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American History

 

Progressive Era and World War I, 1890–1920
The Progressive Era was a period of social, political, and economic reform in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century through the early 1920s. Many of the reforms, such as efforts to curb child labor and outlaw the sale of alcohol, began at the grassroots level. On the level of national politics, Progressivism was associated with the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt (in office 1901–09), William Howard Taft (1909–13), and Woodrow Wilson (1913–21). Roosevelt and Taft are perhaps best known for invoking antitrust legislation to break up large corporations that had monopolized U.S. industries. Wilson reduced tariffs (taxes on imported goods) and introduced regulation of the nation's financial system with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, which created a central banking system. The first two decades of the twentieth century were marked by sharp fluctuations in the economy, with brief spells of prosperity and expansion punctuated by a recession from 1902 to 1904, panics in 1907 and 1910, and another recession lasting most of 1913 and 1914. The national economy boomed during World War I (1914–18), as manufacturers and farmers faced increased overseas demand for their products and the government regulated prices in domestic markets. After the war, however, the agricultural sector declined due to reduced demand in European markets. Nevertheless, big business thrived for most of the 1920s.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the United States acquired territory in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as a result of the Spanish-American War (1898), which began when the United States intervened in a Cuban revolt against Spain. When the war was over, the United States retained control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines and established dominance over independent Cuba. The United States continued to exert heavy-handed political influence in the Western Hemisphere in the early twentieth century. In 1903 Roosevelt encouraged Panama, which borders South America, to separate from Colombia and form a new republic. Under a treaty signed later that year, the United States received the right to build and control the Panama Canal, a profitable man-made waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Isthmus of Panama. In addition, the United States occupied the Dominican Republic in 1905, Nicaragua in 1912, and Haiti in 1915. Read more ..
From CREDO Progressive Era and World War I, 1890–1920 in Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
Image: A number of women's associations cropped up during the Progressive Era. They included the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, pictured here in a protest c. 1909 in support of prohibition. TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES