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Progressive Era Through Great Depression

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Progressive Era through the Great Depression
For this assignment I will discuss the major turning points in American history between the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. Analyze how some historical events shape America’s current society, economy, politics, and culture. Describe ways that women and minorities have responded to challenges and made contributions to American culture. Recognize and discuss the ways that formal policies of government have influenced the direction of historical and social development in the United States. Analyze the rise of the United States to a world “super-power” and how that status has shaped its internal developments in recent decades. Identify how changes in social and economic conditions and technology can cause corresponding changes in the attitudes of the people and policies of the government.
Identify at least (2) two major historical turning points in the period under discussion. The first major historical turning point was the changing roles of women. Women won the right to vote with the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, one of the final great reforms of the Progressive era. A group of congressmen proposed an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923. It states: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction” (Schultz, 2012 p.379). The amendment’s objective was to eliminate all legal distinctions between the sexes, such as those who permitted different pay scales for men and women doing the same job.
The second historical turning point was the Resurgence of the Klan. The Ku Klux Klan, and organizations formed to “redeem” the South after Reconstruction, enjoyed a revival in the 1920s after being reborn in a ceremony on Georgia’s Stone Mountain in 1915. The third historical turning point was the stock market crash of October 1929. The depression is commonly said to have begun, however, with the collapse of the U.S. stock market in 1929. ”During the mid-to-late 1920s many people had invested their money in stocks, or shares of ownership in companies. For a few years the value of stocks rose rapidly, making money for the investors. This encouraged people to buy more shares in the hope of making even greater profits. In September 1929, however, stock prices began to fall, and on October 29 they collapsed completely” (Great Depression, 2003).
Analyze the impact of the two (2) or more major historical turning points selected on America’s current society, economy, politics, and culture. The impact of Women Rights during the Progressive Era, women played more active roles in the larger economic, cultural, and political transformation of American society. This growth in women’s public roles allowed suffragists to be more aggressive in support of their cause as they developed stronger bases of support in the settlement houses, temperance organization, labor unions and reform movements that now sprang up across the country. The Ku Klux Klan made a impact, according to McVeigh “on the wide range of social and economic issues, targeting immigrants and, particularly, Catholics, as well as African Americans, as dangers to American society” (McVeigh, R., 2009).
The crash of the Stock Market was another impact, because with less money available for loans, fewer people were buying stock, so stock prices began to fall. This crash of the Stock Market cause massive unemployment and declining wages. People lost their homes, their savings, and their dreams.
Speculate as to why women earned the right to vote in the frontier states of the West before eastern and southern states. In the frontier states in the West, women worked side by side along with men in numerous ways. When pioneers headed west, they took upon themselves the task of forging new ground, mostly by taking raw, un-worked land and turning it into farms. This required women to right along with men. They did an extreme amount of physical labor and this, in some ways, made them seem more like equals. In the eastern and southern states, women were not usually engaged in physically demanding work. They rarely worked, but if they did, they did women work and did jobs such as seamstress, teachers, or perhaps nurses. They were considered as not quite as smart and not quite as able to make decisions. Women were supposed to be, for the most part, protected and taken care of. They were not considered to be able to be informed or intelligent enough to make such a major decision as voting.
Describe at least two (2) pieces of legislation in the Roosevelt–Taft–Wilson progressive era years that have influenced the conduct of business to this day and what that influence has been. In 1913, the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It allowed Congress to pass laws which taxed incomes from almost any source from the States and it would not depend on the census or amount of people. Congress did pass legislation to that effect and today is codified in Title 26 of the United States Code (26 U.S.C.). This is directly down from the original income tax act passed in 1913. Some states do not have a state income tax, but all citizens of the United States are subject to paying federal income tax. That is not to say that everyone has to file a return. There are certain requirements for who must file taxes. In 1914, Wilson, supported the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, a government agency that had the right to investigate business practices and issue ruling to prevent businesses from unfair practices. Another piece of legislation is the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act, “which prevented the employment of children under the age of sixteen, and a bill that mandated a maximum eight-hour workday for American railroad laborers” (McVeigh, R., 2009). This legislation has influenced the conduct of business to this day.
Explain the role that the Spanish American War played in America’s development of an Empire. American victories in the Philippines and Cuba prompted a full Spanish surrender. The war had lasted only four months. In the peace treaty, signed in Paris, Spain granted independence to Cuba and ceded most of its overseas possessions to the United States, including Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam in exchange for $20 million. Within a matter of a few months, then the United States had amassed an island empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean.
Explain at least two (2) ways in which the boom and bust of the Roaring Twenties followed by the Great Depression affected the federal government’s involvement in the national economy. The New Deal was a collection of initiatives, each aiming to address political, economic, and social demands all at once. Once enacted, the programs of the New Deal expanded the role of the federal government in the economic lives of ordinary American to an unprecedented degree. “The First New Deal Roosevelt proposed a series of dramatic measures meant to re-organize the country’s financial system and raise the living standards of all American, especially working Americans. He offered, the relief, recovery and reform act. Secondly, Roosevelt decided to co-opt the ideas of some of his leftist critics by (1) pressing for more jobs, (2) strengthening the position of labor, and (3) providing a greater social safety net” (McVeigh, R., 2009).

Reference (2003). Great Depression. Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Britannica.
Retrieved from http://elibrary.bigchalk.com
Schultz, K. M. (2012). HIST2 (Vol. 2). Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/content/voting_curriculum/women_suffrage.html
McVeigh, R. (2009). The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Right-Wing Movements and National
Politics Retrieve from: http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-rise-of-the-ku-klux-klan

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