History

The Twentieth Century became noted as being the American Century and who is responsible for this?

Henry Luce, of Time and Life, wrote his "American century" editorial in 1941and within this he declared that the 20th century would be the American Century

Frederick Winslow Taylor, On Scientific Management, 1911 (excerpts, first part of ch. 2, pp. 30-70) was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency.[2] He was one of the first management consultants.[3] Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s). Taylor summed up his efficiency techniques in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management. His pioneering work in applying engineering principles to the work done on the factory floor was instrumental in the creation and development of the branch of engineering that is now known as industrial engineering. Taylor

In 1909, Taylor published "The Principles of Scientific Management." In this, he proposed that by optimizing and simplifying jobs, productivity would increase. He also advanced the idea that workers and managers needed to cooperate with one another. This was very different from the way work was typically done in businesses beforehand. A factory manager at that time had very little contact with the workers, and he left them on their own to produce the necessary product. There was no standardization, and a worker's main motivation was often continued employment, so there was no incentive to work as quickly or as efficiently as possible. Taylor believed that all workers were motivated by money, so he promoted the idea of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." In other words, if a worker didn't achieve enough in a day, he didn't deserve to be paid as much as another worker who was highly productive. With a background in mechanical engineering, Taylor was very interested in efficiency. While advancing his career at a U.S. steel manufacturer, he designed workplace experiments to determine optimal performance levels. In one, he experimented with shovel design until he had a design that would allow workers to shovel for several hours straight. With bricklayers, he experimented with the various motions required and developed an efficient way to lay bricks. And he applied the scientific method to study the optimal way to do any type of workplace task. As such, he found that by calculating the time needed for the various elements of a task, he could develop the "best" way to complete that task. These "time and motion" studies also led Taylor to conclude that certain people could work more efficiently than others. These were the people whom managers should seek to hire where possible. Therefore, selecting the right people for the job was another important part of workplace efficiency. Taking what he learned from these workplace experiments, Taylor developed four principles of scientific management. These principles are also known simply as "Taylorism". Four Principles of Scientific Management Taylor's four principles are as follows: 1.Replace working by "rule of thumb," or simple habit and common sense, and instead use the scientific method to study work and determine the most efficient way to perform specific tasks. 2.Rather than simply assign workers to just any job, match workers to their jobs based on capability and motivation, and train them to work at maximum efficiency. 3.Monitor worker performance, and provide instructions and supervision to ensure that they're using the most efficient ways of working. 4.Allocate the work between managers and workers so that the managers spend their time planning and training, allowing the workers to perform their tasks efficiently

Herbert Hoover, November 1928 Campaign Speech the 31st President of the United States (1929-33). He was a professional mining engineer and was raised as a Quaker. A Republican, Hoover served as head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I, and became internationally known for humanitarian relief efforts in war-time Belgium.[1] As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business under the rubric "economic modernization". In the presidential election of 1928, Hoover easily won the Republican nomination, despite having no elected-office experience. Hoover is the most recent cabinet secretary to be elected President of the United States, as well as one of only two Presidents (along with William Howard Taft) elected without electoral experience or high military rank. Hoover, a globally experienced engineer, believed strongly in the Efficiency Movement, which held that the government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste, and could be improved by experts who could identify the problems and solve them. He also believed in the importance of volunteerism and of the role of individuals in society and the economy. Hoover, who had made a small fortune in mining, was the first of two Presidents to redistribute his salary (President Kennedy was the other; he donated all his paychecks to charity).[2] When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 struck less than eight months after he took office, Hoover tried to combat the ensuing Great Depression with moderate government public works projects such as the Hoover Dam. The record tariffs imbedded in the Smoot-Hawley Tariff and aggressive increases in the top tax bracket from 25% to 63%, coupled with increases in corporate taxes,[3] yielded a "balanced budget" in 1933, but the economy plummeted simultaneously and unemployment rates rose to afflict one in four American workers. This downward spiral set the stage for Hoover's defeat in 1932 by Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who promised a New Deal. After Roosevelt assumed the Presidency in 1933, Hoover became a spokesman for opposition to the domestic and foreign policies of the New Deal. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman appointed Hoover to head the Hoover Commission, intended to foster greater efficiency throughout the federal bureaucracy. Most historians agree that Hoover's defeat in the 1932 election was caused primarily by the downward economic spiral, although his strong support for prohibition was also significant. Hoover is usually ranked lower than average among U.S. Presidents.

In 1928, the Republican party nominated Herbert Hoover, a world famous mining engineer and Secretary of Commerce under Harding and Coolidge, for the presidency. In this speech, which closed his successful presidential campaign, Hoover, a self-made millionaire, expressed his view that the American system was based on "rugged individualism" and "self-reliance." Government, which had assumed unprecedented economic powers during World War I, should, in his view, shrink back to its prewar size and avoid intervening with business. During the early days of the Great Depression, Hoover launched the largest public works projects up until his time. But he continued to believe that problems of poverty and unemployment were best left to "voluntary organization and community service." He feared that federal relief programs would undermine individual character by making recipients dependent on the government. He did not recognize that the sheer size of the nation's economic problems had made the concept of "rugged individualism" meaningless.

