10 - 1900-1929

U.S. Presidential Election (1916)

1916 United States presidential election: Wilson and Marshall reelected by a mere 3,773 votes in California

Amelia Earhart (1928)

Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Amelia Mary Earhart disappeared July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.

Panama Canal Zone Acquired (1904)

At this time, the President and the Senate of the United States were interested in establishing a canal across the isthmus, with some favoring a canal across Nicaragua and others advocating the purchase of the French interests in Panama. Bunau-Varilla, who was seeking American involvement, asked for $100 million, but accepted $40 million in the face of the Nicaraguan option. In June 1902, the US Senate voted in favor of the Spooner Act, to pursue the Panamanian option, provided the necessary rights could be obtained. On January 22, 1903, the Hay-Herrán Treaty was signed by United States Secretary of State John M. Hay and Colombian Chargé Dr. Tomás Herrán. For $10 million and an annual payment, it would have granted the United States a renewable lease in perpetuity from Colombia on the land proposed for the canal. The treaty was ratified by the US Senate on March 14, 1903, but the Senate of Colombia did not ratify it. Bunau-Varilla told President Theodore Roosevelt and Hay of a possible revolt by Panamanian rebels who aimed to separate from Colombia, and hoped that the United States would support the rebels with US troops and money. Roosevelt changed tactics, based in part on the Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty of 1846, and actively supported the separation of Panama from Colombia. Shortly after recognizing Panama, he signed a treaty with the new Panamanian government under terms similar to the Hay-Herrán Treaty. On November 2, 1903, US warships blocked sea lanes against possible Colombian troop movements en route to put down the Panama rebellion. Panama declared independence on November 3, 1903. The United States quickly recognized the new nation. On November 6, 1903, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, as Panama's ambassador to the United States, signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, granting rights to the United States to build and indefinitely administer the Panama Canal Zone and its defenses. This is sometimes misinterpreted as the "99-year lease" because of misleading wording included in article 22 of the agreement. Almost immediately, the treaty was condemned by many Panamanians as an infringement on their country's new national sovereignty. This would later become a contentious diplomatic issue among Colombia, Panama, and the United States. President Roosevelt famously stated, "I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me." Several parties in the United States called this an act of war on Colombia: The New York Times described the support given by the United States to Bunau-Varilla as an "act of sordid conquest." The New York Evening Post called it a "vulgar and mercenary venture." The US maneuvers are often cited as the classic example of US gunboat diplomacy in Latin America, and the best illustration of what Roosevelt meant by the old African adage, "Speak softly and carry a big stick [and] you will go far." After the revolution in 1903, the Republic of Panama became a US protectorate until 1939.

Blease's Law (1929)

Blease's Law criminalized crossing the border outside an official port of entry. Primarily designed to restrict Mexican immigration, the law made "unlawfully entering the country" a misdemeanor and returning after a deportation a felony. During the 1920s, the severest immigration restrictions in U.S. history, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act and the national origins quota system, did not limit migration within the Americas. However, the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929 (Blease's Law) criminalized border crossing to limit the rights of Mexican immigrants. The segregationist and anti- immigrant Senator Coleman Livingston Blease (D-SC) led the legislative push to limit Mexican immigration. Disagreements between employers who depended on Mexican labor, particularly in agri-business, and restrictionists had prevented Congress from putting numeric limits on Mexican immigration. Blease proposed a solution criminalizing border crossings that occurred outside of official ports of entry. In 1929, Congress passed the new law, which made "unlawfully entering the country" a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year's imprisonment and fines, and returning to the United States after deportation a felony punishable by up to two years imprisonment and $1,000 in fines. Soon after passage of the Act, the U.S. economy entered the Great Depression and the federal government coerced Mexicans in the United States into repatriating by threatening penalties and conducting immigration raids targeting those who could not prove their legal status. By the end of the 1930s, U.S. attorneys had prosecuted more than 44,000 cases of unlawful entry almost entirely against Mexicans.

Charles Lindbergh's Flight (1927)

Charles Lindbergh makes first trans-Atlantic flight

Ford Model T (1908)

Ford Model T appears on market The Ford Model T (colloquially known as the Tin Lizzie, Leaping Lena, jitney or flivver) is an automobile produced by Ford Motor Company from October 1, 1908, to May 26, 1927. It is generally regarded as the first affordable automobile, that made car travel available to middle-class Americans. The relatively low price was partly the result of Ford's efficient fabrication, including assembly line production instead of individual hand crafting.

New Mexico & Arizona become States (1912)

Following the victory of the United States in the Mexican-American War (1846-48), under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico ceded its northern holdings, today known as the American Southwest and California, to the United States of America. The United States vowed to accept the residents' claims to their lands and to accept them as full citizens with rights of suffrage. This acquisition of territory and residents resulted in Mexicans' legally being classified as white, since at that time, in most of the southern United States, only whites could vote. Nevertheless, Texas and other western states raised barriers to voting and political participation by ethnic Mexicans, including barring them from serving on juries. Congress established the separate New Mexico Territory in September 1850.[44] It included most of the present-day states of Arizona and New Mexico, and part of Colorado. When the boundary was fixed, a surveyor's error awarded the Permian Basin to the State of Texas. New Mexico dropped its claims to the Permian in a bid to gain statehood in 1911. New Mexico played a role in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. Both Confederate and Union governments claimed ownership and territorial rights over New Mexico Territory. In 1861, the Confederacy claimed the southern tract as its own Arizona Territory and waged the ambitious New Mexico Campaign in an attempt to control the American Southwest and open up access to Union California. Confederate power in the New Mexico Territory was effectively broken after the Battle of Glorieta Pass in 1862. However, the Confederate territorial government continued to operate out of Texas, and Confederate troops marched under the Arizona flag until the end of the war. Additionally, more than 8,000 men from New Mexico Territory served in the Union Army. In the late 19th century, the majority of officially European-descended residents in New Mexico were ethnic Mexicans, many of whom had deep roots in the area from early Spanish colonial times. Politically, they still controlled most of the town and county offices through area elections, and wealthy sheepherder families commanded considerable influence. The Anglo-Americans tended to have more ties to the territorial governor and judges, who were appointed by officials out of the region. The two groups struggled for power and the future of the territory. The Anglo minority was "outnumbered, but well-organized and growing". Anglo-Americans made distinctions between the wealthy Mexicans and poor, ill-educated laborers. What is now known as the state of Arizona was initially administered by the United States government as part of the Territory of New Mexico until the southern part of that region seceded from the Union to form the Territory of Arizona. This newly established territory was formally organized by the Confederate States government on Saturday, January 18, 1862, when President Jefferson Davis approved and signed An Act to Organize the Territory of Arizona, marking the first official use of the name "Territory of Arizona". The Southern territory supplied the Confederate government with men, horses, and equipment. Formed in 1862, Arizona scout companies served with the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Arizona has the westernmost military engagement on record during the Civil War with the Battle of Picacho Pass.

Sacco & Vanzetti Arrested (1920)

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian migrant anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the April 15, 1920, armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were electrocuted in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. Both men adhered to an anarchist movement. After a few hours' deliberation on July 14, 1921, the jury convicted Sacco and Vanzetti of first-degree murder and they were sentenced to death by the trial judge. Anti-Italianism and anti-immigrant bias were suspected as having heavily influenced the verdict. A series of appeals followed, funded largely by the private Sacco and Vanzetti Defense Committee. The appeals were based on recanted testimony, conflicting ballistics evidence, a prejudicial pretrial statement by the jury foreman, and a confession by an alleged participant in the robbery. All appeals were denied by trial judge Webster Thayer and also later denied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. By 1926, the case had drawn worldwide attention. As details of the trial and the men's suspected innocence became known, Sacco and Vanzetti became the center of one of the largest causes célèbres in modern history. In 1927, protests on their behalf were held in every major city in North America and Europe, as well as in Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Montevideo, Johannesburg, and Auckland. Investigations in the aftermath of the executions continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The publication of the men's letters, containing eloquent professions of innocence, intensified belief in their wrongful execution. Additional ballistics tests and incriminating statements by the men's acquaintances have clouded the case. On August 23, 1977—the 50th anniversary of the executions—Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names".

President Harding Dies (1923)

President Harding dies; Vice President Coolidge becomes the 30th President

Wilson's Stroke (1919)

President Wilson has massive stroke. First Lady Edith Wilson takes over in a "silent coup".

RMS Lusitania Sunk (1915)

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was sunk on 7 May 1915 by a German U-boat 11 miles off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 passengers and crew. The sinking presaged the United States declaration of war on Germany. Although the Lusitania sinking was a major factor in building support for a war, it did not take place until nearly two years later, after repeated other attacks and German use of unrestricted warfare against American shipping. The Royal Navy had blockaded Germany at the start of the First World War; the UK declared the entire North Sea a war zone in the autumn of 1914 and mined the approaches. In the spring of 1915, all food imports for Germany were declared contraband. RMS Lusitania left New York for Britain on 1 May 1915 when German submarine warfare was intensifying in the Atlantic. Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom a war zone, and the German embassy in the United States had placed fifty newspaper advertisements warning people of the dangers of sailing on Lusitania. Objections were made by the British that threatening to torpedo all ships indiscriminately was wrong, whether it was announced in advance or not. The Germans justified treating Lusitania as a naval vessel because she was carrying hundreds of tons of war munitions and ammunition, making her a legitimate military target, and they argued that British merchant ships had violated the cruiser rules from the very beginning of the war. The internationally recognized cruiser rules were obsolete by 1915; it had become more dangerous for submarines to surface and give warning with the British introduction of Q-ships in 1915 with concealed deck guns. The Germans argued that Lusitania was regularly transporting 'war munitions'; she operated under the control of the Admiralty; she could be converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser to join the war; her identity had been disguised; and she flew no flags. They claimed that she was a non-neutral vessel in a declared war zone, with orders to evade capture and ram challenging submarines. However, the ship was not armed for battle and was carrying thousands of civilian passengers, and the British government accused the Germans of breaching the cruiser rules. The sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States because 128 American citizens were among the dead. The sinking shifted public opinion in the United States against Germany and was one of the factors in the declaration of war nearly two years later. After the First World War, successive British governments maintained that there were no munitions on board Lusitania, and the Germans were not justified in treating the ship as a naval vessel. In 1982, the head of the British Foreign Office's American department finally admitted that, although no weapons were shipped, there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous and poses a safety risk to salvage teams.

Robert Peary & North Pole (1909)

Robert Peary claims to have reached the North Pole Robert Edwin Peary Sr. was an American explorer and United States Navy officer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for claiming to have reached the geographic North Pole with his expedition on April 6, 1909. Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole was widely debated in contemporary newspapers (along with a competing claim made by Frederick Cook), but eventually won widespread acceptance. In 1989, British explorer Wally Herbert concluded Peary did not reach the pole, although he may have been as close as 60 miles (97 km). His conclusions have been widely accepted, although disputed by some authorities.

