The Gilded Age And The Progressive Era

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After the Civil War, the United States’ economy grew by leaps and bounds to become one of the world’s leading industrial powers. Rapid growth and industrialization brought about a multitude of new dilemmas to the U.S, and posed the question of how the government would react. The federal government expanded its powers and redefined its role in the gilded age and progressive era through the 1920’s. Economic sanctions, immigration laws, constitutional amendments, and changes in foreign policy evolved the federal government’s role into what it is today domestically and internationally. The Gilded Age was a time of private excess and public corruption in America. Advances in technology created new opportunities for business and bolstered the …show more content…

Roosevelt was a moderate reformer and took on the ‘trusts,’ sought fair marketplace competition, economic rights for the working class over corporate power, and social welfare legislation (Mordecai, 60). The toughest public institution for Progressives to reform was the court system (Mordecai, 60). By the start of the 20th century, a middle class had developed that was leery of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West. The Progressives argued the need for government regulation of business practices to ensure competition and free …show more content…

modern stance on foreign involvement and domestic policy during times of war. U.S. neutrality during the beginning of WWI was tested with the sinking of a U.S. passenger ship, The Lusitania, by a German submarine. President Wilson tried to keep the U.S. out of the war. In the meantime, a civil war in Mexico spilled over into the U.S. when rebel leader Poncho Villa led an attack on a U.S. territory in New Mexico. The U.S. responded by sending troops into Mexico to capture Villa, and the Mexican President requested the troops withdraw. The Zimmerman note of 1917 pulled the U.S. into the war when Germany sent a telegram to Mexico proposing an alliance in the case that the U.S. joined the war against

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