Period 7: 1890-1945

Key Concept 7.1 - Growth expanded opportunity, while economic instability led to new efforts to reform U.S. society and its economic system

How did the shift to large scale industry affect women and other Americans?

America largely continued its transformation to an industrial economy with new technology and manufacturing techniques. New technologies include automobiles, lights, airplanes, and telephones. An influential manufacturing technique used, especially by Ford Motors, was the idea of Taylorism or Assembly Line, which gave every worker one monotonous job to do in the factory setting. Radios and refrigerators emerged during this time period and were aimed at consumers. All of these technologies fueled an increased standard of living and a sense of consumer culture. Other effects of these new technologies was that people had much greater personal mobilities with automobiles and had much better communication with telephones.

With all these new technologies and industrial factories, urban cities created many jobs and opportunities. Many flocked to these cities like New York and Chicago. Women were given opportunities to work in factories, especially shirtwaist factories. Immigrants from Italy and Poland were commonly employed as extremely cheap labor. African Americans, in the Great Migration, had left the South in mass numbers to join the industrial workforce. With increasing opportunities, the economy kept rising and rising.

After the Panic of 1907, many Americans including the Progressives pushed for more government control, leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve Act. In the wake of the Great Depression, the booming industrial economy flopped. The American people looked towards the Federal government to strengthen the regulation of their economy. An important regulation brought was the Federal Depsosit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which was made to give an insurance to people's bank deposits and it drastically decreased the number of bank failures. To address the stock market crash, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created to regulate stock prices. These government institutions still exist today from these economic panics.

Why did Progressives want to change the government?

The progressive movement was in a way a reaction to over powered corporations which had created mass social and economic inequality, political corruption, and had neglected the labor sector. Within the progressive movement, journalists, known as muckrakers, were instrumental to prompting reform. Lincoln Stephens wrote "The Shame of Cities" to highlight the political corruption between local governments and businesses. Jacob Riis, another muckraker, wrote "How the Other Half Lives" to highlight the inequality for immigrant laborers. Another progressive was Ida Tarbell, which attacked the the monopololistic practices of Standard Oil. Many of these progressive reformers tended to be middle class and from cities, and many had been women. Jane Addams was a reformer which had created the Hull House to help immigrants.

Nationally, the progressives had looked towards the government to help fix these problems. This was seen through the Clayton Anti-trust Act, which furthered the governments campaign against monopolies. In the administration of Theodore Roosevelt, his square deal policy had generated acts like the Meat Inspection Act and Hepburn Acts to check the powers of corporations and to keep their working conditions reasonable. Under the progressive President Woodrow Wilson, the Federal reserve was created to regulate the economy. Besides controlling the economy, reformers had looked to create social waves. This can be seen with the 16th amendment which allowed for income tax, the 17th amendment which gave direct election of senators, 18th amendment for prohibition, and the 19th amendment for women's suffrage.

Another facet which progressives had worked in was protecting the environment. This had split the progressives as some were preservationists, which advocated for protecting nature completely while others were conservationists, which advocated for limited and sensible use of nature.

A big issue that had split progressives was segregation and African American rights. With two competing reformers W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, African Americans were not unified and consequently, the Progressive era had mostly left African Americans out of solid reform.

How did the New Deal change the government's role in the economy?

The New Deal by FDR had three main objectives: relief, recovery, and reform. Relief focused on stopping the immediate downturn of the economy. An Act which focused on this was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers not to overproduce. Another relief system was the Bank Holiday, which shut down banks until deemed able to be reopened. A relief system to restore faith in the government's ability to handle the great depression was Roosevelt's radio broadcasts of Fireside Chats.

The second stage of the New Deal was to stimulate the recovery of the economy to get it back up on its feet again. Such programs included the Civilian Conservation Corps, Public Works Administration, and Work Progress Administration, which all focused on lowering unemployment but employing many men to work on infrastructure. Another program was the National Industrial Recovery Act(NRA/NIRA), which sought to regulate industry to bring it back to its previous heights. Despite the mass amounts of money spent to create these federal programs, FDR had believed in Keynesian economics, an ideology that the more money the government pours into the economy, the more the economy will be able to grow. This is also seen as a "prime the pump" economics strategy.

The final stage of the New Deal was to create reforms to the economy to prevent another economic disaster from happening again. This can be seen with the implementation of the FDIC, SEC, and the social security system, all of which still exist today.

Despite the slow revival of the economy and plummeting unemployment rates, there were many critics of the New Deal. An example of this was Huey Long, a Senator which believed that the government should take even more control of the economy by giving all citizens $5,000 from taxing the wealthy. Another critic was Father Charles Coughlin, a Christian Radioshow host, which similarly believed that FDR had not gone far enough and should have nationalized the banks further. On the opposite side, many critics were also conservative in the reforms and believed that FDR had gone too far. This can be seen with the Supreme Court in Schechter vs US, which overturned the NRA/NIRA and US vs Butler, which overturned the AAA.

The New Deal had many effects on American society. Despite not being the immediate cause to the end of the Great Depression, which was World War Two, it had created agencies that had sustained to today. Furthermore, it had spurred a large scale political realignment. African Americans had been voting Republican since the Civil War and Lincoln but now vote Democratic. Ethnic minorities had also began to align with the Democratic party. Lastly, the workers and laborers which formed unions had started aligning with the Democratic party after the Wagner Act, which had gave protections to labor unions.