Birth of a Nation Opens (1914)

The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed and co-produced by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from the novel and play The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon Jr. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and co-produced the film with Harry Aitken. The Birth of a Nation is a landmark of film history. It was the first 12-reel film ever made and, at three hours, also the longest up to that point. Its plot, part fiction and part history, chronicling the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth and the relationship of two families in the Civil War and Reconstruction eras over the course of several years—the pro-Union (Northern) Stonemans and the pro-Confederacy (Southern) Camerons—was by far the most complex of any movie made up to that date. It was originally shown in two parts separated by another movie innovation, an intermission, and it was the first to have a musical score for an orchestra. It pioneered close-ups, fade-outs, and a carefully staged battle sequence with hundreds of extras (another first) made to look like thousands. It came with a 13-page "Souvenir Program". It was the first American motion picture to be screened in the White House, viewed there by President Woodrow Wilson. The film was controversial even before its release and has remained so ever since; it has been called "the most controversial film ever made in the United States". Lincoln, whom Dixon saw as a Southerner, was portrayed positively, unusual in a "Lost Cause" environment. However, the film portrayed African-Americans (many played by white actors in blackface) as unintelligent and sexually aggressive towards white women and presented the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) as a heroic force. There were widespread black protests against The Birth of a Nation, such as in Boston, while thousands of white Bostonians flocked to see the film. The NAACP spearheaded an unsuccessful campaign to ban the film. Griffith's indignation at efforts to censor or ban the film motivated him to produce Intolerance the following year.

Emergency Quota Act (1921)

The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act was formulated mainly in response to the large influx of Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe and thus successfully restricted their immigration and that of other "undesirables" into the United States. Although intended as temporary legislation, the Act "proved in the long run the most important turning-point in American immigration policy" because it added two new features to American immigration law: numerical limits on immigration and the use of a quota system for establishing those limits. These limits came to be known as the National Origins Formula. The Emergency Quota Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3% of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States as of the U.S. Census of 1910. This meant that people from northern European countries had a higher quota and were more likely to be admitted to the U.S. than people from eastern Europe, southern Europe, or other, non-European countries. Professionals were to be admitted without regard to their country of origin. The Act set no limits on immigration from Latin America. The act did not apply to countries with bilateral agreements with the US, or to Asian countries listed in the Immigration Act of 1917, known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act. However, the Act was not seen as restrictive enough since millions of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe had come into the USA since 1890. The Immigration Act of 1924 reduced the Quota to 2% per the Census of 1890 when a fairly small percentage of the population was from the regions regarded as less than desirable. In order to execute the quota, the visa system that we still use today was implemented in 1924. It was mandated that all non-citizens seeking to enter the United States needed to obtain and present a visa that was obtained from a U.S. Embassy and Consulate before arrival in the United States. Immigration inspectors handled the visa packets depending on whether they were Non-Immigrant, meaning visitor, or Immigrant, indicating permanent admission. Non-immigrant visas were kept at the ports of entry and were later destroyed, while immigrant visas were sent to the Central Office in Washington D.C. for processing and filing. Based on that formula, the number of new immigrants admitted fell from 805,228 in 1920 to 309,556 in 1921-22. The average annual inflow of immigrants prior to 1921 was 175,983 from Northern and Western Europe, and 685,531 from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe. In 1921, there was a drastic reduction in immigration levels from other countries, principally Southern and Eastern Europe. Following the end of World War I, both Europe and the United States were experiencing economic and social upheaval. In Europe, the destruction of the war, the Russian Revolution, and the dissolutions of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires led to greater immigration to the United States; while in the United States, an economic downturn following post-war demobilization increased unemployment. The combination of increased immigration from Europe at the time of higher American unemployment strengthened the anti-immigrant movement.

Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907

The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 was an informal agreement between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan whereby the United States would not impose restrictions on Japanese immigration and Japan would not allow further emigration to the United States. The goal was to reduce tensions between the two Pacific nations. The agreement was never ratified by the United States Congress and was superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924.

Hay-Bunae-Varilla Treaty (1903)

The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was a treaty signed on November 18, 1903, by the United States and Panama, which established the Panama Canal Zone and the subsequent construction of the Panama Canal. It was named after its two primary negotiators, Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla, the French diplomatic representative of Panama, and United States Secretary of State John Hay.

Hay-Pauncefote Treaty (1901)

The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty is a treaty signed by the United States and Great Britain on 18 November 1901, as a legal preliminary to the U.S. building the Panama Canal. It nullified the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 and gave the United States the right to create and control a canal across the Central American isthmus to connect the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. In the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, both nations had renounced building such a canal under the sole control of one nation.

Ford's Assembly Line (1913)

The Industrial Revolution led to a proliferation of manufacturing and invention. Many industries, notably textiles, firearms, clocks and watches, horse-drawn vehicles, railway locomotives, sewing machines, and bicycles, saw expeditious improvement in materials handling, machining, and assembly during the 19th century, although modern concepts such as industrial engineering and logistics had not yet been named. At Ford Motor Company, the assembly line was introduced by William "Pa" Klann upon his return from visiting Swift & Company's slaughterhouse in Chicago and viewing what was referred to as the "disassembly line", where carcasses were butchered as they moved along a conveyor. The efficiency of one person removing the same piece over and over without himself moving caught his attention. He reported the idea to Peter E. Martin, soon to be head of Ford production, who was doubtful at the time but encouraged him to proceed. Others at Ford have claimed to have put the idea forth to Henry Ford, but Pa Klann's slaughterhouse revelation is well documented in the archives at the Henry Ford Museum and elsewhere, making him an important contributor to the modern automated assembly line concept. Ford was appreciative, having visited the highly automated 40-acre Sears mail order handling facility around 1906. At Ford, the process was an evolution by trial and error. The moving assembly line was developed for the Ford Model T and began operation on October 7, 1913, at the Highland Park Ford Plant, and continued to evolve after that, using time and motion study. The assembly line, driven by conveyor belts, reduced production time for a Model T to just 93 minutes by dividing the process into 45 steps. Producing cars quicker than paint of the day could dry, it had an immense influence on the world.

19th Amendment (1920)

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. Initially introduced to Congress in 1878, several attempts to pass a women's suffrage amendment failed until passing the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919, followed by the Senate on June 4, 1919. It was then submitted to the states for ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee was the last of the necessary 36 states to secure ratification. The Nineteenth Amendment was officially adopted on August 26, 1920: the culmination of a decades-long movement for women's suffrage at both state and national levels. Prior to 1776, women had the right to vote in several of the colonies in what would become the United States, but by 1807 every state constitution denied even limited suffrage. Organizations supporting women's rights became more active in the mid-nineteenth century and, in 1848, the Seneca Falls convention adopted the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for equality between the sexes and included a resolution urging women to secure the vote. Pro-suffrage organizations used a variety of tactics including legal arguments that relied on existing amendments. After those arguments were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, suffrage organizations, with activists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, called for a new constitutional amendment that would guarantee women the right to vote. By the late nineteenth century, new states and territories, particularly in the West, began to grant women the right to vote. In 1878, a suffrage proposal that would eventually become the Nineteenth Amendment was introduced to Congress, but it was rejected in 1887. In the 1890s, suffrage organizations focused on a national amendment while still working at the state and local levels. Lucy Burns and Alice Paul emerged as important leaders whose different strategies helped move the Nineteenth Amendment forward. Entry of the United States into World War I helped to shift public perception of women's suffrage. The National American Woman Suffrage Association, led by Carrie Chapman Catt, supported the war effort, making the case that women should be rewarded with enfranchisement for their patriotic wartime service. The National Woman's Party staged marches, demonstrations, and hunger strikes while pointing out the contradictions of fighting abroad for democracy while limiting it at home by denying women the right to vote. The work of both organizations swayed public opinion, prompting President Wilson to announce his support of the suffrage amendment in 1918. It passed in 1919 and was adopted in 1920, withstanding two legal challenges, Leser v. Garnett and Fairchild v. Hughes. The Nineteenth Amendment enfranchised 26 million American women in time for the 1920 U.S. presidential election, but the powerful women's voting bloc that many politicians feared failed to fully materialize until decades later. As well, the Nineteenth Amendment failed to fully enfranchise African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American women. Shortly after the amendment's adoption, Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party began work on the Equal Rights Amendment, which they believed a necessary additional step to ensure equality.

Volstead Act (1920)

The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, was enacted to carry out the intent of the 18th Amendment (ratified January 1919), which established prohibition in the United States. The Anti-Saloon League's Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation. The three distinct purposes of the Act were: to prohibit intoxicating beverages, to regulate the manufacture, production, use, and sale of high-proof spirits for other than beverage purposes, to insure an ample supply of alcohol and promote its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye, and other lawful industries. Prohibition lost advocates as ignoring the law gained increasing social acceptance and as organized crime violence increased. By 1933, public opposition to prohibition had become overwhelming. In March of that year, Congress passed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which legalized "3.2 beer" (i.e., beer containing 3.2% alcohol by weight or 4% by volume) and wines of similarly low alcohol content, rather than the 0.5% limit defined by the original Volstead Act.

Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act (1909)

The Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, named for Representative Sereno E. Payne (R-NY) and Senator Nelson W. Aldrich (R-RI), began in the United States House of Representatives as a bill raising certain tariffs on goods entering the United States. The high rates angered Republican reformers, and led to a deep split in the Republican Party. The Payne Act, in its essence a compromise bill, had the immediate effect of frustrating both proponents and opponents of reducing tariffs. In particular, the bill greatly angered Progressives, who began to withdraw support from President Taft. Because it increased the duty on print paper used by publishers, the publishing industry viciously criticized the President, further tarnishing his image. Although Taft met and consulted with Congress during its deliberations on the bill, critics charged that he ought to have imposed more of his own recommendations on the bill such as that of a slower schedule. However, unlike his predecessor (Theodore Roosevelt), Taft felt that the president should not dictate lawmaking and should leave Congress free to act as it saw fit.

Newlands Reclamation Act (1902)

The Reclamation Act is a United States federal law that funded irrigation projects for the arid lands of 20 states in the American West. The act at first covered only 13 of the western states as Texas had no federal lands. Texas was added later by a special act passed in 1906. The act set aside money from sales of semi-arid public lands for the construction and maintenance of irrigation projects. The newly irrigated land would be sold and money would be put into a revolving fund that supported more such projects. This led to the eventual damming of nearly every major western river.[citation needed] Under the act, the Secretary of the Interior created the United States Reclamation Service within the United States Geological Survey to administer the program. In 1907, the Service became a separate organization within the Department of the Interior and was renamed the United States Bureau of Reclamation.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1929)

The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was the 1929 murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang that occurred on Saint Valentine's Day. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park garage on the morning of that feast day. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants who were dressed like police officers. The incident resulted from the struggle to control organized crime in the city during Prohibition between the Irish North Siders, headed by George "Bugs" Moran, and their Italian South Side Gang rivals led by Al Capone. The perpetrators have never been conclusively identified, but former members of the Egan's Rats gang working for Capone are suspected of a significant role, as are members of the Chicago Police Department who allegedly wanted revenge for the killing of a police officer's son.

U.S. Department of Commerce & Labor (1903)

The United States Department of Commerce and Labor was a short-lived Cabinet department of the United States government, which was concerned with controlling the excesses of big business.