FDR, No Fear Speech, First Inaugural Address, 1933 an American statesman and political leader who served as the President of the United States from 1933 to 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and dominated his party for many years as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved a great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. As a dominant leader of the Democratic Party, he built the New Deal Coalition that brought together and united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners in support of the party. The Coalition significantly realigned American politics after 1932, creating the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. Roosevelt was born in 1882, to an old, prominent Dutch family from Dutchess County, New York. He attended the elite educational institutions of Groton School and Harvard College. At age 23, in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, with whom he had six children. He entered politics in 1910, serving in the New York State Senate, and then as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson. In 1920, Roosevelt ran for vice president with presidential candidate James M. Cox, but the Cox/Roosevelt ticket lost to the Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Roosevelt was stricken with debilitating polio in 1921, which cost him the use of his legs and put his future political career in jeopardy, but he attempted to recover from the illness, and founded the treatment center for people with polio in Warm Springs, Georgia. After returning to political life by placing Alfred E. Smith's name into nomination at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, Roosevelt, at Smith's behest, successfully ran for Governor of New York in 1928. In office from 1929 to 1932, he served as a reform governor promoting the enactment of programs to combat the Great Depression besetting the United States at the time. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt successfully defeated incumbent Republican president Herbert Hoover to win the presidency of the United States. Having been energized by his personal victory over his polio, FDR relied on his persistent optimism and activism to renew the national spirit.[3] In his first hundred days in office, which began March 4, 1933, Roosevelt spearheaded unprecedented major legislation and issued a profusion of executive orders that instituted the New Deal—a variety of programs designed to produce relief (government jobs for the unemployed), recovery (economic growth), and reform (through regulation of Wall Street, banks and transportation). He created numerous programs to support the unemployed and farmers, and to encourage labor union growth while more closely regulating business and high finance. The repeal of Prohibition in 1933 added to his popularity, helping him win re-election by a landslide in 1936. The economy improved rapidly from 1933 to 1937, but then relapsed into a deep recession in 1937-38. The bipartisan Conservative Coalition that formed in 1937 prevented his packing the Supreme Court, and blocked almost all proposals for major liberal legislation (except the minimum wage, which did pass). When the war began and unemployment ended, conservatives in Congress repealed the two major relief programs, the WPA and CCC. However, they kept most of the regulations on business. Along with several smaller programs, major surviving programs include the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wagner Act, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Social Security. As World War II loomed after 1938, with the Japanese invasion of China and the aggression of Nazi Germany, Roosevelt gave strong diplomatic and financial support to China and the United Kingdom, while remaining officially neutral. His goal was to make America the "Arsenal of Democracy", which would supply munitions to the Allies. In March 1941, Roosevelt, with Congressional approval, provided Lend-Lease aid to Britain and China. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which he called "a date which will live in infamy", Roosevelt sought and obtained the quick approval, on December 8, of the United States Congress to declare war on Japan and, a few days later, on Germany. Assisted by his top aide Harry Hopkins, and with very strong national support, he worked closely with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in leading the Allies against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan in World War II. He supervised the mobilization of the U.S. economy to support the war effort, and also ordered the internment of 100,000 Japanese American civilians. As an active military leader, Roosevelt implemented a war strategy on two fronts that ended in the defeat of the Axis Powers and the development of the world's first nuclear bomb. His work also influenced the later creation of the United Nations and Bretton Woods. During the war, unemployment dropped to 2%, relief programs largely ended, and the industrial economy grew rapidly to new heights as millions of people moved to wartime factory jobs or entered military service.[4] Roosevelt's health seriously declined during the war years, and he died three months into his fourth term. He is often rated by scholars as one of the top three U.S. Presidents, along with Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.[5]

In one of the most powerful of American political addresses, replete with biblical allusions, President Roosevelt takes control of a nation reeling from the Depression. The speech is less notable for its specific proposals—FDR had elaborated on these in his Commonwealth Club Address—than for its ambitious reach over the political landscape. Roosevelt asks for wartime executive powers to deal with the crisis and for Americans to bow with military discipline to his authority. Roosevelt presents himself as a biblical prophet, damning the "unscrupulous money changers," who "know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish." Assuming the place of Jesus he declares: "The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths." Roosevelt cunningly uses the economic crisis to turn our gaze away from "mere possession of money." The restoration of "ancient truths" will come about when "we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." We must fulfill our "true destiny" of ministering to ourselves and our fellow men. But restoration calls for more than spiritual conversion; it demands "action, and action now." FDR set the standard for liberal rhetoric and action—noble ambitions for the sake of redistributing wealth. Roosevelt pleads for extraordinary powers. After making unemployment the priority, he calls for the redistribution of the population to correct the "overbalance of population in our industrial centers." After this shocking idea FDR calls for changes in agriculture, government budgets, relief, banking, national planning, international trade, and a good neighbor policy. He concludes that "We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good." Moving as a "trained and loyal army," we should all be bound together by "a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife." Roosevelt does not offer specific plans, but he asks the people to trust him with unspecified extraordinary powers. Roosevelt calls for "broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." He speaks of his respect for the Constitution and the separation of powers, "But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure." Roosevelt concludes by claiming a mandate from the people for "direct, vigorous action": "They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it" (See Acts 2:38). He had opened and now closes a speech laden with biblical allusions by declaring this a day of national dedication, that is, of consecration (see Deuteronomy 6:4-13). In describing his own apotheosis that would bring about a restoration, Roosevelt, acting as the people's servant, gives perhaps the most Machiavellian speech ever delivered by a President. The constitutional forms that Abraham Lincoln and others in crises strove so hard to preserve Roosevelt now discards, for the indeterminate length of the crisis.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lochner v. New York, 1904 an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932, and as Acting Chief Justice of the United States January-February 1930. Noted for his long service, his concise and pithy opinions and his deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "clear and present danger" opinion for a unanimous Court in the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, and is one of the most influential American common law judges, honored during his lifetime in Great Britain as well as the United States. Holmes retired from the Court at the age of 90 years, making him the oldest Justice in the Supreme Court's history. He also served as an Associate Justice and as Chief Justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was Weld Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School, of which he was an alumnus. Profoundly influenced by his experience fighting in the American Civil War, Holmes helped move American legal thinking towards legal realism, as summed up in his maxim: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."[2] Holmes espoused a form of moral skepticism and opposed the doctrine of natural law, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence. As he wrote in one of his most famous decisions, his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), he regarded the United States Constitution as "an experiment, as all life is an experiment" and believed that as a consequence "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death."[3] During his tenure on the Supreme Court, to which he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt, he supported efforts for economic regulation and advocated broad freedom of speech under the First Amendment. These positions as well as his distinctive personality and writing style made him a popular figure, especially with American progressives.[4] His jurisprudence influenced much subsequent American legal thinking, including judicial consensus supporting New Deal regulatory law, and influential schools of pragmatism, critical legal studies, and law and economics. He was one of only a handful of justices to be known as a scholar; The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Holmes as one of the three most cited American legal scholars of the 20th century.[5]

Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that held that "liberty of contract" was implicit in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved a New York law that limited the number of hours that a bakery employee could work each day to ten, and each week to 60. By a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that the law was necessary to protect the health of bakers, deciding it was a labor law attempting to regulate the terms of employment, and calling it an "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference with the right and liberty of the individual to contract." Lochner is one of the most controversial decisions in the Supreme Court's history, giving its name to what is known as the Lochner era. In the Lochner era, the Supreme Court issued several controversial decisions invalidating federal and state statutes that sought to regulate working conditions during the Progressive Era and the Great Depression. During the quarter-century that followed Lochner, the Supreme Court also began to use the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect rights like freedom of speech and the right to send one's child to private school (which was the beginning of the line of cases that found a right to privacy in the Constitution). The Lochner era ended with West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), in which the Supreme Court took an expansive view of the government's power to regulate commercial activities. In 1895, the New York Legislature unanimously enacted the Bakeshop Act, which regulated sanitary conditions in bakeries and also prohibited employees from working in bakeries for more than ten hours per day or sixty hours per week. In 1899, Joseph Lochner, owner of Lochner's Home Bakery in Utica, was indicted on a charge that he violated Section 110 of Article 8, Chapter 415, of the Laws of 1897, in that he wrongfully and unlawfully permitted an employee working for him to work more than sixty hours in one week. Lochner was fined $25. For a second offense in 1901, Lochner drew a fine of $50 from the Oneida County Court. Lochner chose to appeal his second conviction. However, the conviction was upheld by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in a 3-2 vote. Lochner appealed again to the New York Court of Appeals, where he lost by a 4-3 margin. After his defeat in the Court of Appeals (New York's highest court), Lochner took his case to the Supreme Court of the United States. Lochner's appeal was based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which provides: "... nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In a series of cases starting with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), the Supreme Court established that the Due Process Clause (found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments) is not merely a procedural guarantee, but also a substantive limitation on the type of control the government may exercise over individuals. Although this interpretation of the Due Process Clause is a controversial one (see substantive due process), it had become firmly embedded in American jurisprudence by the end of the 19th century. Lochner argued that the right to freely contract was one of the rights encompassed by substantive due process. Scholars have noted that when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868, 27 out of 37 state constitutions had Lockean Provisos, which typically said: "All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring and possessing and protecting property: and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness." As such clauses were "deeply rooted in American history and tradition," they likely informed the original meaning of the scope and nature of the fundamental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment in the eyes of Lochner-era justices.[1] The Supreme Court had accepted the argument that the due process clause protected the right to contract seven years earlier, in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897). However, the Court had acknowledged that the right was not absolute, but subject to the "police power" of the states. For example, in Holden v. Hardy (1898), the Supreme Court upheld a Utah law setting an eight-hour work day for miners. In Holden, Justice Henry Brown wrote that while "the police power cannot be put forward as an excuse for oppressive and unjust legislation, it may be lawfully resorted to for the purpose of preserving the public health, safety, or morals." The issue facing the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York was whether the Bakeshop Act represented a reasonable exercise of the state's police power. Lochner's case was argued by Henry Weismann (who had been one of the foremost advocates of the Bakeshop Act when he was Secretary of the Journeymen Bakers' Union). In his brief, Weismann decried the idea that "the treasured freedom of the individual ... should be swept away under the guise of the police power of the State." He denied New York's argument that the Bakeshop Act was a necessary health measure, claiming that the "average bakery of the present day is well ventilated, comfortable both summer and winter, and always sweet smelling." Weismann's brief contained an appendix providing statistics showing that bakers' mortality rates were comparable to that of white collar professionals.

