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Progressive and Industrial Era (Child Labor)
Although children had been servants and apprentices throughout most of human history, child labor reached new extremes during the Industrial Revolution. Children often worked long hours in dangerous factory conditions for very little money. Children were useful as laborers because their size allowed them to move in small spaces in factories or mines where adults couldn’t fit, children were easier to manage and control and perhaps most importantly, children could be paid less than adults. -
Forgein Affairs (Dollar Diplomacy)
In an extension of the Roosevelt Corollary, Taft encouraged investors to spend money in Latin American countries such as Honduras and Haiti. Adhering to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, Taft would not allow foreign investors into Latin American markets, so America felt a responsibility to support these financially struggling republics. Many of these nations were constantly on the verge of financial collapse and required foreign investment to strengthen their shaky foundations. -
Progressive and Industrial (The Ballinger-Pinchot Affair)
A dispute between U.S. Forest Service Chief Gifford Pinchot and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Achilles Ballinger that contributed to the split of the Republican Party before the 1912 Presidential Election. -
Forgien Affairs (U.S. Intervention in Mexico and Camp Willis, 1916)
Mexico was torn by revolution and civil war in the decade of the 1910s. The United States shared a 2,000 mile border with Mexico, and American businesses had invested in Mexican railroads, oil fields and plantations. President Woodrow Wilson ordered two U.S. military interventions during the Mexican Revolution. At Veracruz in 1914, the president sought to influence the conflict by controlling the flow of foreign supplies to Mexico's chief port. -
Progressive and Industrial Era (Women's Suffrage)
At the turn of the century, women reformers in the club movement and in the settlement house movement wanted to pass reform legislation. However, many politicians were unwilling to listen to a disenfranchised group. Thus, over time women began to realize that in order to achieve reform, they needed to win the right to vote. For these reasons, at the turn of the century, the woman suffrage movement became a mass movement. -
Forgein Affairs (Anti-German Sentiment During WW1)
By the time of U.S. entry into World War I in 1917, there were over ten million immigrants in the United States from the countries of the Central Powers. Most German-American communities supported neutrality. To gain support for the war, President Woodrow Wilson selected George Creel to lead a propaganda campaign for war bonds, and filmmakers were encouraged to produce movies that featured alleged German atrocities. -
From Isolationism to World War
During the 1930s, the combination of the Great Depression and the memory of tragic losses in World War I contributed to pushing American public opinion and policy toward isolationism. Isolationists advocated non-involvement in European and Asian conflicts and non-entanglement in international politics. Although the United States took measures to avoid political and military conflicts across the oceans, it continued to expand economically and protect its interests in Latin America. -
United States and the Post-Cold War World(first atomic bomb)
The project brought together scientists from the United States, Great Britain, and Canada to study the feasibility of building an atomic bomb capable of unimaginable destructive power. The project proceeded with no small degree of urgency, since the American government had been warned that Nazi Germany had also embarked on a program to develop an atomic weapon. By July 1945, a prototype weapon was ready for testing. -
United States and the Post-Cold War World
Moving out of Post World War 2 tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union grew stronger. The rivalry between The United States and the Soviet Union lasted for most of the 20th Century. A series of nternational incidents that brought the world’s superpowers to the brink of disaster. -
The Cold War (Eisenhower announces a policy of massive retaliation)
In August 1945, the United States ended the Pacific War with the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Four years later, on August 9, 1949, the Soviet Union developed its own nuclear weapons. At the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use nuclear devices against each other. Eventually with nuclear triads being established, both countries were quickly increasing their ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the interior of the opposing country. -
The Cold War (The Soviets explode their first atomic bomb)
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the USSR successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, code name "First Lightning." In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They also placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals. The atomic explosion, which at 20 kilotons was roughly equal to "Trinity,". -
The Cold War (SANE is established)
The escalating nuclear arms race of the late 1950s led Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, along with Clarence Pickett of the American Society of Friends (Quakers), to found the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) in 1957. Their most visible member was Dr. Benjamin Spock, who joined in 1962 after becoming disillusioned with President Kennedy's failure to halt nuclear proliferation. -
United States and Post Cold War World(Cuban Missile Crisis)
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a number of ways, featuring calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret communications and miscommunications between the two sides. -
Social Transformation in the United States(The Age of Trans.)
Far smaller and far slower social changes in earlier periods triggered civil wars, rebellions, and violent intellectual and spiritual crises. The extreme social transformations of this century have caused hardly any stir. They have proceeded with a minimum of friction, with a minimum of upheavals, and, indeed, with a minimum of attention from scholars, politicians, the press, and the public. -
Social Transformation in the United States(Technology)
Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the telephone, the Internet has no single “inventor.” Instead, it has evolved over time. The Internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and researchers used it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine life without it. -
Social Transformation (Cell Phones)
The Cell Phone Reader offers a diverse, eclectic set of essays that examines how this rapidly evolving technology is shaping new media cultures, new forms of identity, and media-centered relationships. The contributors focus on a range of topics, from horror films to hip-hop,from religion to race, and draw examples from across the globe.