Wall Street Crash of 1929: Analysis

The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s. During the latter half of the 1920s, steel production, building construction, retail turnover, automobiles registered, and even railway receipts advanced from record to record. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies showed an increase, in the first six months of 1929, of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Iron and steel led the way with doubled gains. Such figures set up a crescendo of stock-exchange speculation that led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. A significant number of them were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. at the time. The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest, hoping the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. Because of margin buying, investors stood to lose large sums of money if the market turned down—or even failed to advance quickly enough. The average price to earnings ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929, clearly above historical norms. According to economist John Kenneth Galbraith, this exuberance also resulted in a large number of people placing their savings and money in leverage investment products like Goldman Sachs' "Blue Ridge trust" and "Shenandoah trust". These too crashed in 1929, resulting in losses to banks of $475 billion 2010 dollars ($556.91 billion in 2019). Good harvests had built up a mass of 250 million bushels of wheat to be "carried over" when 1929 opened. By May there was also a winter-wheat crop of 560 million bushels ready for harvest in the Mississippi Valley. This oversupply caused a drop in wheat prices so heavy that the net incomes of the farming population from wheat were threatened with extinction. Stock markets are always sensitive to the future state of commodity markets[citation needed], and the slump in Wall Street predicted for May by Sir George Paish arrived on time. In June 1929, the position was saved by a severe drought in the Dakotas and the Canadian West, plus unfavorable seed times in Argentina and eastern Australia. The oversupply was now wanted to fill the gaps in the 1929 world wheat production. From 97¢ per bushel in May, the price of wheat rose to $1.49 in July. When it was seen that at this figure American farmers would get more for their crop than for that of 1928, stocks went up again. In August, the wheat price fell when France and Italy were bragging of a magnificent harvest, and the situation in Australia improved. That sent a shiver through Wall Street and stock prices quickly dropped, but word of cheap stocks brought a fresh rush of "stags", amateur speculators and investors. Congress voted for a $100 million relief package for the farmers, hoping to stabilize wheat prices. By October though, the price had fallen to $1.31 per bushel. Other important economic barometers were also slowing or even falling by mid-1929, including car sales, house sales, and steel production. The falling commodity and industrial production may have dented even American self-confidence, and the stock market peaked on September 3 at 381.17 just after Labor Day, then started to falter after Roger Babson issued his prescient "market crash" forecast. By the end of September, the market was down 10% from the peak (the "Babson Break"). Selling intensified in early and mid October, with sharp down days punctuated by a few up days. Panic selling on huge volume started the week of October 21 and intensified and culminated on October 24, the 28th, and especially the 29th ("Black Tuesday"). Great Depression starts.

U.S. Population (1900)

75 million

ABC Powers (1914)

ABC countries, or ABC powers, refers to the South American countries of Argentina, Brazil and Chile, which are seen as the three most powerful, most influential and wealthiest countries in South America. The term was mostly used in the first half of the 20th century, when they worked together to develop common interests and a coordinated approach to issues in the region with relatively little influence from outside powers, in contrast with the Cold War governments. During the early 20th century Argentina, Brazil, and Chile engaged in a naval arms race, beginning with Brazil purchasing three dreadnoughts in response to the recently-concluded Argentine-Chilean naval arms race. The Niagara Falls peace conference is the first well-known use of the term "ABC". On May 20, 1914, the three countries met in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, to mediate between the United States and Mexico after increasing tensions over the Tampico Affair, the United States occupation of Veracruz, and developing issues that led to the Mexican Revolution.

Senate Rejects Treaty of Versailles & League of Nations (1919)

After the Versailles conference, Democratic President Woodrow Wilson claimed that "at last the world knows America as the savior of the world!" However, the Republican Party, led by Henry Cabot Lodge, controlled the US Senate after the election of 1918, and the senators were divided into multiple positions on the Versailles question. It proved possible to build a majority coalition, but impossible to build a two-thirds coalition that was needed to pass a treaty. The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War; in 1919 U.S. president Woodrow Wilson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role as the leading architect of the League. The organisation's primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.[2] Other issues in this and related treaties included labour conditions, just treatment of native inhabitants, human and drug trafficking, the arms trade, global health, prisoners of war, and protection of minorities in Europe.[3] The Covenant of the League of Nations was signed on 28 June 1919 as Part I of the Treaty of Versailles, and it became effective together with the rest of the Treaty on 10 January 1920. The first meeting of the Council of the League took place on 16 January 1920, and the first meeting of Assembly of the League took place on 15 November 1920. At its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. After some notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. The credibility of the organization was weakened by the fact that the United States never joined the League and the Soviet Union joined late and was soon expelled after invading Finland. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and others. The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years; the United Nations (UN) replaced it after the end of the Second World War and inherited several agencies and organisations founded by the League.

Big-Stick Diplomacy (early 1900s)

Big stick ideology, big stick diplomacy, or big stick policy refers to President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy: "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." Roosevelt described his style of foreign policy as "the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis." As practiced by Roosevelt, big stick diplomacy had five components. First it was essential to possess serious military capability that would force the adversary to pay close attention. At the time that meant a world-class navy. Roosevelt never had a large army at his disposal. The other qualities were to act justly toward other nations, never to bluff, to strike only when prepared to strike hard, and the willingness to allow the adversary to save face in defeat. The idea is negotiating peacefully but also having strength in case things go wrong. Simultaneously threatening with the "big stick", or the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies a pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals. It is comparable to gunboat diplomacy, as used in international politics by the powers.

Dollar Diplomacy (1909)

Dollar diplomacy of the United States—particularly during President William Howard Taft's presidential term— was a form of American foreign policy to minimize the use or threat of military force and instead further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through the use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. In his message to Congress on 3 December 1912, Taft summarized the policy of Dollar Diplomacy: The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims. Dollar diplomacy was not new, as the use of diplomacy to promote commercial interest dates from the early years of the Republic. However, under Taft, the State Department was more active than ever in encouraging and supporting American bankers and industrialists in securing new opportunities abroad. Bailey finds that dollar diplomacy was designed to make both people in foreign lands and the American investors prosper. The concept is relevant to both Liberia, where American loans were given in 1913, and Latin America. Latin Americans tend to use the term "dollar diplomacy" disparagingly to show their disapproval of the role that the U.S. government and U.S. corporations have played in using economic, diplomatic and military power to open up foreign markets. When Woodrow Wilson became president in March 1913, he immediately canceled all support for Dollar diplomacy. Historians agree that Taft's Dollar diplomacy was a failure everywhere. In the Far East it alienated Japan and Russia, and created a deep suspicion among the other powers hostile to American motives.

Oklahoma becomes a State (1907)

During the 19th century, thousands of Native Americans were expelled from their ancestral homelands from across North America and transported to the area including and surrounding present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to be removed from the Southeastern United States. The phrase "Trail of Tears" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831, although the term is usually used for the Cherokee removal. Seventeen thousand Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves were deported. The area, already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was called for the Choctaw Nation until revised Native American and then later American policy redefined the boundaries to include other Native Americans. By 1890, more than 30 Native American nations and tribes had been concentrated on land within Indian Territory or "Indian Country". In the period between 1866 and 1899, cattle ranches in Texas strove to meet the demands for food in eastern cities and railroads in Kansas promised to deliver in a timely manner. Cattle trails and cattle ranches developed as cowboys either drove their product north or settled illegally in Indian Territory. In 1881, four of five major cattle trails on the western frontier traveled through Indian Territory. Increased presence of white settlers in Indian Territory prompted the United States Government to establish the Dawes Act in 1887, which divided the lands of individual tribes into allotments for individual families, encouraging farming and private land ownership among Native Americans but expropriating land to the federal government. In the process, railroad companies took nearly half of Indian-held land within the territory for outside settlers and for purchase. Major land runs, including the Land Run of 1889, were held for settlers where certain territories were opened to settlement starting at a precise time. Usually land was open to settlers on a first come first served basis. Those who broke the rules by crossing the border into the territory before the official opening time were said to have been crossing the border sooner, leading to the term sooners, which eventually became the state's official nickname. Deliberations to make the territory into a state began near the end of the 19th century, when the Curtis Act continued the allotment of Indian tribal land.

First Red Scare (1917-1920)

First Red Scare, marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism The First Red Scare was a period during the early 20th-century history of the United States marked by a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism, due to real and imagined events; real events included the Russian Revolution and anarchist bombings. At its height in 1919-1920, concerns over the effects of radical political agitation in American society and the alleged spread of communism and anarchism in the American labor movement fueled a general sense of concern. The Scare had its origins in the hyper-nationalism of World War I as well as the Russian Revolution. At the war's end, following the October Revolution, American authorities saw the threat of Communist revolution in the actions of organized labor, including such disparate cases as the Seattle General Strike and the Boston Police Strike and then in the bombing campaign directed by anarchist groups at political and business leaders. Fueled by labor unrest and the anarchist bombings, and then spurred on by United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's attempt to suppress radical organizations, it was characterized by exaggerated rhetoric, illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. In addition, the growing anti-immigration nativism movement among Americans viewed increasing immigration from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe as a threat to American political and social stability. Bolshevism and the threat of a Communist-inspired revolution in the U.S. became the overriding explanation for challenges to the social order, even such largely unrelated events as incidents of interracial violence. Fear of radicalism was used to explain the suppression of freedom of expression in form of display of certain flags and banners. In April 1920, concerns peaked with J. Edgar Hoover telling the nation to prepare for a bloody uprising on May Day. Police and militias prepared for the worst, but May Day passed without incident. Soon, public opinion and the courts turned against Palmer, putting an end to his raids and the First Red Scare.

WW 1 Before U.S. (1914-1917)

German strategy for a war on two fronts against France and Russia was to rapidly concentrate the bulk of its army in the West to defeat France within six weeks, then shift forces to the East before Russia could fully mobilize; this was later known as the Schlieffen Plan. On 2 August, Germany demanded free passage through Belgium, an essential element in achieving a quick victory over France. When this was refused, German forces invaded Belgium on 3 August and declared war on France the same day; the Belgian government invoked the 1839 Treaty of London and in compliance with its obligations under this, Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August. On 12 August, Britain and France also declared war on Austria-Hungary; on the 23 August, Japan sided with Britain, seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. In November 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the Sinai Peninsula. The war was fought in and drew upon each power's colonial empire as well, spreading the conflict to Africa and across the globe. The Entente and its allies would eventually become known as the Allied Powers, while the grouping of Austria-Hungary, Germany and their allies would become known as the Central Powers. The German advance into France was halted at the Battle of the Marne and by the end of 1914, the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, marked by a long series of trench lines that changed little until 1917 (the Eastern Front, by contrast, was marked by much greater exchanges of territory). In 1915, Italy joined the Allied Powers and opened a front in the Alps. Bulgaria joined the Central Powers in 1915 and Greece joined the Allies in 1917, expanding the war in the Balkans. The United States initially remained neutral, though even while neutral it became an important supplier of war materiel to the Allies. Eventually, after the sinking of American merchant ships by German submarines, the declaration by Germany that its navy would resume unrestricted attacks on neutral shipping, and the revelation that Germany was trying to incite Mexico to make war on the United States, the U.S. declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917. Trained American forces would not begin arriving at the front in large numbers until mid-1918, but ultimately the American Expeditionary Force would reach some two million troops.

Precursor to FBI Established (1908)

In 1896, the National Bureau of Criminal Identification was founded, which provided agencies across the country with information to identify known criminals. The 1901 assassination of President William McKinley created a perception that the United States was under threat from anarchists. The Departments of Justice and Labor had been keeping records on anarchists for years, but President Theodore Roosevelt wanted more power to monitor them. The Justice Department had been tasked with the regulation of interstate commerce since 1887, though it lacked the staff to do so. It had made little effort to relieve its staff shortage until the Oregon land fraud scandal at the turn of the 20th Century. President Roosevelt instructed Attorney General Charles Bonaparte to organize an autonomous investigative service that would report only to the Attorney General. Bonaparte reached out to other agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, for personnel, investigators in particular. On May 27, 1908, the Congress forbade this use of Treasury employees by the Justice Department, citing fears that the new agency would serve as a secret police department. Again at Roosevelt's urging, Bonaparte moved to organize a formal Bureau of Investigation, which would then have its own staff of special agents.

