US as a World Power: Progressivism to Great Depression, Lecture notes of English

Download US as a World Power: Progressivism to Great Depression and more Lecture notes English in PDF only on Docsity! THE BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURY By the end of the 19th century the United States had become the richest country in the world, with its economic power based on agricultural prosperity, massive industrial output and the rich mineral resources available. The economic boom, however, hadn’t prevented the spread of poverty. In the industrial areas of the North, like the metropolises of Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York and Boston, workers lived in dirty, overcrowded slums, and toiled long hours for low wages. And so, after, many national problems, like the conditions of life in the city slums or corruption in government, were brought to light by books and articles written by investigative journalists called “muckrakers”. Their reports shocked most Americans, who started to think that the government should take action to eliminate the problems of society through new reform. -belief in laissez-faire was replaced by progressivism, which found a leader in the Republican Theodore Roosevelt, who became the 26th President of the USA. IMPERIAL EXPANSION The United States had pursued a policy of imperial expansion. In 1867 America had bought Alaska from Russia, and from 1895 attention was focused on the Spanish colony of Cuba, where the United States supported the Cuban rebellion against Spain. The Spanish-American War (1898) ended with the defeat of Spain, and the United States acquired most of its overseas empire, including Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, which provided bases to control and protect the growing number of American traders in China. In the same period the United States also annexed Hawaii and supported the revolt for independence of Panama from Colombia. The territory was finally granted to the Americans, who built the Panama Canal (1914) to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean. Imperialism, however, was regarded as contrary to the democratic values of the American Constitution. This is why the United States gradually began to grant independence to its dominions except for Cuba, where they built a large naval base. THE FIRST WORLD WAR When the First World War broke out, America initially held to its policy of isolationism, even after the British Lusitania was sunk, with 128 Americans among the dead. The United States joined the war in 1917: the main reason was the attacks German submarines were making on American ships. At the same time, the economy of Britain grew quickly. This was due to many reasons: vast resources were invested to create new industries, there was little competition from Europe, the population was increasing and taxes on profits and industries were cut by the Republican government. The economic prosperity in large parts of the USA gave rise to a feeling of euphoria and experimentation in music, with new styles like jazz, as well as dance and fashion, from which the name “Roaring Twenties”. RED SCARE AND PROHIBITION There were in this period also reactionary attitudes such as the fear of Socialism, the so called “Red Scare”, which led to the imprisonment and persecution of political activists with radical or labour backgrounds. The most famous case was that of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, whose execution on a charge of murder divided American public opinion as many people thought that they weren’t guilty. -there was the restriction of immigration -the segregation of poor into city slums like Harlem, which became the big Afro-American quarter in New York. -and a feeling of xenophobia and racial persecution spread. -A revival of puritanical attitudes brought about the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol. This drastic step, known as “Prohibition”, was taken to fight the problem of alcohol addiction among the poor. However, it encouraged the illegal traffic of “bootleggers”, who imported or produced liquor illegally, and increased the phenomenon of gangsterism. THE WALL STREET CRASH AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION In 1929 the American stock market collapsed. This led to a massive panic and on Thursday 24th October Wall Street - the home of the New York Stock Exchange, crashed. This day became known as “Black Thursday”, as it sealed America's fall into depression. The Wall Street Crash marked the end of the prosperous Twenties and the beginning of a worldwide economic crisis known as the “Great Depression”. Factories failed, banks crashed, goods were produced but no longer sold. Americans were unemployed and spent hours in “breadlines”, where they received free rations of food. In that period the Great Plains region was devastated by drought and for this reason many farmers were forced to migrate to California, by this environmental disaster named the “Dust Bowl”. The agricultural devastation, in particularly, helped to lengthen the depression. -In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt became president and promised the Americans a “new reform deals”, where there were mainly three objectives which were: relief, recovery and reform. And so, after the federal government spent a lot of money on the unemployed, public works and conservation of natural resources. There was also promoted the rehabilitation of farms where farmers were instructed to plant trees and anchor the land. THE SECOND WORLD WAR