ch. 29

Question 1

Underwood Tariff

Answer 1

This tariff provided for a substantial reduction of rates and enacted an unprecedented, graduated federal income tax. By 1917, revenue from the income tax surpassed receipts from the tariff, a gap that has since been vastly widened.

Question 2

Federal Reserve Act

Answer 2

An act establishing twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks and a Federal Reserve Board, appointed by the president, to regulate banking and create stability on a national scale in the volatile banking sector. The law carried the nation through the financial crises of the First World War of 1914–1918.

Question 3

Federal Trade Commission Act

Answer 3

A banner accomplishment of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, this law empowered a standing, presidentially appointed commission to investigate illegal business practices in interstate commerce like unlawful competition, false advertising, and mislabeling of goods.

Question 4

Clayton Anti-Trust Act

Answer 4

Law extending the anti-trust protections of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and exempting labor unions and agricultural organizations from antimonopoly constraints. The act conferred long-overdue benefits on labor.

Question 5

holding companies

Answer 5

Companies that own part or all of other companies’ stock in order to extend monopoly control. Often, a holding company does not produce goods or services of its own but only exists to control other companies. The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 sought to clamp down on these companies when they obstructed competition.

Question 6

Workingmen’s Compensation Act

Answer 6

Passed under Woodrow Wilson, this law granted assistance to federal civil-service employees during periods of disability. It was a precursor to labor-friendly legislation passed during the New Deal.

Question 7

Adamson Act

Answer 7

This law established an eight-hour day for all employees on trains involved in interstate commerce, with extra pay for overtime. The first federal law regulating the hours of workers in private companies, it was upheld by the Supreme Court in Wilson v. New (1917).

Question 8

Jones Act

Answer 8

Law according territorial status to the Philippines and promising independence as soon as a “stable government” could be established. The United States did not grant the Philippines independence until July 4, 1946.

Question 9

Tampico Incident

Answer 9

An arrest of American sailors by the Mexican government that spurred Woodrow Wilson to dispatch the American navy to seize the port of Veracruz in April 1914. Although war was avoided, tensions grew between the United States and Mexico.

Question 10

Central Powers

Answer 10

Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by Turkey and Bulgaria, made up this alliance against the Allies in World War I.

Question 11

Allies

Answer 11

Great Britain, Russia, and France, later joined by Italy, Japan, and the United States, formed this alliance against the Central Powers in World War I.

Question 12

U-boats

Answer 12

German submarines, named for the German Unterseeboot, or “undersea boat,” proved deadly for Allied ships in the war zone. U-boat attacks played an important role in drawing the United States into the First World War.

Question 13

Lusitania

Answer 13

British passenger liner that sank after it was torpedoed by Germany on May 7, 1915. It ended the lives of 1198 people, including 128 Americans, and pushed the United States closer to war.

Question 14

Zimmermann note

Answer 14

German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmerman had secretly proposed a German-Mexican alliance against the United States. When the note was intercepted and published in March 1917, it caused an uproar that made some Americans more willing to enter the war.

Question 15

Fourteen Points

Answer 15

Woodrow Wilson’s proposal to ensure peace after World War I, calling for an end to secret treaties, widespread arms reduction, national self-determination, and a new league of nations.

Question 16

Committee on Public Information

Answer 16

A government office during World War I known popularly as the Creel Committee for its chairman George Creel, it was dedicated to winning everyday Americans’ support for the war effort. It regularly distributed prowar propaganda and sent out an army of “four-minute men” to rally crowds and deliver “patriotic pep.”

Question 17

Espionage Act

Answer 17

A law prohibiting interference with the draft and other acts of national “disloyalty.” Together with the Sedition Act of 1918, which added penalties for abusing the government in writing, it created a climate that was unfriendly to civil liberties.

Question 18

Schenck v. United States

Answer 18

A Supreme Court decision that upheld the Espionage and Sedition Acts, reasoning that freedom of speech could be curtailed when it posed a “clear and present danger” to the nation.

Question 19

War Industries Board

Answer 19

Headed by Bernard Baruch, this federal agency coordinated industrial production during World War I, setting production quotas, allocating raw materials, and pushing companies to increase efficiency and eliminate waste. Under the economic mobilization of the War Industries Board, industrial production in the United States increased 20 percent during the war.

Question 20

Industrial Workers of the World

Answer 20

The IWW, also known as the “Wobblies,” was a radical organization that sought to build “one big union” and advocated industrial sabotage in defense of that goal. At its peak in 1923, it could claim 100,000 members and could gain the support of 300,000. The IWW particularly appealed to migratory workers in agriculture and lumbering and to miners, all of whom suffered from horrific working conditions.

Question 21

general strike

Answer 21

A large-scale work stoppage that typically cuts across industry lines and affects an entire community. In February 1919, such a strike erupted in Seattle, Washington, eventually involving more than 60,000 workers and paralyzing the city for five days. The strike provoked a fierce backlash, as many of its ringleaders were branded as American “Bolsheviks” eager to foment a second Communist Revolution in the United States.

Question 22

Great Migration

Answer 22

The movement of 6 million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North and West in two major waves. The first, from World War I until the onset of the Great Depression, brought more than 1.5 million migrants to northern cities. From 1940 to 1970, another 5 million left the South, pushed off the land by the mechanization of cotton farming and lured north and west by hopes for greater economic opportunity and more equitable political participation. After 1970, increasing numbers of African Americans trekked back to the South in what was called the New Great Migration, as new jobs became more plentiful in the South than in the older industrial cities of the North and racial relations improved in the South.

