http://michael-streich.suite101.com/progressive-era-reforms-the-17th-amendment-a82723

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/sat-ii-us-history-moving-through-the-progressive-e.html (Don’t be insulted!!!)

Why was the 16th Amendment the first Progressive reform placed within the Constitution? What were they hoping to accomplish, and why?

The income tax and tariff were complementary issues: The Underwood Tariff Act not only reduced tariffs to their lowest levels in a half-century, but also included an increase in the income tax to offset the ensuing revenue loss. The shift to income tax was seen as an issue of economic fairness. Replacing the tariff system, which Progressives viewed as both an unpredictable source of government revenue as well as an inequitable government give-away to wealthy manufacturers, was a top priority for the Progressives. A graduated income tax,which had been first proposed by the Populists, would have less of an impact on the working-class and farmers who paid a higher percentage of their income on tariff-impacted goods than the wealthy did. An income tax would also provide a reliable source of government income to help pay for the new services the federal government would provide to the people under a Progressive agenda.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/7762384_history_behind_the_16th_amendment_and_united_states_income_taxes;_ylt=ArQYhxYAlIz1ITvGHe5qh0NH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTRpaWhldmFhBGFzc2V0Ay9zL2FjLzc3NjIzODRfaGlzdG9yeV9iZWhpbmRfdGhlXzE2dGhfYW1lbmRtZW50X2FuZF91bml0ZWRfc3RhdGVzX2luY29tZV90YXhlcwRjY29kZQNyYW5kb20EY3BvcwMyBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDaGlzdG9yeWJlaGlu

1. List the main features of the New Freedom platform. Compare with the New Nationalism. What writer influenced TR in creating his platform? Which was the more conservative platform?
2. What factors, especially political considerations, gave Democrats hope that they could capture the White House in 1912?
3. What were the unusual features of the election of 1912? Use the information from the map on 730 as well as the actual text in forming your answer. What might have happened if TR and Taft had not split the Republican vote? What about the Socialists?
4. Explain: “Progressivism rather than Wilson was the run-away winner.”
5. Which party was stronger in 1912? Socialists or Progressives? Why?
6. How did Taft eventually find a happy ending?
7. How did Wilson’s heritage (birthplace and religious background) influence specific policies he advocated?
8. What tactic did Wilson use to attempt to “manage” the legislative branch as both governor and president? What impact did his personality have on the effectiveness of this tactic?
9. What three specific things did Wilson target as the cause of the economic inequality in America? Which one was addressed first, and why did this make sense?
10. What is the correlation between the Underwood Tariff Act and the 16th Amendment? How did Wilson get this bill passed despite opposition and lobbying?
11. How did the Federal Reserve Act attempt to fix the specific flaws of the Civil War Banking Act?
12. What two laws passed under Wilson attempted to break the power of the trusts? What were the main powers of the Federal Trade Commission?
13. How did the Clayton Act help labor? What were its main provisions? How historically significant did Samuel Gompers believe this law to be?
14. How did Wilson change the cultural makeup of the Supreme Court? What were the LIMITS of Wilson’s Progressivism, from a social point of view?
15. Create a chart of the specific pieces of major legislation passed during Wilson’s first term in office.
16. Was Wilson imperialist or anti-imperialist? Give a nuanced answer with specific examples.
17. Describe the reasons for Wilson’s less-than-friendly relations with Mexico.
18. How did most Americans regard our obligations at the start of World War I? How did economic ties influence our “neutrality?”
19. Why did German submarines attack non-military ships? Did they attack American ships? Explain why America was outraged by the attacks on the Lusitania, Arabia, and Sussex?
20. What pledges did Germany make, and what was the value of these pledges? What condition did Germany extract from the US in order to give the Sussex pledge?
21. What groups strongly supported Wilson in his re-election bid?

