in 1914, which resulted in Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia; which led to the formation of the Triple Alliance, the Central Powers, and the Allied Powers.

Zimmerman Note

indicated that Germany would help Mexico regain territory it had lost to the United States if Mexico joined the war on Germany's side.

Committee on Public Information (CPI)

Established by President Wilson in 1917 to organize pro-war propaganda.

Four-Minute Men

CPI sent them to give speeches and produced evocative posters to convince Americans to support the war.

War Industries Board

Board led by Bernard Baruch. It’s purpose is to organize industry to increase efficiency and maximize production.

Food Administration

Administration created to ensure food production.

National War Labor Policies Board

Established on April 8, 1918 to mediate labor disputes during World War I .

no-manʼs land

By the time the United States entered, the war had bogged down into a stalemate, with both sides dug into trenches separated by a strip of "______".

Battle of the Somme (1916)

The five-month-long ___________ resulted in more than a million casualties and no substantial gains for either side. American troops suffered over 300,000 casualties, including over 50,000 battlefield deaths and over 60,000 non-combat deaths.

Fourteen Points

Wilson proposed this to create a world order based on freedom of the seas, removal of barriers to trade, self-determination for European peoples, and an international organization to resolve conflicts.

Espionage Act (1917)

passed by Congress two months after the United States declared war against Germany in World War I, made it a federal crime for any person to interfere with or attempt to undermine the U.S. armed forces during a war, or to in any way assist the war efforts of the nation’s enemies.

Red Scare

A campaign against Communists, anarchists, and other radicals, and targeted labor leaders. It was a grassroots response to the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, which brought the Communist Party to power and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union.

Nativism

Opposition to immigration

Huns

Government propaganda vilified Germans, labeling nativists as "______" and portraying them as ruthless killers.

Immigration Restriction Act

established a reading test requirement for admission to the US and barred immigrant laborers from several countries designated as the “Asiatic Barred Zone.“

Great Migration of African Americans

This migration was caused by the mistreatment African Americans received in the South, such as Jim Crow laws that separated them from whites in schools, buses, trains, and other facilities.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

The deadliest race riot in American history occurred in ______, in 1921, caused by an encounter in an elevator between a young white female elevator operator and a young African American male shoe-shiner.

Black Wall Street

A maelstrom of violence ensued, as white residents, including police and National Guardsmen, rioted through the Greenwood District of Tulsa, which was known as the "______" and was considered the wealthiest African-American community in the United States at the time.

Henry Ford

He was an important figure in the development of new production techniques, opening a plant with a continuous conveyor belt in 1913.

Frederick Winslow Taylor

His scientific-management techniques were key to mass production. He watched workers, noted the most efficient techniques, and wrote down instructions to reconfigure work on the shop floor.

Edward Bernays

A nephew of Sigmund Freud, was a key figure in the shift towards elaborate corporate advertising campaigns, and the values of advertising and promotion seeped into the broader culture, even into religion.

The Man Nobody Knows

Bruce Barton wrote a best-selling book, “_______“, which portrayed Jesus Christ as a "super-salesman" and the spread of Christianity as a marketing triumph.

The Amos ʼnʼ Andy Show

Early successful programs included ____________ (1928), a holdover from "blackface" minstrel shows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin's “________“ satirized the capitalist system, while Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington depicted the triumph of a decent, "everyman" politician.

Emergency Quota Act (1921)

This act set the quota for each nationality at 3 percent of the total number of that nationality in 1910, while the second act reduced the percentage to 2 percent and moved the year back to 1890.

National Origins Act (1924)

a law enacted on May 26, 1924, to greatly reduce the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States by setting immigration quotas for each European nation

Harlem Renaissance

This was a literary, artistic, and intellectual movement centered in Harlem, New York City, that sought to increase pride in Black culture by celebrating African American life and forging a new cultural identity.

Lost Generation

This movement expressed a general disillusionment with society, commenting on the narrowness of small-town life and the materialism of American society.

The Great Gatsby

A book by F. Scott Fitzgerald exposed the shallowness of the lives of the wealthy and privileged.

Regionalism

________ in art and literature emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century, as a response to the homogenizing forces of modern media and mass culture.

Dust Bowl

caused a cultural shift in California, with displaced people from the southern Great Plains bringing their culture to the Central Valley.

Yiddish theater

The migration of Eastern European Jews to the United States from the 1880s to the 1920s gave rise to several cultural developments, including the flourishing _______, which was a major cultural force in the United States between 1890 and 1940.

Ku Klux Klan

a violent, racist group with its roots in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

John Scopes

A Tennessee biology teacher, was arrested for violating the Butler Act, a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. The case turned into a national spectacle, with Clarence Darrow representing Scopes and William Jennings Bryan representing the state.

Panic of 1893

signaled the beginning of the worst economic depression in American history, when the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad went bankrupt and the National Cordage Company also failed.

Panic of 1907

Several banks had invested in a scheme to gain control of the United Copper Company, leading to runs on several of them. One major New York bank, Knickerbocker Trust Company, collapsed, sending ripples of fear through the banking world and leading to a withdrawal of reserves.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

He was able to convey a sense of empathy and personal warmth, and his openness to experimentation allowed for a more flexible response to the Depression than Hoover's more ideological approach.

Glass-Steagall Act (1933)

This act insures deposits to ensure people do not lose their savings.

Industrial Code

designed to stabilize the industrial sector of the economy by creating codes to shorten hours, guarantee trade union rights, establish minimum wage levels, regulate the price of petroleum products, and promote fair business practices.

Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933)

This act is implemented to reduce production and strengthen the agricultural sector, but it had an unintended negative effect by evicting tenant farmers and sharecroppers, including African-American farmers.

Tennessee Valley Authority (1933)

It was the federal governmentʼs first experiment in regional planning. This built dams, generated electricity, manufactured fertilizer, provided technical assistance to farmers, and fostered economic development in the Tennessee Valley

Federal Emergency Relief Act (1933)

This was created to distribute more than $500 million to state and local governments, which would, in turn, distribute aid to the poor.

Civilian Conservation Corps (1933)

Roosevelt created this to provide outdoor work for young men between the ages of 18 and 24.

Securities and Exchange Commission (1934)

This was created to oversee stock market operations by monitoring transactions, licensing brokers, limiting buying on margin, and prohibiting insider trading.

Communist Party

This party in the United States gained new members and influence in the 1930s due to the Great Depression and the Soviet Union's achievements. They adapted the Popular Front strategy.

Popular Front

Strategy called for the Party to drop talk of an impending revolution and cooperate with anti-fascist groups and governments, including Roosevelt's New Deal administration.

Share Our Wealth Society

Huey Long organized a national network of clubs under the "_________" banner, which proposed breaking up the fortunes of the rich and distributing them to everyone else.

National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)

President Roosevelt encouraged union membership in order to increase purchasing power, leading to this act.

Wagner Act (1935)

This act legalized union membership.

Committee for Industrial Organization

John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers organized this orgaization, which was ordered to disband in 1936 and expelled in 1937.