William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold Speech, Democratic National Convention, 1896 an American orator and politician from Nebraska, and a dominant force in the populist wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as the Party's candidate for President of the United States (1896, 1900 and 1908). He served two terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Nebraska and was United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1915). He resigned because of his pacifist position on World War I. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a strong advocate of popular democracy, and an enemy of the banks and the gold standard. He demanded "Free Silver" because he believed it undermined the evil "Money Power" and put more cash in the hands of the common people. He was a peace advocate, a supporter of Prohibition, and an opponent of Darwinism on religious and humanitarian grounds. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was perhaps the best-known orator and lecturer of the era. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, he was called "The Great Commoner." In the intensely fought 1896 and 1900 elections, he was defeated by William McKinley but retained control of the Democratic Party. With over 500 speeches in 1896, Bryan invented the national stumping tour in an era when other presidential candidates stayed home. In his three presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and trust-busting in 1908, calling on Democrats to fight the trusts (big corporations) and big banks, and embrace anti-elitist ideals of republicanism. President Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913. After the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915, Wilson made strong demands on Germany that Bryan disagreed with, resigning in protest as a pacifist. After 1920 he supported Prohibition and attacked Darwinism and evolution, most famously at the Scopes Trial in 1925 in Tennessee. Five days after the conclusion of the Scopes case, Bryan died in his sleep.[2]

The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan, a former United States Representative from Nebraska, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 9, 1896. In the address, Bryan supported bimetallism or "free silver", which he believed would bring the nation prosperity. He decried the gold standard, concluding the speech, "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold".[1] Bryan's address helped catapult him to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination; it is considered one of the greatest political speeches in American history. For twenty years, Americans had been bitterly divided over the nation's monetary standard. The gold standard, which the United States had effectively been on since 1873, limited the money supply but eased trade with other nations, such as the United Kingdom, whose currency was also based on gold. Many Americans, however, believed that bimetallism (making both gold and silver legal tender) was necessary for the nation's economic health. The financial Panic of 1893 intensified the debates, and when Democratic President Grover Cleveland continued to support the gold standard against the will of much of his party, activists became determined to take over the Democratic Party organization and nominate a silver-supporting candidate in 1896. Bryan had been a dark horse candidate with little support in the convention. His speech, delivered at the close of the debate on the party platform, electrified the convention and is generally credited with getting him the nomination for president. However, he lost the general election to William McKinley and the United States formally adopted the gold standard in 1900.

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash, 1954, chapters 5 & 6 was a Canadian and, later, American economist, public official, and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. As an economist, he leaned toward Post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective.[2][3] Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and stayed with Harvard University for half a century as a professor of economics.[4] He was a prolific author and wrote four dozen books, including several novels, and published more than a thousand articles and essays on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as United States Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His political activism, literary output and outspokenness made him, arguably, "the best-known economist in the world"[5] during his lifetime.[6] Galbraith was one of few recipients both of the Medal of Freedom (1946) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) for his public service and contribution to science. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur.

The Great Crash, 1929 is a book written by John Kenneth Galbraith and published in 1955; it is an economic history of the lead-up to the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The book argues that the 1929 stock market crash was precipitated by rampant speculation in the stock market, that the common denominator of all speculative episodes is the belief of participants that they can become rich without work[1] and that the tendency towards recurrent speculative orgy serves no useful purpose, but rather is deeply damaging to an economy.[2] It was Galbraith's belief that a good knowledge of what happened in 1929 was the best safeguard against its recurrence.[3]

Eugene Debs, Statement to the Court, 1918 was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies), and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.[1] Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States. Early in his political career, Debs was a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected as a Democrat to the Indiana General Assembly in 1884. After working with several smaller unions, including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Debs was instrumental in the founding of the American Railway Union (ARU), one of the nation's first industrial unions. After workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company organized a wildcat strike over pay cuts in the summer of 1894, Debs signed many into the ARU. He called a boycott of the ARU against handling trains with Pullman cars, in what became the nationwide Pullman Strike, affecting most lines west of Detroit, and more than 250,000 workers in 27 states. To keep the mail running, President Grover Cleveland used the United States Army to break the strike. As a leader of the ARU, Debs was convicted of federal charges for defying a court injunction against the strike and served six months in prison. In jail, Debs read various works of socialist theory and emerged six months later as a committed adherent of the international socialist movement. Debs was a founding member of the Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898), and the Socialist Party of America (1901). Debs ran as a Socialist candidate for President of the United States five times, including 1900 (earning 0.63% of the popular vote), 1904 (2.98%), 1908 (2.83%), 1912 (5.99%), and 1920 (3.41%), the last time from a prison cell. He was also a candidate for United States Congress from his native Indiana in 1916. Debs was noted for his oratory, and his speech denouncing American participation in World War I led to his second arrest in 1918. He was convicted under the Sedition Act of 1918 and sentenced to a term of 10 years. President Warren G. Harding commuted his sentence in December 1921. Debs died in 1926, not long after being admitted to a sanatorium due to cardiovascular problems that developed during his time in prison. He has since been cited as the inspiration for numerous politicians

sentencing hearing:[42] Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court. In its ruling on Debs v. United States, the court examined several statements Debs had made regarding World War I and socialism. While Debs had carefully worded his speeches in an attempt to comply with the Espionage Act, the Court found he had the intention and effect of obstructing the draft and military recruitment. Among other things, the Court cited Debs' praise for those imprisoned for obstructing the draft. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. stated in his opinion that little attention was needed since Debs' case was essentially the same as that of Schenck v. United States, in which the Court had upheld a similar conviction.