Harley-Davidson Motor Company & Ford Motor Company Formed (1903)

In 1901, 20 year-old William S. Harley drew up plans for a small engine with a displacement of 7.07 cubic inches (116 cc) and four-inch (102 mm) flywheels[7][8] designed for use in a regular pedal-bicycle frame. Over the next two years, he and his childhood friend Arthur Davidson worked on their motor-bicycle using the northside Milwaukee machine shop at the home of their friend Henry Melk. It was finished in 1903 with the help of Arthur's brother Walter Davidson. Upon testing their power-cycle, Harley and the Davidson brothers found it unable to climb the hills around Milwaukee without pedal assistance, and they wrote off their first motor-bicycle as a valuable learning experiment. The Henry Ford Company was Henry Ford's first attempt at a car manufacturing company and was established on November 3, 1901. This became the Cadillac Motor Company on August 22, 1902, after Ford left with the rights to his name. The Ford Motor Company was launched in a converted factory in 1903 with $28,000 (equivalent to $797,000 in 2019) in cash from twelve investors, most notably John and Horace Dodge (who would later found their own car company). The first president was not Ford, but local banker John S. Gray, who was chosen to assuage investors' fears that Ford would leave the new company the way he had left its predecessor. During its early years, the company produced just a few cars a day at its factory on Mack Avenue and later at its factory on Piquette Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Groups of two or three men worked on each car, assembling it from parts made mostly by supplier companies contracting for Ford. Within a decade, the company would lead the world in the expansion and refinement of the assembly line concept, and Ford soon brought much of the part production in-house (vertical integration).

J. Edgar Hoover appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to FBI)

J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation — predecessor to the FBI. John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 - May 2, 1972) was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and an American law enforcement administrator. He was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation - the FBI's predecessor - in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories. Later in life and after his death, Hoover became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He was found to have exceeded the jurisdiction of the FBI, and to have used the FBI to harass political dissenters and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods. Hoover consequently amassed a great deal of power and was in a position to intimidate and threaten others, including sitting presidents of the United States. Under Hoover's leadership the FBI used COINTELPRO (short for Counter Intelligence Program) to wrongly discredit black civil rights activists, Native American groups, the American Communist Party, and more using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. His victims include Mark Clark (activist), Assata Shakur, Geronimo Pratt, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marshall "Eddie" Conway.

U.S. Steel (1901)

J. P. Morgan formed U.S. Steel on March 2, 1901 by financing the merger of Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Company with Elbert H. Gary's Federal Steel Company and William Henry "Judge" Moore's National Steel Company for $492 million ($15.12 billion today). At one time, U.S. Steel was the largest steel producer and largest corporation in the world. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion ($43 billion today), making it the world's first billion-dollar corporation. The company established its headquarters in the Empire Building at 71 Broadway in New York City; it remained a major tenant in the building for 75 years. Charles M. Schwab, the Carnegie Steel executive who originally suggested the merger to Morgan, ultimately emerged as the new corporation's first President. John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 - March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age. As the head of the banking firm that ultimately became known as J.P. Morgan and Co., he was a driving force behind the wave of industrial consolidation in the United States spanning the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As the Progressive Era's leading financier, J.P. Morgan's dedication to efficiency and modernization helped transform the shape of the American economy. Adrian Wooldridge characterized Morgan as America's "greatest banker". Morgan died in Rome, Italy, in his sleep in 1913 at the age of 75, leaving his fortune and business to his son, John Pierpont Morgan Jr. Biographer Ron Chernow estimated his fortune at only $118 million (of which approximately $50 million was attributed to his vast art collection), a net worth which allegedly prompted John D. Rockefeller to say: "and to think, he wasn't even a rich man."

Espionage & Sedition Acts (1917)

Laws that enacted harsh penalties against anyone opposing U.S. participation in World War I. It was intended to prohibit interference with military operations or recruitment, to prevent insubordination in the military, and to prevent the support of United States enemies during wartime. In 1919, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled through Schenck v. United States that the act did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under its provisions. The constitutionality of the law, its relationship to free speech, and the meaning of its language have been contested in court ever since. Among those charged with offenses under the Act are German-American socialist congressman and newspaper editor Victor L. Berger, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate, Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, former Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society president Joseph Franklin Rutherford, communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Cablegate whistleblower Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Defense Intelligence Agency employee Henry Kyle Frese, and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden. Rutherford's conviction was overturned on appeal. Although the most controversial sections of the Act, a set of amendments commonly called the Sedition Act of 1918, were repealed on March 3, 1921, the original Espionage Act was left intact.

NAACP Founded (1909)

NAACP founded by W. E. B. Du Bois The Race Riot of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, the state capital and President Abraham Lincoln's hometown, was a catalyst showing the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. In the decades around the turn of the century, the rate of lynchings of blacks, particularly men, was at an all-time high. Mary White Ovington, journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz met in New York City in January 1909 to work on organizing for black civil rights. They sent out solicitations for support to more than 60 prominent Americans, and set a meeting date for February 12, 1909. This was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the first large meeting did not take place until three months later, the February date is often cited as the founding date of the organization. The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, by a larger group including African Americans W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Mary Church Terrell, and the previously named whites Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling (the wealthy Socialist son of a former slave-holding family),Florence Kelley, a social reformer and friend of Du Bois; Oswald Garrison Villard, and Charles Edward Russell, a renowned muckraker and close friend of Walling. Russell helped plan the NAACP and had served as acting chairman of the National Negro Committee (1909), a forerunner to the NAACP.

NBC & CBS Founded (1926/27)

NBC founded as the U.S.'s first major broadcast network 1927 - Columbia Broadcasting System (later called CBS) was founded, becomes second national radio network in the U.S.

NFL Formed (1920)

On August 20, 1920, a meeting was held by representatives of the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio. This meeting resulted in the formation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), a group who, according to the Canton Evening Repository, intended to "raise the standard of professional football in every way possible, to eliminate bidding for players between rival clubs and to secure cooperation in the formation of schedules". Another meeting was held on September 17, 1920 with representatives from teams from four states: Akron, Canton, Cleveland, and Dayton from Ohio; the Hammond Pros and Muncie Flyers from Indiana; the Rochester Jeffersons from New York; and the Rock Island Independents, Decatur Staleys, and Racine (Chicago) Cardinals from Illinois. The league was renamed to the American Professional Football Association (APFA). The league elected Jim Thorpe as its first president, and consisted of 14 teams (the Buffalo All-Americans, Chicago Tigers, Columbus Panhandles, and Detroit Heralds joined the league during the year). The Massillon Tigers from Massillon, Ohio was also at the September 17 meeting, but did not field a team in 1920. Only two of these teams, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), remain.

Wilson's Fourteen Points (1918)

President Wilson's Fourteen Points, which assures citizens that the Great War was being fought for a moral cause and for postwar peace in Europe The Fourteen Points was a statement of principles for peace that was to be used for peace negotiations in order to end World War I. The principles were outlined in a January 8, 1918, speech on war aims and peace terms to the United States Congress by President Woodrow Wilson. But his main Allied colleagues (Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of the United Kingdom, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy) were skeptical of the applicability of Wilsonian idealism. The United States had joined the Triple Entente in fighting the Central Powers on April 6, 1917. Its entry into the war had in part been due to Germany's resumption of submarine warfare against merchant ships trading with France and Britain and also the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram. However, Wilson wanted to avoid the United States' involvement in the long-standing European tensions between the great powers; if America was going to fight, he wanted to try to separate that participation in the war from nationalistic disputes or ambitions. The need for moral aims was made more important, when after the fall of the Russian government, the Bolsheviks disclosed secret treaties made between the Allies. Wilson's speech also responded to Vladimir Lenin's Decree on Peace of November 1917, immediately after the October Revolution in 1917. The speech made by Wilson took many domestic progressive ideas and translated them into foreign policy (free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination). Three days earlier United Kingdom Prime Minister Lloyd George had made a speech setting out Britain's war aims which bore some similarity to Wilson's speech but which proposed reparations be paid by the Central Powers and which was more vague in its promises to the non-Turkish subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Fourteen Points in the speech were based on the research of the Inquiry, a team of about 150 advisers led by foreign-policy adviser Edward M. House, into the topics likely to arise in the anticipated peace conference.

Titanic Sinks (1912)

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking one of modern history's deadliest peacetime commercial marine disasters. RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line. She was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, chief naval architect of the shipyard at the time, died in the disaster.

Silent Sentinels (1917-1919)

Silent Sentinels hold a vigil outside the White House gates in favor of women's suffrage, a nearly two-and-a-half year demonstration organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party The Silent Sentinels were a group of women in favor of women's suffrage organized by Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party. They protested in front of the White House during Woodrow Wilson's presidency starting on January 10, 1917. The Silent Sentinels started to protest after a meeting with the president on January 9, 1917, during which he told the women to "concert public opinion on behalf of women's suffrage." The protesters served as a constant reminder to Wilson of his lack of support for suffrage. At first the picketers were tolerated, but they were later arrested on charges of obstructing traffic. The women protested at the White House gates and later in Lafayette Square until June 4, 1919 when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed both by the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Supreme Court breaks up Standard Oil (1911)

Standard Oil Co. Inc. was an American oil producing, transporting, refining, marketing company. Established in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller and Henry Flagler as a corporation in Ohio, it was the largest oil refiner in the world of its time. Its history as one of the world's first and largest multinational corporations ended in 1911, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a landmark case, that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that antitrust law required Standard Oil to be broken into smaller, independent companies. Among the "baby Standards" that still exist are ExxonMobil and Chevron. Some have speculated that if not for that court ruling, Standard Oil could have possibly been worth more than $1 trillion in the 2000s.[52] Whether the breakup of Standard Oil was beneficial is a matter of some controversy.[53] Some economists believe that Standard Oil was not a monopoly, and also argue that the intense free market competition resulted in cheaper oil prices and more diverse petroleum products. Critics claimed that success in meeting consumer needs was driving other companies out of the market who were not as successful. An example of this thinking was given in 1890 when Rep. William Mason, arguing in favor of the Sherman Antitrust Act, said: "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise". The Sherman Antitrust Act prohibits the restraint of trade. Defenders of Standard Oil insist that the company did not restrain trade; they were simply superior competitors. The federal courts ruled otherwise.

Adamson Railway Labor Act (1916)

The Adamson Act was a United States federal law passed in 1916 that established an eight-hour workday, with additional pay for overtime work, for interstate railroad workers.

Aldrich-Vreeland Act (1908)

The Aldrich-Vreeland Act was passed in response to the Panic of 1907 and established the National Monetary Commission, which recommended the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The act also allowed national banks to start national currency associations in groups of ten or more, with at least $5 million in total capital, to issue emergency currency. These bank notes were to be backed by not just government bonds but also just about any securities the banks were holding. The act proposed that this emergency currency had to go through a process of approval by the officers of these national currency associations and then distributed by the Comptroller of the Currency.

Algeciras Conference (1906)

The Algeciras Conference of 1906 took place in Algeciras, Spain, and lasted from 16 January to 7 April. The purpose of the conference was to find a solution to the First Moroccan Crisis of 1905 between France and Germany, which arose as Germany responded to France's effort to establish a protectorate over the independent state of Morocco. Germany was not trying to stop French expansion. Its goal was to enhance its own international prestige, and it failed badly. The result was a much closer relationship between France and Britain, which strengthened the Entente Cordiale since both London and Paris were increasingly suspicious and distrustful of Berlin. An even more momentous consequence was the heightened sense of frustration and readiness for war in Germany. It spread beyond the political elite to much of the press and most of the political parties except for the Liberals and Social Democrats on the left. The Pan-German element grew in strength and denounced their government's retreat as treason and stepped up chauvinistic support for war. The First Moroccan Crisis (also known as the Tangier Crisis) was an international crisis between March 1905 and May 1906 over the status of Morocco. Germany wanted to challenge France's growing control over Morocco, aggravating France and the United Kingdom, but the crisis was resolved by a conference of mostly European countries that affirmed French control. The crisis worsened German relations with both France and the United Kingdom, and helped enhance the new Anglo-French Entente.