Here is a link to a digital copy of the book: http://tenant.net/Community/Riis/title.html

Here is background on the book: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/davis/photography/riis/otherhalf.html

This one has better images and a timeline of events: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

1. Compare the demographic details provided in the opening paragraphs with the first two paragraphs under “March of the Millions” on p. 308 and the chart on p. 309. What are three conclusions you can draw regarding the changes in the American population?
2. Explain (specifically) what the progressives believed about government power, and why. How did economic concerns from the Gilded Age fuel progressive beliefs in the early 20th century?
3. What previous writers and movements helped propel progressive reform in the US? What more extreme movement threatened to gain strength if progressive reforms were not initiated?
4. What did muckrakers do? What magazines were associated with muckraking? Compare and contrast muckrakers and yellow journalists.
5. What was the claim of David G. Phillips? What Progressive Amendment attempted to deal with this problem? What was Phillips’ reward?
6. Explain the quote: “The cure for the ills of American democracy… was more democracy.”
7. Why is there no socialism in the United States, according to Werner Sombart?
8. What was the IWW?
9. What were the two chief goals of the progressives, according to p. 708?
10. What six specific measure did progressives enact to increase voter control over government? Explain each one.
11. How did women first get the right to vote? What arguments did suffragists use to support their case?
12. What progressive reforms were put into place at the local government level?
13. What progressive reforms were put into place at the state government level? In which states was this the strongest?
14. What organizations did women use to gain influence besides the vote? What is the notion of the “separate spheres?”
15. Was Mueller v. Oregon a true victory for women? Explain.
16. How does the incident at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory help illuminate Scoop’s dictum that a law is only as good as its enforcement?
17. What victories did workers gain during the progressive era?
18. Why did progressives target alcohol? What did they believe were the ties between political machines and saloons?
19. What was the Square Deal, and what were the three C’s? How did they work together?
20. What were the causes of the coal strike of 1902 and what were the effects?
21. What specific measures were enacted against the railroads? Explain each one.
22. What, according to TR, were the differences between “good trusts” and “bad trusts?” What were the limits to TR’s trustbusting?
23. What were the two political effects of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle?
24. What were the goals of the three 19th century laws sought to conserve the environment? What laws and actions did TR put in place?
25. Read carefully—how did the Turner thesis influence the national mood for conservation?
26. What is the difference between conservationism and environmentalism (or preservationism)?
27. How does the struggle over the Hetch Hetchy Valley show the limits of conservationism in protecting the environment? What was “multiple-use resource management?”
28. What happened during the “Roosevelt Panic” of 1907? Why was his disavowal of a third term a mistake?
29. Who was Eugene V. Debs? Use the index in the back of your book to give a complete answer.
30. What were Taft’s (WHT) political liabilities? What was “dollar diplomacy?”
31. How did the “rule of reason” impact government efforts to control trusts?
32. What were the causes of eventual rift between TR and WHT?

This famous poem, written by Britain’s imperial poet, was a response to the American take over of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. What was Kipling saying about colonialism? How should the word “burden” be interpreted, and who exactly carries this burden?

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed–
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild–
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
The savage wars of peace–
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard–
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:–
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Ye dare not stoop to less–
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Then this response was published in an African-American newspaper…

Why Talk of the White Man’s Burden?
By Bruce Grit, The Colored American (D.C.) (Feb. 25, 1899).

This poem was written in response to Kipling’s and published in a major African American newspaper.

Why talk of the white man’s burden;
What burdens hath he borne
That have not been shared by the black man
From the day creation dawned?

Why talk of the white man’s burden,
Why boast of the white man’s power
When the black man’s load is heavier,
And increasing every hour?

Why taunt us with our weakness,
Why boast of your brutal strength;
Know ye not that the children of meekness
Shall inherit the earth — at length?

“Take up the white man’s burden!”
What burdens doth he bear,
That have not been borne with courage
By brave men everywhere?

Then why the white man’s burden?
What more doth he bear than we –
The victims of his power and greed
From the great lakes to the sea?

This poem was published without a title. It is provided here from the first line.