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 1899 an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, Roosevelt successfully overcame his health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle. He integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements into a "cowboy" persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he became a lifelong naturalist before attending Harvard College. His first of many books, The Naval War of 1812 (1882), established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the reform faction of Republicans in New York's state legislature. Following the deaths of his wife and mother, he took time to grieve by escaping to the wilderness of the American West and operating a cattle ranch in the Dakotas for a time, before returning East to run unsuccessfully for Mayor of New York City in 1886. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under William McKinley, resigning after one year to serve with the Rough Riders, where he gained national fame for courage during the Spanish-American War. Returning a war hero, he was elected governor of New York in 1898. The state party leadership distrusted him, so they took the lead in moving him to the prestigious, but considered by them powerless, position of running for vice president as McKinley's running mate in the election of 1900. Roosevelt campaigned vigorously across the country, helping McKinley win re-election by a landslide on a platform of peace, prosperity, and conservatism. Following the assassination of President McKinley in September 1901, Roosevelt, at age 42, became the youngest United States President in history. Leading his party and country into the Progressive Era, he championed his "Square Deal" domestic policies, promising the average citizen fairness, breaking of trusts, regulation of railroads, and pure food and drugs. Making conservation a top priority, he established myriad new national parks, forests, and monuments intended to preserve the nation's natural resources. In foreign policy, he focused on Central America, where he began construction of the Panama Canal. He greatly expanded the United States Navy, and sent the Great White Fleet on a world tour to project the United States' naval power around the globe. His successful efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize. Elected in 1904 to a full term, he continued his pursuit of progressive policies, but many of his efforts and much of his legislative agenda were eventually blocked in Congress. Roosevelt successfully groomed his close friend, William Howard Taft, to succeed him in the presidency, and after leaving office, went on safari in Africa and toured Europe. Returning to the USA, he became frustrated with Taft's approach as his successor, trying but failing to win the presidential nomination again himself in 1912. He then founded his own party, the Progressive, so-called "Bull Moose" Party, and called for wide-ranging progressive reforms. The split allowed the Democrats to win both the White House and a majority in the Congress in 1912, and Republicans aligned with Taft would control the Republican Party for decades. Frustrated at home, Roosevelt led a two-year expedition in the Amazon, nearly dying of tropical disease. During World War I, he opposed President Wilson for keeping the U.S. out of the war against Germany, and offered his military services, which were never summoned. Although he planned to run again for president in 1920, his health quickly deteriorated, and he died in early 1919. Roosevelt has consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S. presidents.[2]

"The Strenuous Life" is the name of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in Chicago, Illinois on April 10, 1899. Based upon his personal experiences, he argued that strenuous effort and overcoming hardship were ideals to be embraced by Americans for the betterment of the nation and the world in the 20th century. The speech reflected his own personality and life experience. Roosevelt was sickly and asthmatic as a youngster, and had to sleep propped up in bed or slouching in a chair during much of his early childhood. He was in poor physical condition as a result. Roosevelt's father compelled the young Roosevelt to take up exercise, including boxing lessons in order to ward off bullies.[2] The influence stuck. Upon graduating from Harvard University, Roosevelt underwent a physical examination and his doctor advised him that due to serious heart problems, he should find a desk job and avoid strenuous activity. Roosevelt disregarded the advice. As an adult, he exercised regularly and took up boxing, tennis, hiking, rowing, polo, and horseback riding. As governor of New York, he boxed with sparring partners several times a week, a practice he regularly continued as President until one blow detached his left retina, leaving him blind in that eye (a fact not made public until many years later). Thereafter, he practiced jujutsu and continued his habit of skinny-dipping in the Potomac River during winter.[3][4] As a result, the phrase "the strenuous life" has become highly connected to Roosevelt's life. Nathan Miller's biography of Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, begins by saying that "the strenuous life" is one of "the things that immediately come to mind when Theodore Roosevelt's name is mentioned."[5] The speech also reflected the American spirit at the turn of the 20th century. The increasing industrialization and urbanization of America led many to become fearful of growing weak. College sports were on the rise, as were recreational athletics such as bicycling. American culture embraced masculinity, patriotism, and nationalism.[6] Issues of masculinity were especially predominant during this time, given the various women's movements of the age. Critics and scholars, including author Henry James, worried about a femininization of America. The time was ripe for Roosevelt to extol the masculine virtues of the strenuous life.[7] Roosevelt used the speech to justify American imperialism as well.[8]

Andrew Carnegie, Wealth, 1889 Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for the United States and the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away to charities, foundations, and universities about $350 million[2] (in 2015 share of GDP, $78.6 billion) - almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and it stimulated a wave of philanthropy. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States with his very poor parents in 1848. Carnegie started work as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. He accumulated further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million[2] (2015 per share of GDP, $370 billion), creating the U.S. Steel Corporation. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. With the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie Hall and he founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.