Boxer Rebellion (1900)

The Boxer Rebellion was an anti-imperialist, anti-foreign, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, toward the end of the Qing dynasty. It was initiated by the Militia United in Righteousness (Yìhéquán), known in English as the Boxers because many of their members had practiced Chinese martial arts, also referred to in the west as Chinese Boxing. Villagers in North China had been building resentment against Christian missionaries who ignored tax obligations and abused their extraterritorial rights to protect their congregants against lawsuits. The immediate background of the uprising included severe drought and disruption by the growth of foreign spheres of influence after the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. After several months of growing violence and murder in Shandong and the North China Plain against foreign and Christian presence in June 1900, Boxer fighters, convinced they were invulnerable to foreign weapons, converged on Beijing with the slogan Support the Qing government and exterminate the foreigners. Foreigners and Chinese Christians sought refuge in the Legation Quarter. In response to reports of an invasion by Eight Nation Alliance of American, Austro-Hungarian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Russian troops to lift the siege, the initially hesitant Empress Dowager Cixi supported the Boxers and on June 21 issued an Imperial Decree declaring war on the foreign powers. Diplomats, foreign civilians, and soldiers as well as Chinese Christians in the Legation Quarter were besieged for 55 days by the Imperial Army of China and the Boxers. Chinese officialdom was split between those supporting the Boxers and those favoring conciliation, led by Prince Qing. The supreme commander of the Chinese forces, the Manchu General Ronglu (Junglu), later claimed he acted to protect the foreigners. Officials in the Mutual Protection of Southeast China ignored the imperial order to fight against foreigners. The Eight-Nation Alliance, after being initially turned back, brought 20,000 armed troops to China, defeated the Imperial Army, and arrived at Peking on August 14, relieving the siege of the Legations. Uncontrolled plunder of the capital and the surrounding countryside ensued, along with summary execution of those suspected of being Boxers. The Boxer Protocol of 7 September 1901 provided for the execution of government officials who had supported the Boxers, provisions for foreign troops to be stationed in Beijing, and 450 million taels of silver—approximately $10 billion at 2018 silver prices and more than the government's annual tax revenue—to be paid as indemnity over the course of the next 39 years to the eight nations involved.

Clayton Antitrust Act (1914)

The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 was a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act sought to prevent anticompetitive practices in their incipiency. That regime started with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the first Federal law outlawing practices considered harmful to consumers (monopolies, cartels, and trusts). The Clayton Act specified particular prohibited conduct, the three-level enforcement scheme, the exemptions, and the remedial measures.

Depression of 1920-21

The Depression of 1920-21 was a sharp deflationary recession in the United States and other countries, beginning 14 months after the end of World War I. It lasted from January 1920 to July 1921. The extent of the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product. There was a two-year post-World War I recession immediately following the end of the war, complicating the absorption of millions of veterans into the economy. The economy started to grow, but it had not yet completed all the adjustments in shifting from a wartime to a peacetime economy. Factors identified as contributing to the downturn include returning troops, which created a surge in the civilian labor force and problems in absorbing the veterans; a decline in labor union strife; changes in fiscal and monetary policy; and changes in price expectations. Following the end of the depression, the Roaring Twenties brought a period of economic prosperity. Factors that economists have pointed to as potentially causing or contributing to the downturn include troops returning from the war, which created a surge in the civilian labor force and more unemployment and wage stagnation; a decline in agricultural commodity prices because of the post-war recovery of European agricultural output, which increased supply; tighter monetary policy to combat the postwar inflation of 1919; and expectations of future deflation that led to reduced investment.

Wall Street Crash of 1929

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummets a record 68 points over a two-day period, setting off the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and triggering the Great Depression The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major stock market crash that occurred in 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The crash, which followed the London Stock Exchange's crash of September, signaled the beginning of the Great Depression. The "Roaring Twenties", the decade following World War I that led to the crash,[2] was a time of wealth and excess. Building on post-war optimism, rural Americans migrated to the cities in vast numbers throughout the decade with the hopes of finding a more prosperous life in the ever-growing expansion of America's industrial sector. While American cities prospered, however, the overproduction of agricultural produce created widespread financial despair among American farmers throughout the decade, which was later blamed as one of the key factors that led to the 1929 stock market crash. Despite the dangers of speculation, it was widely believed that the stock market would continue to rise forever: on March 25, 1929, after the Federal Reserve warned of excessive speculation, a small crash occurred as investors started to sell stocks at a rapid pace, exposing the market's shaky foundation. Two days later, banker Charles E. Mitchell announced that his company, the National City Bank, would provide $25 million in credit to stop the market's slide. Mitchell's move brought a temporary halt to the financial crisis, and call money declined from 20 to 8 percent. However, the American economy showed ominous signs of trouble: steel production declined, construction was sluggish, automobile sales went down, and consumers were building up high debts because of easy credit.

Drago Doctrine (1902)

The Drago Doctrine was announced in 1902 by Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis María Drago in a diplomatic note to the United States. Perceiving a conflict between the Monroe Doctrine and the influence of European imperial powers, and raising attention to the principle of sovereign equality that the United States had long supported, it set forth the policy that no foreign power, including the United States, could use force against a nation in Latin America to collect debt. In 1904, the Roosevelt Corollary was issued by the United States in response to the Drago Doctrine and asserted the right of the United States to intervene Latin America in the interests of American business and Latin American independence from European powers. A modified version, known as the Porter Convention after Horace Porter, was adopted at The Hague in 1907 and added that arbitration and litigation should always be used first.

18th Amendment (1919)

The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of "intoxicating liquors" in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. The Eighteenth Amendment was the product of decades of efforts by the temperance movement, which held that a ban on the sale of alcohol would ameliorate poverty and other societal issues. The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, though it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol. Shortly after the amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Volstead Act to provide for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. The Volstead Act declared that liquor, wine, and beer all qualified as intoxicating liquors and were therefore prohibited. Under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment, Prohibition began on January 17, 1920, one year after the amendment was ratified. Although the Eighteenth Amendment led to a decline in alcohol consumption in the United States, nationwide enforcement of Prohibition proved difficult, particularly in cities. Organized crime and other groups engaged in large-scale bootlegging, and speakeasies became popular in many areas. Public sentiment began to turn against Prohibition during the 1920s, and 1932 Democratic presidential nominee Franklin D. Roosevelt called for the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in his platform. The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933, making the Eighteenth Amendment the only amendment to the U.S. Constitution to date to be repealed in its entirety. The Eighteenth Amendment was the result of decades of effort by the temperance movement in the United States and at the time was generally considered a progressive amendment. Starting in 1906, the Anti-Saloon League (ASL) began leading a campaign to ban the sale of alcohol on a state level. They led speeches, advertisements, and public demonstrations, claiming that banning the sale of alcohol would get rid of poverty and social issues, such as immoral behavior and violence. It would also inspire new forms of sociability between men and women and they believed that families would be happier, fewer industrial mistakes would be made and overall, the world would be a better place. A group that was inspired by the movement was the Anti-Saloon League, who at the turn of the 20th century began heavily lobbying for prohibition in the United States. The group was founded in 1893 in the state of Ohio, gaining massive support from Evangelical Protestants, to becoming a national organization in 1895. The group was successful in helping implement prohibition, through heavy lobbying and having a vast influence. Following the repeal of prohibition, the group fell out of power, and in 1950 it merged with other groups, forming the National Temperance League.

Elkins Act (1903)

The Elkins Act is a 1903 United States federal law that amended the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Act authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates. The railroad companies were not permitted to offer rebates. Railroad corporations, their officers, and their employees, were all made liable for discriminatory practices. Prior to the Elkins Act, the livestock and petroleum industries paid standard rail shipping rates, but then would demand that the railroad company give them rebates. The railroad companies resented being extorted by the railroad trusts and therefore welcomed passage of the Elkins Act. The law was sponsored by President Theodore Roosevelt as a part of his "Square Deal" domestic program, and greatly boosted his popularity.

Federal Trade Commission (1914)

The FTC was established in 1914 with the passage of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, who was a strong proponent of it, the Federal Trade Commission Act was a major response to 19th-century monopolistic trusts. Trusts and trust-busting were significant political concerns during the Progressive Era. Since its inception, the FTC has enforced the provisions of the Clayton Act, a key antitrust statute, as well as the provisions of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. § 41 et seq. Over time, the FTC has been delegated with the enforcement of additional business regulation statutes and has promulgated a number of regulations (codified in Title 16 of the Code of Federal Regulations).

Federal Farm Loan Act (1916)

The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 was a United States federal law aimed at increasing credit to rural family farmers. It did so by creating a federal farm loan board, twelve regional farm loan banks and tens of farm loan associations. The act was signed into law by President of the United States Woodrow Wilson. In 1908, the Administration of Theodore Roosevelt commissioned a study on the problems facing rural families. At this point in U.S. history, these families made up the largest demographic of Americans. The commission concluded that access to credit was one of the most serious problems facing rural farmers and recommended the introduction of a cooperative credit system. Four years later, Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson sent a commission of Americans to study cooperative credit systems for farmers in Europe. Components of such European programs at the time included cooperative land-mortgage banks and rural credit unions. This commission concluded that the best form of cooperative credit system would include both long-term credit to cover land mortgages and short-term credit to cover regular business needs. The most visible component of the Act were the loans to individual farmers and their families. Under the act, farmers could borrow up to 50% of the value of their land and 20% of the value of their improvements. The minimum loan was $100 and the maximum was $10,000. Loans made through the Act were paid off through amortization over 5 to 40 years. The act furthered Wilson's reputation against trusts and big business. By providing small farmers with competitive loans, they were now more able to compete with big business. As a result, the likelihood of agricultural monopolies decreased.

Fordney-McCumber Tariff (1922)

The Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922 was a law that raised American tariffs on many imported goods to protect factories and farms. The US Congress displayed a pro-business attitude in passing the tariff and in promoting foreign trade by providing huge loans to Europe. That, in turn, bought more US goods. However, five years after the passage of the tariff, American trading partners had raised their own tariffs by a significant degree. France raised its tariffs on automobiles from 45% to 100%, Spain raised its tariffs on American goods by 40%, and Germany and Italy raised their tariffs on wheat. According to the American Farm Bureau, farmers lost more than $300 million annually as a result of the tariff. The first sector of the economy that was hit by a fall in postwar demand was agriculture. During World War I, the American agricultural industry had enjoyed prosperity through the raising of prices, which led to increased output that Americans used to supply Europe. Farmers borrowed heavily to expand their acreage and had difficulty paying back the loans when prices fell. Some of the postwar problems for American agriculture come from the great surplus of farm goods, which could not be absorbed in the national market as European countries had recovered sufficiently from the war, with their markets no longer requiring large quantities of American agricultural products. The tariff was supported by the Republican Party and conservatives and was generally opposed by the Democratic Party, liberals, and progressives. One purpose of the tariff was to help those returning from World War I have greater job opportunities. In 1928, Henry Ford attacked the tariff and argued that the American automobile industry did not need protection since it dominated the domestic market. Its main interest was now to expand foreign sales. Some farmers opposed the tariff and blamed it for the agricultural depression. The American Farm Bureau Federation claimed that because of the tariff, the raised price of raw wool cost to farmers $27 million. Democratic Senator David I. Walsh challenged the tariff by arguing that the farmers were net exporters and so did not need protection. They depended on foreign markets to sell their surplus. Walsh pointed out that during the first year of the tariff, the cost of living climbed higher than any other year except during the war. He presented a survey of the Department of Labor in which all of the 32 cities that were assessed had seen an increase in the cost of living. For example, the food costs increased 16.5% in Chicago and 9.4% in New York. Clothing prices rose by 5.5% in Buffalo and 10.2% in Chicago.