“The White Man’s Burden” as Prophecy
By Benjamin R. Tillman

Extract from a speech delivered in the U.S. Senate, Feb. 7, 1899.

As though coming at the most opportune time possible, you might say just before the treaty reached the Senate, or about the time it was sent to us, there appeared in one of our magazines a poem by Rudyard Kipling, the greatest poet of England at this time. This poem, unique, and in some places too deep for me, is a prophecy. I do not imagine that in the history of human events any poet has ever felt inspired so clearly to portray our danger and our duty. It is called “The White Man’s Burden.” With the permission of Senators I will read a stanza, and I beg Senators to listen to it, for it is well worth their attention. This man has lived in the Indies. In fact, he is a citizen of the world, and has been all over it, and knows whereof he speaks.

“Take up the White Man’s burden–
Send forth the best ye breed– Go, bind your sons to exile,
To serve your captive’s need; To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild– Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.”

I will pause here. I intend to read more, but I wish to call attention to a fact which may have escaped the attention of Senators thus far, that with five exceptions every man in this chamber who has had to do with the colored race in this country voted against the ratification of the treaty[the Treaty of Paris which was ratified Feb. 6, 1899 and ended the Spanish-American War]. It was not because we are Democrats, but because we understand and realize what it is to have two races side by side that can not mix or mingle without deterioration and injury to both and the ultimate destruction of the civilization of the higher. We of the South have borne this white man’s burden of a colored race in our midst since their emancipation and before.

It was a burden upon our manhood and our ideas of liberty before they were emancipated. It is still a burden, although they have been granted the franchise. It clings to us like the shirt of Nessus, and we are not responsible, because we inherited it, and your fathers as well as ours are responsible for the presence amongst us of that people. Why do we as a people want to incorporate into our citizenship ten millions more of different or of differing races, three or four of them?

But we have not incorporated them yet, and let us see what this English poet has to say about it, and what he thinks.

“Take up the White Man’s burden–
No iron rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper–
The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread, Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.”

Ah, if we have no other consideration, if no feeling of humanity, no love of our fellows, no regard for others’ rights, if nothing but our self-interest shall actuate us in this crisis, let me say to you that if we go madly on in the direction of crushing these people into subjection and submission we will do so at the cost of many, many thousands of the flower of American youth. There are 10,000,000 of these people, some of them fairly well civilized, and running to the extreme of naked savages, who are reported in our press dispatches as having stood out in the open and fired their bows and arrows, not flinching from the storm of shot and shell thrown into their midst by the American soldiers there.

The report of the battle claims that we lost only seventy-five killed and a hundred and odd wounded; but the first skirmish has carried with it what anguish, what desolation, to homes in a dozen states! How many more victims are we to offer up on this altar of Mammon or national greed? When those regiments march back, if they return with decimated ranks, as they are bound to come, if we have to send thousands and tens of thousands of re-enforcements there to press onward until we have subdued those ten millions, at whose door will lie these lives — their blood shed for what? An idea. If a man fires upon the American flag, shoot the last man and kill him, no matter how many Americans have to be shot to do it.

The city of Manila is surrounded by swamps and marshes, I am told. A few miles back lie the woods and jungles and mountains. These people are used to the climate. They know how to get about, and if they mean to have their liberties, as they appear to do, at what sacrifice will the American domination be placed over them? There is another verse of Kipling. I have fallen in love with this man. He tells us what we will reap:

“Take up the White Man’s burden,
And reap his old reward– The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard– The cry of those ye humor
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:– ‘Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?’”

Those peoples are not suited to our institutions. They are not ready for liberty as we understand it. They do not want it. Why are we bent on forcing upon them a civilization not suited to them and which only means in their view degradation and a loss of self-respect, which is worse than the loss of life itself?

I am nearly done. Nobody answers and nobody can. The commercial instinct which seeks to furnish a market and places for the growth of commerce or the investment of capital for the money making of the few is pressing this country madly to the final and ultimate annexation of these people regardless of their own wishes.