"Wealth",[2] more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth",[3] is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June[4] of 1889[5] that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new phenomenon of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in a responsible and thoughtful manner. This approach was contrasted with traditional bequest (patrimony), where wealth is handed down to heirs, and other forms of bequest e.g. where wealth is willed to the state for public purposes. Carnegie argued that surplus wealth is put to best use (i.e. produces the greatest net benefit to society) when it is administered carefully by the wealthy. Carnegie also argues against wasteful use of capital in the form of extravagance, irresponsible spending, or self-indulgence, instead promoting the administration of said capital over the course of one's lifetime toward the cause of reducing the stratification between the rich and poor. As a result, the wealthy should administer their riches responsibly and not in a way that encourages "the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy". The Gospel of Wealth asserts that hard work and perseverance lead to wealth. Carnegie based his philosophy on the observation that the heirs of large fortunes frequently squandered them in riotous living rather than nurturing and growing them. Even bequeathing one's fortune to charity was no guarantee that it would be used wisely, due to the fact that there was no guarantee that a charitable organization not under one's direction would use the money in accordance with one's wishes. Carnegie disapproved of charitable giving that maintained the poor in their impoverished state, and urged a movement toward the creation of a new mode of giving that would create opportunities for the beneficiaries of the gift to better themselves. As a result, the gift would not be simply consumed, but would be productive of even greater wealth throughout the house. In Wealth, Carnegie examines the modes of distributing accumulated wealth and capital to the communities from which they originate. He preached that ostentatious living and amassing private treasures were wrong. He praised the high British taxes on the estates of dead millionaires, remarking that "By taxing estates heavily at death the State marks its condemnation of the selfish millionaire's unworthy life. It is desirable that nations should go much further in this direction."[2] Carnegie made it clear that the duty of the rich was to live modest lifestyles,[6] and that any surplus of money they had was best suited for re-circulation back into society where it could be used to support the greater good. He shunned aristocratic chains of inheritance and argued that dependents should be supported by their work with major moderation, with the bulk of excess wealth to be spent on enriching the community. In cases where excess wealth was held until death, he advocated its apprehension by the state on a progressive scale: "Indeed, it is difficult to set bounds to the share of a rich man's estates which should go at his death to the public through the agency of the State, and by all means such taxes should be granted, beginning at nothing upon moderate sums to dependents, and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell, until of the millionaire's hoard, at least the other half comes to the privy coffer of the State."[2] He claimed that, in bettering society and people here on Earth, one would be rewarded at the gates of Paradise.

What Five Generations of Americans do we study?

-Late Nineteenth-Century Americans, among them many immigrants: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Emma Lazarus, for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, 1886 -World War One Generation. President Woodrow Wilson negotiated the terms of world peace at Versailles, 1919 -World War Two Generation. American Troops at Omaha Beach in June 1944 -The Generation Coming of Age in the 1960s and fighting in Vietnam -The Children of 9/11

Two large projects that Americans were undertaking in the 19th century and how did they overlap?

1) The creation of an industrial economy on a continental scale 2) A reassessment of democratic institutions, with major fights for inclusion and exclusion. Herbert Croly's forecast in The Promise of American Life, 1909 The Promise of American Life is a book published by Herbert Croly, founder of The New Republic, in 1909. This book opposed aggressive unionization and supported economic planning to raise general quality of life. After reading this book, Theodore Roosevelt adopted the New Nationalism. The book is said to "offer a manifesto of Progressive beliefs" that "anticipated the transition from competitive to corporate capitalism and from limited government to the welfare state." For Croly, the individualistic, libertarian America of the agrarian 18th and 19th centuries was gone, swept away by the forces of the industrial revolution, urbanization, centralization and modernity. He advocated a new political consensus that included as its core nationalism, but with a sense of social responsibility and care for the less fortunate

Carrie Chapman Catt, National American Woman Suffrage Association, Address to Congress, 1917 Carrie Chapman Catt (January 9, 1859 - March 9, 1947) was an American women's suffrage leader who campaigned for the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gave U.S. women the right to vote in 1920. Catt served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association and was the founder of the League of Women Voters and the International Alliance of Women. She "led an army of voteless women in 1919 to pressure Congress to pass the constitutional amendment giving them the right to vote and convinced state legislatures to ratify it in 1920" and "was one of the best-known women in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century and was on all lists of famous American women".[1]

Address to Congress on Women's Suffrage 1917, fought for women's right to vote, encouraged women to participate in WWI to get their right to vote

Helped in the creation of an industrial economy on a continental scale

Frederick Winslow Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 1911 was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency.[2] He was one of the first management consultants.[3] Taylor was one of the intellectual leaders of the Efficiency Movement and his ideas, broadly conceived, were highly influential in the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s). Taylor summed up his efficiency techniques in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management. His pioneering work in applying engineering principles to the work done on the factory floor was instrumental in the creation and development of the branch of engineering that is now known as industrial engineering.

W.E.B. DuBois, "The Talented Tenth," 1903 was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the University of Berlin and Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military. Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era. He wrote one of the first scientific treatises in the field of American sociology, and he published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.

In this 1903 speech, progressive for its time, Du Bois calls for leadership from the exceptional members of the black community--the "talented tenth"--and instructs these chosen ones on how to educate their children, since he has little faith in the American public school system. Yet he encourages college education because a "university is a human invention for the transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to generation, through the training of quick minds and pure hearts, and for this work no other human invention will suffice, not even trade and industrial schools." For Du Bois, the imperative lessons for the "talented tenth" are strength of character, increased knowledge, and the know-how to make a living. He ends his speech by warning the Men of America: "If you do not lift [the millions] up, they will pull you down." DuBois' speech offers an opportunity to discuss the value of higher education, whose responsibility it is to "pull up the masses", and how this might impact our teaching, learning, service, or work.