Great Train Robbery (1903)

The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent short western film written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter, a former Edison Studios cameraman. Actors in the movie included Alfred C. Abadie, Broncho Billy Anderson and Justus D. Barnes, although there were no credits. It was filmed in Milltown, New Jersey. The film was inspired by Scott Marble's 1896 stage play, and may also have been inspired by a 1900 train robbery perpetrated by Butch Cassidy. At twelve minutes long, The Great Train Robbery film is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter's previous work Life of an American Fireman. The film used a number of then-unconventional techniques, including composite editing, on-location shooting, and frequent camera movement.

Hay-Herran Treaty (1903)

The Hay-Herrán Treaty was a treaty signed on January 22, 1903, between United States Secretary of State John M. Hay of the United States and Tomás Herrán of Colombia. Had it been ratified, it would have allowed the United States a renewable lease of 100 years on a six-mile-wide strip across the isthmus of Panama (then part of Colombia) for $10 million and an annual payment of $250,000, both payments being in gold coin. It was ratified by the United States Senate on March 14, but it was not ratified by the Senate of Colombia, so it had no effect. It has been considered by later observers that this happened mainly because Herrán had negotiated the treaty with little government or legislative oversight. It has also been mentioned that many of the politicians and congressmen found the amount offered to fall short, considering that the United States was willing to pay $40 million for the New Panama Canal Company and its construction equipment and excavations. The United States government was not willing to renegotiate the treaty with Colombia or alter the amounts involved and soon gave its support, both political and military, to a planned uprising in Panama, which led to its independence and to the eventual construction of the Panama Canal.

Hepburn Act (1906)

The Hepburn Act is a 1906 United States federal law that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates and extended its jurisdiction. This led to the discontinuation of free passes to loyal shippers. In addition, the ICC could view the railroads' financial records, a task simplified by standardized bookkeeping systems. For any railroad that resisted, the ICC's conditions would remain in effect until the outcome of legislation said otherwise. By the Hepburn Act, the ICC's authority was extended to cover bridges, terminals, ferries, railroad sleeping cars, express companies and oil pipelines. The Hepburn Act was named for its sponsor, twelve-term Republican congressman William Peters Hepburn. The final version was close to what President Theodore Roosevelt had asked for, and it easily passed Congress, with only three dissenting votes. The Act, along with the Elkins Act of 1903, was a component of one of Roosevelt's major policy goals: railroad regulation. The most important provision of the law gave the ICC the power to replace existing rates with "just-and-reasonable" maximum rates, and authorized the Commission to define what was just and reasonable. The Act made ICC orders binding; that is, the railroads had to either obey or contest the ICC orders in federal court. To speed the rate-setting process, the Act specified that appeals from rulings of the district courts would go directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. The limitation on railroad rates depreciated the value of railroad securities, a factor in causing the Panic of 1907. Scholars consider the Hepburn Act the most important piece of legislation affecting railroads in the first half of the 20th century. Economists and historians debate whether it crippled the railroads, giving so much advantage to the shippers that a giant unregulated trucking industry—undreamed of in 1906—eventually took away their business.

Immigration Act Basic Law (1924)

The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson-Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia, set quotas on the number of immigrants from the Eastern Hemisphere, and provided funding and an enforcement mechanism to carry out the longstanding ban on other immigrants. The 1924 act supplanted earlier acts to effectively ban all immigration from Asia and set a total immigration quota of 165,000 for countries outside the Western Hemisphere, an 80% reduction from the pre-World War I average. Quotas for specific countries were based on 2% of the U.S. population from that country as recorded in 1890. As a result, populations poorly represented in 1890 were prevented from immigrating in proportionate numbers—especially affecting Italians, Eastern European Jews, Greeks, Poles and other Slavs. According to the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian, the purpose of the act was "to preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity." Congressional opposition was minimal. A key element of the act was its provisions for enforcement. The act provided funding and legal instructions to courts of deportation for immigrants whose national quotas were exceeded. Additionally, the formation of the U.S. Border Patrol was authorized under the National Origins Act. The 1924 act's provisions were revised in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Industrial Workers of the World (1905)

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. The union combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to both socialist and anarchist labor movements. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of their short-term goals, particularly in the American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries. At their peak in August 1917, IWW membership was more than 150,000, with active wings in the United States, Canada, and Australia. The extremely high rate of IWW membership turnover during this era (estimated at 133% per decade) makes it difficult for historians to state membership totals with any certainty, as workers tended to join the IWW in large numbers for relatively short periods (e.g., during labor strikes and periods of generalized economic distress). Due to several factors, membership declined dramatically in the late 1910s and 1920s. There were conflicts with other labor groups, particularly the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which regarded the IWW as too radical, while the IWW regarded the AFL as too conservative and dividing workers by craft. Membership also declined due to government crackdowns on radical, anarchist and socialist groups during the First Red Scare after World War I. In Canada the IWW was outlawed by the federal government. Probably the most decisive factor in the decline in IWW membership and influence, however, was a 1924 schism in the organization, from which the IWW never fully recovered. The IWW promotes the concept of "One Big Union", and contends that all workers should be united as a social class to supplant capitalism and wage labor with industrial democracy. They are known for the Wobbly Shop model of workplace democracy, in which workers elect their managers and other forms of grassroots democracy (self-management) are implemented. IWW membership does not require that one work in a represented workplace, nor does it exclude membership in another labor union.

Jones Act (1916)

The Jones Law was an Organic Act (specifying a U.S. territory) passed by the United States Congress. The law replaced the Philippine Organic Act of 1902 and acted as a constitution of the Philippines from its enactment until 1934, when the Tydings-McDuffie Act was passed (which in turn led eventually to the Commonwealth of the Philippines and to independence from the United States). The Jones Law created the first fully elected Philippine legislature. The law was enacted by the 64th United States Congress on August 29, 1916, and contained the first formal and official declaration of the United States Federal Government's commitment to grant independence to the Philippines. It was a framework for a "more autonomous government", with certain privileges reserved to the United States to protect its sovereign rights and interests, in preparation for the grant of independence by the United States. The law provides that the grant of independence would come only "as soon as a stable government can be established", which was to be determined by the United States Government itself.

Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)

The Kellogg-Briand Pact is a 1928 international agreement in which signatory states promised not to use war to resolve "disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them". There were no mechanisms for enforcement. Parties failing to abide by this promise "should be denied of the benefits furnished by [the] treaty". It was signed by Germany, France, and the United States on 27 August 1928, and by most other states soon after. Sponsored by France and the U.S., the Pact renounced the use of war and calls for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Similar provisions were incorporated into the Charter of the United Nations and other treaties, and it became a stepping-stone to a more activist American policy. It is named after its authors, United States Secretary of State Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. The pact was concluded outside the League of Nations and remains in effect. A common criticism is that the Kellogg-Briand Pact did not live up to all of its aims, but has arguably had some success. It neither ended war, nor stopped the rise of militarism, and was unable to prevent the Second World War. The pact has been ridiculed for its moralism and legalism and lack of influence on foreign policy. Moreover, it effectively erased the legal distinction between war and peace because the signatories began to wage wars without declaring them.

Lansing-Ishii Agreement (1917)

The Lansing-Ishii Agreement was a diplomatic note signed between the United States and Japan on 2 November 1917 over their disputes with regards to China. In the published text of the Agreement, signed by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing and Japanese special envoy Ishii Kikujirō, both parties pledged to uphold the Open Door Policy in China, with respect to its territorial and administrative integrity. However, the United States government also acknowledged that Japan had "special interests" in China due to its geographic proximity, especially in those areas of China adjacent to Japanese territory, which was in effect, a contradiction to the Open Door Policy. In a secret protocol attached to the public Agreement, both parties agreed not to take advantage of the special opportunities presented by World War I to seek special rights or privileges in China at the expense of other nations allied in the war effort against Germany. At the time, the Lansing-Ishii Agreement was touted as evidence that Japan and the United States had laid to rest their increasingly acrimonious rivalry over China, and the Agreement was hailed as a landmark in Japan-United States relations. However, critics soon realized that the vagueness and differing possible interpretations of the Agreement meant that nothing had really been decided after two months of talks. The Lansing-Ishii Agreement was abrogated in April 1923, when it was replaced by the Nine-Power Treaty.

Mann-Elkins Act (1910)

The Mann-Elkins Act was a 1910 United States federal law that was among the Progressive era reforms. The Act got its name from congressmen Stephen Benton Elkins and James Robert Mann. Both congressmen sponsored and created legislation about interstate trade which would go on to be signed into law. The Mann-Elkins Act would further expand upon the work by these two men (the Elkins Act and the Mann Act). The act was part of an initiative by President William Howard Taft "to regulate destructive competition and unfair trade practices" in order to make good on promises made during his campaign. It was created because, "Taft believed that the 1887 Interstate Commerce Act should be amended so as to permit railroads to make traffic agreements, which would preserve the principle of competition, and avoid the common control of competing railroad lines." This act was in direct response to railroad price increase that took place in 1910. The Act placed a price ceiling on interstate commerce and transportation companies to ensure fair market value of prices. The Act extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to regulate the telecommunications industry, and designated telephone, telegraph and wireless companies as common carriers. The act placed all telecommunications under the ICC's control. Supported by Taft, the law also expanded on the powers granted to the ICC in the 1906 Hepburn Act. The ICC was authorized to investigate proposed railroad rate increases and suspend them if warranted. The act empowered the ICC to freeze rate increases without previous issue from shipping companies. The act created a commerce court to increase efficiency and speed of court cases. This speed was achieved through "making all cases immediately appealable to the United States Supreme Court". This disallowed the railroad companies from dragging out long court cases. The Mann-Elkins Act ensured that all rates in regarding to interstate commerce would be "just and reasonable". The "long-and-short haul" clause of the original Interstate Commerce Act (1887) was strengthened to prohibit railroads from charging passengers more for a short trip, compared to a longer ride, over the same route unless specifically approved by the ICC. The Act terminated the railroad companies' ability to give free or discounted rates to those who were employees or family of employees.

NHL Formed (1917)

The National Hockey League was established in 1917 as the successor to the National Hockey Association (NHA). Founded in 1909, the NHA began play one year later with seven teams in Ontario and Quebec, and was one of the first major leagues in professional ice hockey. But by the NHA's eighth season, a series of disputes with Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone led team owners of the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, and Quebec Bulldogs to hold a meeting to discuss the league's future. Realizing the NHA constitution left them unable to force Livingstone out, the four teams voted instead to suspend the NHA, and on November 26, 1917, formed the National Hockey League. Frank Calder was chosen as its first president, serving until his death in 1943.

