The Rise of Progressivism
Major Concepts
1 - A number of writers and reformers in the period 1865-1914 discussed the growing gap between wealth and poverty in the United States. Compare and contrast the following authors' explanations for this condition and their proposals for dealing with it.
A. Henry George, Progress and Poverty B. Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward C. Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth
D. William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other E. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle
2 - Analyze the ways in which state and federal legislation and judicial decisions, including those of the Supreme Court, affected the efforts of African Americans, Farmers, and Workers to improve their position in society between 1880 and 1920.
3 - "Most reform legislation since 1900 has been the work of special interests seeking to advance their own well-being, but the adoption of such legislation has required the general support of others who were not directly affected but who perceived it to be in the public interest." Assess the validity of this statement with reference to government: national, state, and municipal reform legislation since 1900.
4 - "The Progressive movement of 1901 to 1917 was a triumph of conservatism rather than a victory for liberalism." Assess the validity of this statement.
5 - Why did socialism fail to become a major force in American in American politics between 1900 and 1920 despite widespread dissatisfaction with the social and economic order and significant support for radical movements during that period?
6 - Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois offered different strategies for dealing with the problems of poverty and discrimination faced by Black Americans at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth centuries. Assess the appropriateness of each of these strategies in the historical context in which each was developed.
7 - "In American politics the most significant battles have occurred within