Woodrow Wilson, Address to Congress on War with Germany, 1917 an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his early years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson earned a PhD in political science, working as a professor and scholar at various institutions before being chosen as President of Princeton University, a position he held from 1902 to 1910. In the election of 1910, he was the gubernatorial candidate of New Jersey's Democratic Party, and was elected the 34th Governor of New Jersey, serving from 1911 to 1913. Running for president in 1912, a split in the Republican Party allowed his plurality, just over forty percent, to win him a large electoral college margin. As President, Wilson was a leading force in the Progressive Movement, bolstered by his Democratic Party's winning control of both the White House and Congress in 1912. In office, Wilson reintroduced the spoken State of the Union, which had been out of use since 1801. Leading the Congress, now in Democratic hands, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933.[1] Included among these were the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal Farm Loan Act. Having taken office one month after ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, Wilson called a special session of Congress, whose work culminated in the Revenue Act of 1913, reintroducing an income tax and lowering tariffs. Through passage of the Adamson Act, imposing an 8-hour workday for railroads, he averted a railroad strike and an ensuing economic crisis.[2] Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Wilson maintained a policy of neutrality, while pursuing a more aggressive policy in dealing with Mexico's civil war. Wilson faced former Governor Charles Evans Hughes of New York in the presidential elections of 1916. He became the first Democrat since Andrew Jackson elected to consecutive terms with a narrow majority. Wilson's second term was dominated by American entry into World War I. In April 1917, when Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson asked Congress to declare war in order to make "the world safe for democracy." The United States conducted military operations alongside the Allies, although without a formal alliance. During the war, Wilson focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving military strategy to the generals, especially General John J. Pershing. Loaning billions of dollars to Britain, France, and other Allies, the United States aided their finance of the war effort. Through the Selective Service Act, conscription sent 10,000 freshly trained soldiers to France, per day, by summer of 1918. On the home front, he raised income taxes, borrowing billions of dollars through the public's purchase of Liberty Bonds. He set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union cooperation, regulating agriculture and food production through the Lever Act, and granting to the Secretary of the Treasury, William McAdoo, direct control of the nation's railroad system. In his 1915 State of the Union, Wilson asked Congress for what became the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, suppressing anti-draft activists. The crackdown was intensified by his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to include expulsion of non-citizen radicals during the First Red Scare of 1919-1920. Following years of advocacy for suffrage on the state level, in 1918 he endorsed the Nineteenth Amendment whose ratification provided all women the right to vote by its ratification in 1920, over Southern opposition. Wilson staffed his government with Southern Democrats who believed in segregation.[3] He gave department heads greater autonomy in their management.[4] Early in 1918, he issued his principles for peace, the Fourteen Points, and in 1919, following armistice, he traveled to Paris, promoting the formation of a League of Nations, concluding the Treaty of Versailles. Following his return from Europe, Wilson embarked on a nationwide tour in 1919 to campaign for the treaty, suffering a severe stroke. The treaty was met with serious concern by Senate Republicans, and Wilson rejected a compromise effort led by Henry Cabot Lodge, leading to the Senate's rejection of the treaty. Due to his stroke, Wilson secluded himself in the White House, disability having diminished his power and influence. Forming a strategy for reelection, Wilson deadlocked the 1920 Democratic National Convention, but his bid for a third term nomination was overlooked. A devoted Presbyterian, Wilson infused morality into his internationalism, an ideology now referred to as "Wilsonian"—an activist foreign policy calling on the nation to promote global democracy.[5][6][7] For his sponsorship of the League of Nations, Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize, the second of three sitting presidents so honored

In this message urging Congress to declare war on Germany, President Woodrow Wilson presents the Progressive understanding of foreign policy: America has a duty to spread liberty across the world. "The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty." By contrast, the prudent practice before Wilson was best captured in John Quincy Adams's statement that America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy." Inaugurated less than a month before, Wilson had been reelected not least for his having kept America out of the European war. But Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare created a state of war and called for American intervention. Wilson is careful, however, to reject mere self-defense in justifying war, thereby marking another profound break with traditional American foreign policy. In Wilson's view, national interest alone cannot guide American policy. When America acts in the world, he would have it be for the universal good of mankind. By contrast, Washington in his Farewell Address spoke of choosing "peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel." Throughout the address Wilson appeals variously to humanity, mankind, free peoples, and a "League of Honor." He would have America conform to the highest aspirations of mankind, as expressed by the united wishes of the peoples of other nations—hence the need for a League of Nations and, later, a United Nations. Prior to Wilson, the shapers of American foreign policy kept "independence" as the watchword. Wilson justifies the U.S. entry into war "for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free." He declares "our object now" for a "concert of purpose and action" among like-minded nations dedicated to peace and justice. Thus, he approves of the overthrow of the czar of Russia, a nation that he found "always in fact democratic at heart." Wilson's universalism is not the Declaration's universalism of "all men are created equal." The Founders sought to base their own government on consent, not to offer a battle cry for a utopian, never-ending mission abroad. Wilson's passion to make "the world...safe for democracy" assumed that his Progressive democracy could be safe and salutary for any world, let alone the one nation that is based on individual natural rights.