Niagara Falls Conference (1905)

The Niagara Falls convention was a meeting of twenty-nine men on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls from July 11 until 14 July 1905. It was the first meeting of The Niagara Movement, a group of African-Americans, led by W. E. B. Du Bois, John Hope, and William Monroe Trotter. Instrumental in forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Niagara Movement was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of civil rights activists- many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States -led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and Niagara Falls, near Fort Erie, Ontario, where the first meeting took place in July 1905. The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. It opposed what its members believed were policies of accommodation and conciliation promoted by African-American leaders such as Booker T. Washington.

Pinochot-Ballinger Controversy (1909)

The Pinchot-Ballinger controversy, also known as the "Ballinger Affair", was a dispute between U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger that contributed to the split of the Republican Party before the 1912 presidential election and helped to define the U.S. conservation movement in the early 20th century. In March 1909, President William Howard Taft began his administration by replacing Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, James Rudolph Garfield, with Richard A. Ballinger, a former Mayor of Seattle who had served as Commissioner of the General Land Office (GLO) under Secretary Garfield. Ballinger's appointment was a disappointment to conservationists, who interpreted the replacement of Garfield as a break with Roosevelt administration policies on conservationism. Within weeks of taking office, Ballinger reversed some of Garfield's policies, restoring 3 million acres (12,000 km²) to private use. By July 1909, Gifford Pinchot, who had been appointed by President William McKinley to head the USDA Division of Forestry in 1898, and who had run the U.S. Forest Service since it had taken over management of forest reserves from the General Land Office in 1905, became convinced that Ballinger intended to "stop the conservation movement". In August, speaking at the annual meeting of the National Irrigation Congress in Spokane, Washington, he accused Ballinger of siding with private trusts in his handling of water power issues. At the same time, he helped to arrange a meeting between President Taft and Louis Glavis, chief of the Portland, Oregon, Field Division of the GLO. Glavis met with the president at Taft's summer retreat in Beverly, Massachusetts, and presented him with a 50-page report accusing Ballinger of an improper interest in his handling of coal field claims in Alaska. The firing of Pinchot, a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt, alienated many progressives within the Republican party and drove a wedge between Taft and Roosevelt himself, leading to the split of the Republican Party in the 1912 presidential election.

Pure Food & Drug Act & Meat Inspection Act (1906)

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was the first of a series of significant consumer protection laws which was enacted by Congress in the 20th century and led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration. Its main purpose was to ban foreign and interstate traffic in adulterated or mislabeled food and drug products, and it directed the U.S. Bureau of Chemistry to inspect products and refer offenders to prosecutors. It required that active ingredients be placed on the label of a drug's packaging and that drugs could not fall below purity levels established by the United States Pharmacopeia or the National Formulary. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, with its graphic and revolting descriptions of unsanitary conditions and unscrupulous practices rampant in the meatpacking industry, was an inspirational piece that kept the public's attention on the important issue of unhygienic meat processing plants that later led to food inspection legislation. Sinclair quipped, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach," as outraged readers demanded and got the pure food law. The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) is an American law that makes it a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under strictly regulated sanitary conditions. These requirements also apply to imported meat products, which must be inspected under equivalent foreign standards. USDA inspection of poultry was added by the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957. The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act authorizes the FDA to provide inspection services for all livestock and poultry species not listed in the FMIA or PPIA, including venison and buffalo. The Agricultural Marketing Act authorizes the USDA to offer voluntary, fee-for-service inspection services for these same species.

Revenue Act of 1913

The Revenue Act of 1913, also known as the Underwood Tariff or the Underwood-Simmons Act re-established a federal income tax in the United States and substantially lowered tariff rates. The act was sponsored by Representative Oscar Underwood, passed by the 63rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson and other members of the Democratic Party had long seen high tariffs as equivalent to unfair taxes on consumers, and tariff reduction was President Wilson's first priority upon taking office. Following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, Democratic leaders agreed to seek passage of a major bill that would dramatically lower tariffs and implement an income tax. Underwood quickly shepherded the revenue bill through the House of Representatives, but the bill won approval in the United States Senate only after extensive lobbying by the Wilson administration. Wilson signed the bill into law on October 3, 1913. The Revenue Act of 1913 lowered average tariff rates from 40 percent to 26 percent. It also established a one percent tax on income above $3,000 per year; the tax affected approximately three percent of the population. A separate provision established a corporate tax of one percent, superseding a previous tax that had only applied to corporations with net incomes greater than $5,000 per year. Though a Republican-controlled Congress would later raise tariff rates, the Revenue Act of 1913 marked an important shift in federal revenue policy, as government revenue would increasingly rely on income taxes rather than tariff duties.

Roosevelt Corollary (1904)

The Roosevelt Corollary was an addition to the Monroe Doctrine articulated by President Theodore Roosevelt in his State of the Union address in 1904 after the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-1903. The corollary states that the United States will intervene in conflicts between the European countries and Latin American countries to enforce legitimate claims of the European powers, rather than having the Europeans press their claims directly. Roosevelt tied his policy to the Monroe Doctrine, and it was also consistent with his foreign policy included in his Big Stick Diplomacy. Roosevelt stated that in keeping with the Monroe Doctrine, the United States was justified in exercising "international police power" to put an end to chronic unrest or wrongdoing in the Western Hemisphere. While the Monroe Doctrine had sought to prevent European intervention, the Roosevelt Corollary was used to justify US intervention throughout the hemisphere. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt renounced interventionism and established his Good Neighbor policy for the Western Hemisphere.

Root-Takahira Agreement (1908)

The Root-Takahira Agreement was an agreement between the United States and the Empire of Japan negotiated between United States Secretary of State Elihu Root and Japanese Ambassador to the United States Takahira Kogorō. It was a statement of long-standing policies held by both nations, much like the Taft-Katsura agreement of 1905. Both agreements acknowledged key overseas territories controlled by each nation. Signed on November 30, 1908, the agreement consisted of an official recognition of the territorial status quo as of November 1908, affirmation of the independence and territorial integrity of China (i.e. the "Open Door Policy" as proposed by John Hay), maintenance of free trade and equal commercial opportunities, Japanese recognition of the American annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Philippines and American recognition of Japan's position in northeast China. Implicit in the agreement was American acknowledgment of Japan's right to annex Korea and dominance over southern Manchuria, and Japan's acquiescence to limitations on Japanese immigration to California. With the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the United States had become a major power in East Asia. The American occupation of Hawaii and the Philippines, combined with aggressive economic policies in China were increasingly perceived as a threat by the Japanese government. The American government, on the other hand, was increasingly concerned by Japanese ambitions towards territorial gain at the expense of China, and with Japan's increasingly modern and powerful navy in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War. The Agreement was credited at the time with averting mounting tensions between the United States and Japan. However, with Japan's rapprochement to Russia after 1907, and increasing economic investment into Manchuria, the Agreement resulted in a weakened American influence over further Japanese control over China.

Scopes Trial (1925)

The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in July 1925 in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself purposely so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (equivalent to $1,500 in 2019), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial served its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flocked to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, spoke for Scopes. The trial publicized the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the Word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether modern science should be taught in schools.

17th Amendment (1913)

The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the popular election of United States senators by the people of the states. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures. It also alters the procedure for filling vacancies in the Senate, allowing for state legislatures to permit their governors to make temporary appointments until a special election can be held. According to Judge Jay Bybee of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, those in favor of popular elections for senators believed that two primary problems were caused by the original provisions: legislative corruption and electoral deadlocks. There was a sense that senatorial elections were "bought and sold", changing hands for favors and sums of money rather than because of the competence of the candidate. Between 1857 and 1900, the Senate investigated three elections over corruption. In 1900, for example, William A. Clark had his election voided after the Senate concluded that he had bought votes in the Montana legislature. But analysts Bybee and Todd Zywicki believe this concern was largely unfounded; there was a "dearth of hard information" on the subject. In more than a century of legislative elections of U.S. senators, only ten cases were contested for allegations of impropriety.

16th Amendment (1913)

The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution allows Congress to levy an income tax without apportioning it among the states on the basis of population. It was passed by Congress in 1909 in response to the 1895 Supreme Court case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. Prior to the early 20th century, most federal revenue came from tariffs rather than taxes, although Congress had often imposed excise taxes on various goods. The Revenue Act of 1861 had introduced the first federal income tax, but that tax was repealed in 1872. During the late nineteenth century, various groups, including the Populist Party, favored the establishment of a progressive income tax at the federal level. These groups believed that tariffs unfairly taxed the poor, and they favored using the income tax to shift the tax burden onto wealthier individuals. The 1894 Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act contained an income tax provision, but the tax was struck down by the Supreme Court in the case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. In its ruling, the Supreme Court did not hold that all federal income taxes were unconstitutional, but rather held that income taxes on rents, dividends, and interest were direct taxes and thus had to be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. For several years after Pollock, Congress did not attempt to implement another income tax, largely due to concerns that the Supreme Court would strike down any attempt to levy an income tax. In 1909, during the debate over the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act, Congress proposed the Sixteenth Amendment to the states. Though conservative Republican leaders had initially expected that the amendment would not be ratified, a coalition of Democrats, progressive Republicans, and other groups ensured that the necessary number of states ratified the amendment. Shortly after the amendment was ratified, Congress imposed a federal income tax with the Revenue Act of 1913. The Supreme Court upheld that income tax in the 1916 case of Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., and the federal government has continued to levy an income tax since 1913.

Roosevelt's Square Deal (early 1900s)

The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program, which reflected his three major goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. These three demands are often referred to as the "three Cs" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. Thus, it aimed at helping middle class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting business from the most extreme demands of organized labor. He explained in 1901-1909: When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. A progressive Republican, Roosevelt believed in government action to mitigate social evils, and as president he in 1908 denounced "the representatives of predatory wealth" as guilty of "all forms of iniquity from the oppression of wage workers to unfair and unwholesome methods of crushing competition, and to defrauding the public by stock-jobbing and the manipulation of securities." During his second term, Roosevelt tried to extend his Square Deal further, but was blocked by conservative Republicans in Congress.

Teapot Dome Scandal (1923)

The Teapot Dome scandal was a bribery scandal involving the administration of United States President Warren G. Harding from 1921 to 1923. Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, and two locations in California, to private oil companies at low rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of a seminal investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies, Fall became the first presidential cabinet member to go to prison; no one was convicted of paying the bribes. Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics". It damaged the reputation of the Harding administration, which was already severely diminished by its controversial handling of the Great Railroad Strike of 1922 and Harding's veto of the Bonus Bill in 1922. Congress subsequently passed legislation, enduring to this day, giving subpoena power to the House and Senate for review of tax records of any US citizen without regard to elected or appointed position, nor subject to White House interference.

Esch-Cummins Act (1920)

The Transportation Act, 1920, commonly known as the Esch-Cummins Act, was a United States federal law that returned railroads to private operation after World War I, with much regulation. It also officially encouraged private consolidation of railroads and mandated that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) ensure their profitability. The United States had entered World War I in April 1917, and the government found that the nation's railroads were not prepared to serve the war effort. On December 26, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had ordered that U.S. railroads be nationalized in the public interest. This order was implemented through the creation of the United States Railroad Administration.[2] Congress ratified the order in the Railway Administration Act of 1918.

