Gilded Age Politics & Reform
This 19th-century practice involved political winners rewarding their supporters with government jobs regardless of qualifications.
What is the spoils system (or patronage)?
This application of Charles Darwin's theories to human societies was used by the wealthy to justify extreme economic inequality.
What is Social Darwinism?
Led by Samuel Gompers, this major labor organization focused exclusively on skilled workers, higher wages, and collective bargaining.
What is the American Federation of Labor (AFL)?
This sensationalist, exaggerated, and emotional journalism was pioneered by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst in the late 1890s.
What is the yellow press?
These German military vessels were used to blockade Great Britain and sink merchant and passenger ships without warning.
What are submarines (U-boats)?
Passed during the Progressive Era, this amendment established a federal income tax.
What is the 16th Amendment?
Highly organized political groups like Tammany Hall traded municipal services for votes using these entities.
What are political machines?
This late 19th-century Protestant movement applied Christian ethics to social problems like poverty, crime, and slums.
What is the Social Gospel?
This political and economic theory advocating for public or collective ownership of the means of production and distribution was championed in the U.S. by Eugene V. Debs.
What is socialism?
Written in 1890 by U.S. naval officer Alfred T. Mahan, this work argued that national greatness and global power relied on controlling the seas.
What is The Influence of Sea Power Upon History?
Intercepted by British intelligence in 1917, this communication proposed a military alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States.
What is the Zimmerman telegram?
This Progressive Era amendment provided for the direct election of U.S. senators by the public.
What is the 17th Amendment?
This agrarian-based third party of the 1890s championed the direct election of senators and a graduated income tax.
Who are the Populists (People's Party)?
Pioneered by Jane Addams with Hull House, these community centers provided educational and social services in poor urban neighborhoods.
What are settlement houses?
Government activities designed to break up monopolies and industrial trusts to restore market competition, heavily pursued by Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.
What is trust-busting?
This 1898 amendment pledged that the U.S. would not annex Cuba after the Spanish-American War.
What is the Teller Amendment?
Established in 1917 during WWI, this U.S. government agency coordinated the purchase of war supplies and managed industrial production.
What is the War Industries Board (WIB)?
This amendment instituted a nationwide constitutional ban on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
What is the 18th Amendment (Prohibition)?
This late 19th-century political movement advocated for the unlimited coinage of silver to expand the money supply and cause inflation.
What is Free Silver?
These investigative journalists and writers exposed political and corporate corruption during the Progressive Era.
Who are muckrakers?
These two 1906 consumer protection laws established federal inspection of meat and prohibited adulterated or misbranded foods and drugs.
What are the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food & Drug Act?
Introduced by Secretary of State John Hay in 1899–1900, this policy demanded equal trading access for all nations in China.
What is the Open Door Policy?
Woodrow Wilson presented this idealistic post-war peace plan in 1918 calling for open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, and self-determination.
What are the Fourteen Points?
This landmark constitutional amendment granted women the right to vote.
What is the 19th Amendment?
These three Progressive Era political reforms—giving citizens the power to propose laws, vote on laws directly, and remove corrupt officials—are called these.
What are initiative, referendum, and recall?
his 1896 Supreme Court ruling upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal."
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
These were the 1912 presidential campaign platforms of Theodore Roosevelt (calling for heavy government intervention and regulation of trusts) and Woodrow Wilson (emphasizing small government and the destruction of monopolies).
What are New Nationalism and New Freedom?
Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 extension of the Monroe Doctrine declared that the U.S. had the right to act as this in the Western Hemisphere.
What is an "international police power" (the Roosevelt Corollary)?
Signed in 1919, this official peace treaty imposed crushing economic reparations, territorial losses, and a "war guilt" clause on Germany.
What is the Treaty of Versailles?