Alain Locke, "Negro Youth Speaks," in The New Negro, 1925 was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished as the first African American Rhodes Scholar in 1907, Locke was the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. As a result, popular listings of influential African-Americans have repeatedly included him. On March 19, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe

Negro Youth Speaks Alain Locke's essay, Negro Youth Speaks is very representative of the Harlem Renaissance. It discusses the younger generation who Locke refers to as the "voice of the New Negro" (47). It is through this younger generation that African Americans have broken into true artistic levels, competing with their white counterparts. At this time, art became a very important segment of society for African Americans to showcase their talents and accomplishments. Locke feels that this new generation has "stopped speaking for the Negro" and now "they speak as Negroes" (48). It is this New Negro that has changed society and the way that African American art is evaluated. I liked that Locke pointed out that the African American artists of the Harlem Renaissance had a new way of thinking and a new outlook about their lives. Locke stated that African American artists had a "new aesthetic and a new philosophy" (49). I think that this new attitude gave rise to the Harlem Renaissance and characterized this time period in African American history. This New Negro no longer has the obligation to represent the race. Instead they are free to express themselves as individuals through their art. There are fewer restrictions on the African American because they are not as held back by the prejudice and oppression of the earlier generations. Locke's essay has a very positive tone. I think when this essay was published it provided African Americans with hope and motivation to break free from the restrictions of the past and strive to accomplish great things. Locke was sending a message that this new generation is finally going to be able to make the contributions that they have always been capable of doing.

Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895 was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement and the Jim Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His base was the Tuskegee Institute, a historically black college in Alabama. As lynchings in the South reached a peak in 1895, Washington gave a speech, known as the "Atlanta compromise," which brought him national fame. He called for black progress through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to challenge directly the Jim Crow segregation and the disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. Washington mobilized a nationwide coalition of middle-class blacks, church leaders, and white philanthropists and politicians, with a long-term goal of building the community's economic strength and pride by a focus on self-help and schooling. But, secretly, he also supported court challenges to segregation and passed on funds raised for this purpose.[1] Black militants in the North, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, at first supported the Atlanta compromise but after 1909, they set up the NAACP to work for political change. They tried with limited success to challenge Washington's political machine for leadership in the black community but also built wider networks among white allies in the North.[2] Decades after Washington's death in 1915, the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s took a more active and militant approach, which was also based on new grassroots organizations based in the South, such as CORE, SNCC and SCLC. Booker T. Washington mastered the nuances of the political arena in the late 19th century, which enabled him to manipulate the media, raise money, strategize, network, pressure, reward friends and distribute funds while punishing those who opposed his plans for uplifting blacks. His long-term goal was to end the disenfranchisement of the vast majority of African Americans, who still lived in the South.[3]

The Cotton States and International Exposition Speech was an address on the topic of race relations given by Booker T. Washington on September 18, 1895. The speech laid the foundation for the Atlanta compromise, an agreement between African-American leaders and Southern white leaders in which Southern blacks would work meekly and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic education and due process of law. The speech was presented before a predominantly white audience at the Cotton States and International Exposition (the site of Piedmont Park) in Atlanta, Georgia, the speech[1] has been recognized as one of the most important and influential speeches in American history.[2] The speech was preceded by the reading of a dedicatory ode written by Frank Lebby Stanton.[3] Washington began with a call to the blacks, who composed one third of the Southern population, to join the world of work. He declared that the South was where blacks were given their chance, as opposed to the North, especially in the worlds of commerce and industry. He told the white audience that rather than relying on the immigrant population arriving at the rate of a million people a year, they should hire some of the nation's eight million blacks. He praised blacks' loyalty, fidelity and love in service to the white population, but warned that they could be a great burden on society if oppression continued, stating that the progress of the South was inherently tied to the treatment of blacks and protection of their liberties. He addressed the inequality between commercial legality and social acceptance, proclaiming that "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house." Washington also endorsed segregation by claiming that blacks and whites could exist as separate fingers of a hand. The title "Atlanta Compromise" was given to the speech by W.E.B Dubois, who believed it was insufficiently committed to the pursuit of social and political equality for blacks. Cast down your bucket where you are[edit] This phrase surfaced numerous times throughout Washington's speech.[4] Generally, the phrase had different meanings for whites and blacks. For whites, Washington seemed to be challenging their common misperceptions of black labor. The North had been experiencing labor troubles in the early 1890s (Homestead Strike, Pullman Strike, etc.) and Washington sought to capitalize on these issues by offering Southern black labor as an alternative, especially since his Tuskegee Institute was in the business of training such workers. For blacks, however, the "Bucket motif" represented a call to personal uplift and diligence, as the South needed them to rebuild following the Civil War. Separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand[edit] This phrase appeared at the end of the speech's fifth paragraph.[5] It is commonly referred to as the "Hand simile." Certain historians, like Louis Harlan, saw this simile as Washington's personal embrace of racial segregation.[6] The entire simile reads as follows: In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.[5]

14th amendment 1868

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by Southern states, which were forced to ratify it in order for them to regain representation in Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark decisions such as Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion The amendment's first section includes several clauses: the Citizenship Clause, Privileges or Immunities Clause, Due Process Clause, and Equal Protection Clause. The Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had held that Americans descended from African slaves could not be citizens of the United States. The Privileges or Immunities Clause has been interpreted in such a way that it does very little. The Due Process Clause prohibits state and local government officials from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without legislative authorization. This clause has also been used by the federal judiciary to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural requirements that state laws must satisfy. The Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision that precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation, and for many other decisions rejecting irrational or unnecessary discrimination against people belonging to various groups. The second, third, and fourth sections of the amendment are seldom litigated. However, the second section's reference to "rebellion and other crime" has been invoked as a constitutional ground for felony disenfranchisement. The fifth section gives Congress the power to enforce the amendment's provisions by "appropriate legislation". However, under City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), Congress's enforcement power may not be used to contradict a Supreme Court interpretation of the amendment.