Treaty of Versailles (1919)

The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919 in Versailles, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which had directly led to the war. The other Central Powers on the German side signed separate treaties. Although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919. Of the many provisions in the treaty, one of the most important and controversial required "Germany [to] accept the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage" during the war (the other members of the Central Powers signed treaties containing similar articles). This article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make ample territorial concessions, and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers. In 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks (then $31.4 billion or £6.6 billion, roughly equivalent to US$442 billion or UK£284 billion in 2020). At the time economists, notably John Maynard Keynes (a British delegate to the Paris Peace Conference), predicted that the treaty was too harsh—a "Carthaginian peace"—and said the reparations figure was excessive and counter-productive, views that, since then, have been the subject of ongoing debate by historians and economists. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side, such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently. The result of these competing and sometimes conflicting goals among the victors was a compromise that left no one satisfied, and, in particular, Germany was neither pacified nor conciliated, nor was it permanently weakened. The problems that arose from the treaty would lead to the Locarno Treaties, which improved relations between Germany and the other European powers, and the re-negotiation of the reparation system resulting in the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and the indefinite postponement of reparations at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. The treaty has sometimes been cited as a cause of World War II: although its actual impact was not as severe as feared, its harsh terms led to great resentment in Germany which powered the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Washington Disarmament Conference of 1921

The Washington Naval Conference, was a disarmament conference called by The United States and held in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspice of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine nations—the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal regarding interests in the Pacific Ocean and East Asia. Soviet Russia was not invited to the conference. It was the first arms control conference in history, and as Kaufman, 1990 shows, it is studied by political scientists as a model for a successful disarmament movement. Held at Memorial Continental Hall in downtown Washington DC,[3] it resulted in three major treaties: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty (more commonly known as the Washington Naval Treaty), the Nine-Power Treaty, and a number of smaller agreements. These treaties preserved peace during the 1920s but were not renewed in the increasingly hostile world of the Great Depression.

Mann Act (1910)

The White-Slave Traffic Act, or the Mann Act, is a United States federal law, passed June 25, 1910. It is named after Congressman James Robert Mann of Illinois. In its original form the act made it a felony to engage in interstate or foreign commerce transport of "any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose". Its primary stated intent was to address prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking, particularly where trafficking was for the purposes of prostitution. It was one of several acts of protective legislation aimed at moral reform during the Progressive Era. In practice, its ambiguous language about "immorality" resulted in it being used to criminalize even consensual sexual behavior between adults. It was amended by Congress in 1978 and again in 1986 to limit its application to transport for the purpose of prostitution or other illegal sexual acts. In the 19th century, many of America's cities had designated, legally protected areas of prostitution; and increased urbanization as well as greater numbers of young women entering the workforce led to greater flexibility in courtship without supervision. It is in this changing social sphere that concern over "white slavery" began. This term referred to women being kidnapped for the purposes of prostitution. Jack Johnson (boxer) was famous case. Johnson was arrested on charges of violating the Mann Act—forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes"—a racially motivated charge that embroiled him in controversy for his relationships, including marriages, with white women.

Wright Brothers Flight (1903)

The Wright brothers make their first powered flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina The Wright Flyer (often retrospectively referred to as Flyer I or 1903 Flyer) was the first successful heavier-than-air powered aircraft. It was designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903, near Kill Devil Hills, about four miles (6.4 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Today, the airplane is exhibited in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. The U.S. Smithsonian Institution describes the aircraft as "the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard." The flight of Flyer I marks the beginning of the "pioneer era" of aviation.

Zimmerman Telegram (1917)

The Zimmermann Telegram was a secret diplomatic communication issued from the German Foreign Office in January 1917 that proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico. If the United States entered World War I against Germany, Mexico would recover Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. The telegram was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence. Revelation of the contents enraged Americans, especially after German Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann publicly admitted on March 3 that the telegram was genuine, helping to generate support for the United States declaration of war on Germany in April. The decryption was described as the most significant intelligence triumph for Britain during World War I, and one of the earliest occasions on which a piece of signal intelligence influenced world events.

Albert Einstein & Theory of Relativity (1905)

The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in the absence of gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its relation to other forces of nature. It applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy. The theory transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century, superseding a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton. It introduced concepts including spacetime as a unified entity of space and time, relativity of simultaneity, kinematic and gravitational time dilation, and length contraction. In the field of physics, relativity improved the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, along with ushering in the nuclear age. With relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves.

Treaty of Portsmouth (1906)

Theodore Roosevelt negotiates Treaty of Portsmouth, receives Nobel Peace Prize The Treaty of Portsmouth formally ended the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. It was signed on September 5, 1905 after negotiations lasting from August 6 to August 30, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, United States. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the negotiations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. The war of 1904-05 was fought between the Empire of Russia, an international power with one of the largest armies in the world, and the Empire of Japan, a nation which had only recently industrialized after two-and-a-half centuries of isolation. A series of battles in the Liaodong Peninsula had resulted in Russian armies being driven from southern Manchuria, and the Battle of Tsushima had resulted in a cataclysm for the Imperial Russian Navy. The war was unpopular with the Russian public, and the Russian government was under increasing threat of revolution at home. On the other hand, the Japanese economy was severely strained by the war, with rapidly mounting foreign debts, and its forces in Manchuria faced the problem of ever-extending supply lines. No Russian territory had been seized, and the Russians continued to build up reinforcements via the Trans-Siberian Railway. Recognizing that a long-term war was not to Japan's advantage, as early as July 1904 the Japanese government had begun seeking out intermediaries to assist in bringing the war to a negotiated conclusion.

Theodore Roosevelt Shot (1912)

Theodore Roosevelt shot, but not killed, while campaigning for the bull Moose Party Once his defeat at the Republican convention appeared probable, Roosevelt announced that he would "accept the progressive nomination on a progressive platform and I shall fight to the end, win or lose". At the same time, Roosevelt prophetically said, "My feeling is that the Democrats will probably win if they nominate a progressive". Bolting from the Republican Party, Roosevelt and key allies such as Pinchot and Albert Beveridge created the Progressive Party, structuring it as a permanent organization that would field complete tickets at the presidential and state level. It was popularly known as the "Bull Moose Party", after Roosevelt told reporters, "I'm as fit as a bull moose". Platform: "To destroy this invisible Government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. This country belongs to the people. Its resources, its business, its laws, its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever manner will best promote the general interest. This assertion is explicit... Mr. Wilson must know that every monopoly in the United States opposes the Progressive party... I challenge him... to name the monopoly that did support the Progressive party, whether... the Sugar Trust, the US Steel Trust, the Harvester Trust, the Standard Oil Trust, the Tobacco Trust, or any other... Ours was the only program to which they objected, and they supported either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Taft As an experienced hunter and anatomist, Roosevelt correctly concluded that since he was not coughing blood, the bullet had not reached his lung, and he declined suggestions to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt.[244] He spoke for 90 minutes before completing his speech and accepting medical attention. His opening comments to the gathered crowd were, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose."[245] Afterwards, probes and an x-ray showed that the bullet had lodged in Roosevelt's chest muscle, but did not penetrate the pleura. Doctors concluded that it would be less dangerous to leave it in place than to attempt to remove it, and Roosevelt carried the bullet with him for the rest of his life.

WW 1 & the U.S. (1917-1919)

Though Serbia was defeated in 1915, and Romania joined the Allied Powers in 1916 only to be defeated in 1917, none of the great powers were knocked out of the war until 1918. The 1917 February Revolution in Russia replaced the Tsarist autocracy with the Provisional Government, but continuing discontent with the cost of the war led to the October Revolution, the creation of the Soviet Socialist Republic, and the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the new government in March 1918, ending Russia's involvement in the war. This allowed the transfer of large numbers of German troops from the East to the Western Front, resulting in the German March 1918 Offensive. This offensive was initially successful, but failed to score a decisive victory and exhausted the last of the German reserves. The Allies rallied and drove the Germans back in their Hundred Days Offensive, a continual series of attacks to which the Germans had no reply. Bulgaria was the first Central Power to sign an armistice—the Armistice of Salonica on 29 September 1918. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire capitulated, signing the Armistice of Mudros. On 4 November, the Austro-Hungarian empire agreed to the Armistice of Villa Giusti. With its allies defeated, revolution at home, and the military no longer willing to fight, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated on 9 November and Germany signed an armistice on 11 November 1918, effectively ending the war. World War I was a significant turning point in the political, cultural, economic, and social climate of the world. The war and its immediate aftermath sparked numerous revolutions and uprisings. The Big Four (Britain, France, the United States, and Italy) imposed their terms on the defeated powers in a series of treaties agreed at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the most well known being the German peace treaty—the Treaty of Versailles. Ultimately, as a result of the war the Austro-Hungarian, German, Ottoman, and Russian Empires ceased to exist, with numerous new states created from their remains. However, despite the conclusive Allied victory (and the creation of the League of Nations during the Peace Conference, intended to prevent future wars), a second world war would follow just over twenty years later.

U.S. Presidential Election (1900)

U.S. presidential election, 1900: William McKinley reelected president; Theodore Roosevelt elected vice president 1901: President McKinley assassinated, Vice President Roosevelt becomes the 26th President

U.S. Presidential Election (1904)

U.S. presidential election, 1904: Theodore Roosevelt elected president for full term; Charles W. Fairbanks elected vice president

U.S. Presidential Election (1912)

U.S. presidential election, 1912: Woodrow Wilson elected president, Thomas R. Marshall, vice president. Roosevelt becomes the only third party candidate to come in second for well over a century.

U.S. Presidential Election (1920)

U.S. presidential election, 1920: Warren G. Harding elected president, and Calvin Coolidge vice president.

U.S. Presidential Election (1924)

U.S. presidential election, 1924: Calvin Coolidge elected president for a full term, Charles G. Dawes elected vice president

U.S. Presidential Election (1928)

U.S. presidential election, 1928: Herbert C. Hoover elected president and Charles Curtis vice president

Louis Brandeis appointed to Supreme Court (1916)

When his family's finances became secure, he began devoting most of his time to public causes and was later dubbed the "People's Lawyer". He insisted on serving on cases without pay so that he would be free to address the wider issues involved. The Economist magazine calls him "A Robin Hood of the law." Among his notable early cases were actions fighting railroad monopolies, defending workplace and labor laws, helping create the Federal Reserve System, and presenting ideas for the new Federal Trade Commission. He achieved recognition by submitting a case brief, later called the "Brandeis Brief", which relied on expert testimony from people in other professions to support his case, thereby setting a new precedent in evidence presentation. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the Supreme Court. His nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible ... [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court." On June 1, 1916, he was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22, to become one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court.

U.S. Presidential Election (1908)

William Howard Taft elected president; James S. Sherman vice president. William Jennings Bryan loses for the third and final time.

U.S. Enters WW 1 (1917)

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilization of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatant and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the related 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 17-50 million deaths worldwide. On 28 June 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb Yugoslav nationalist, assassinated the Austro-Hungarian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, leading to the July Crisis. In response, on 23 July, Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Serbia's reply failed to satisfy the Austrians, and the two moved to a war footing. A network of interlocking alliances enlarged the crisis from a bilateral issue in the Balkans to one involving most of Europe. By July 1914, the great powers of Europe were divided into two coalitions: the Triple Entente—consisting of France, Russia, and Britain—and the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy (the Triple Alliance was only defensive in nature, allowing Italy to stay out of the war until April 1915, when it joined the Allied Powers after its relations with Austria-Hungary deteriorated). Russia felt it necessary to back Serbia and, after Austria-Hungary shelled the Serbian capital of Belgrade on the 28 July, approved partial mobilization. Full Russian mobilization was announced on the evening of 30 July; on the 31st, Austria-Hungary and Germany did the same, while Germany demanded Russia demobilize within twelve hours. When Russia failed to comply, Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August in support of Austria-Hungary, with Austria-Hungary following suit on 6 August; France ordered full mobilization in support of Russia on 2 August.