Question 23

Nineteenth Amendment

Answer 23

This constitutional amendment, finally passed by Congress in 1919 and ratified in 1920, gave women the right to vote over seventy years after the first organized calls for woman’s suffrage in Seneca Falls, New York.

Question 24

Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act

Answer 24

Designed to appeal to new women voters, this act provided federally financed instruction in maternal and infant health care and expanded the role of government in family welfare.

Question 25

American Expeditionary Forces (AEF)

Answer 25

The name given to the U.S. Army force deployed to Europe in World War I commanded by General John J. Pershing and composed mostly of conscripts. Because the United States entered the war so late, by the time the AEF was raised, trained, and deployed, the war was in its last year (1918). Units of the AEF fought at Cantigny in May and at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood in June; its major engagements were at Saint Mihiel (September 12–15) and the Meuse-Argonne (September 26–November 11).

Question 26

Battle of Château-Thierry

Answer 26

The first significant engagement of American troops in World War I—and, indeed, in any European war. To weary French soldiers, the American doughboys were an image of fresh and gleaming youth.

Question 27

Meuse-Argonne offensive

Answer 27

General John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing led American troops in this effort to cut the German railroad lines supplying the western front. One of the few major battles that Americans participated in during the entire war, it was still under way when the war ended.

Question 28

League of Nations

Answer 28

A world organization of national governments proposed by President Woodrow Wilson and established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. It worked to facilitate peaceful international cooperation. Despite emotional appeals by Wilson, isolationists’ objections to the League created the major obstacle to American signing of the Treaty of Versailles

Question 29

Treaty of Versailles

Answer 29

Signed in France’s famed palace after six months of tough negotiations, it established the terms of settlement of the First World War between Germany and the Allied and Associated Powers (most notably France, Britain, Italy, and the United States). Article 231, soon dubbed “the war guilt clause,” blamed the war on Germany as justification for forcing German disarmament and saddling Germany with heavy reparations payments to the Allied victors. Germans detested the treaty as too harsh, the French feared it was too weak to prevent future aggression, and the U.S. Senate rejected it, largely because it obliged the United States to join the League of Nations.

Question 30

irreconcilables

Answer 30

Led by Senators William Borah of Idaho and Hiram Johnson of California, this was a hard-core group of militant isolationists who opposed the Wilsonian dream of international cooperation in the League of Nations after World War I. Their efforts played an important part in preventing American participation in the international organization.

Question 31

Louis D. Brandeis

Answer 31

A progressive-minded confidant of Woodrow Wilson, Brandeis was the litigator behind Muller v. Oregon. In 1916, Wilson made him the first Jewish American to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Question 32

Francisco (“Pancho”) Villa

Answer 32

A combination of bandit and Robin Hood, Villa emerged as a chief rival to Mexican president Carranza and tried to provoke the United States into war by going on a killing spree north of the border in New Mexico. President Wilson dispatched General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing in an attempt to capture Villa, but the expedition ended in defeat for American forces.

Question 33

Arthur Zimmermann

Answer 33

German foreign secretary during World War I and author of the infamous “Zimmermann note,” which proposed a German-Mexican alliance against the United States

Question 34

George Creel

Answer 34

The young, outspoken, and tactless journalist who was tapped to head the Committee on Public Information, also known as the Creel Committee, during World War I.

Question 35

Eugene V. Debs

Answer 35

A tireless socialist leader who organized the American Railway Union in the Pullman Strike in 1894. Debs was later convicted under the World War I’s Espionage Act in 1918 and sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary. A frequent presidential candidate on the Socialist party ticket, in 1920 he won more than 900,000 votes campaigning for president from his prison cell.

Question 36

William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood

Answer 36

As a leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Western Federation of Miners, and the Socialist Party of America, Haywood was one of the most feared American labor radicals. During World War I, he became a special target of anti-leftist legislation.

Question 37

Herbert C. Hoover

Answer 37

A Quaker-humanitarian tapped to head the Food Administration during World War I. During the 1920s, he became the secretary of commerce, promoting economic modernization and responsible leadership by business to hold off further expansion of government power. Elected to the presidency in 1928 as a Republican, he soon faced the crisis of the Great Depression, which he tried to combat with the same voluntary efforts and restrained government action that had been his hallmark over the previous decade. He lost the election of 1932 to Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, who advocated a more activist role for the federal government.

Question 38

Alice Paul

Answer 38

A leading suffragist, feminist, and antiwar activist. The Quaker-raised Paul worked with the Women’s Social and Political Union in Great Britain and the National American Woman Suffrage Association in the United States before cofounding the National Woman’s party (NWP) in 1916. The NWP combined militant feminist protest action with controversial opposition to America’s involvement in World War I, and in 1923 it launched the movement for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

Question 39

Henry Cabot Lodge

Answer 39

A prominent Republican senator from Massachusetts, Lodge was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a persistent thorn in President Wilson’s internationalist side when he crusaded against the League of Nations.

Question 40

The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916

Answer 40

made credit available to farmers at low rates of interest—as long demanded by the Populists.

Question 41

The Warehouse Act of 1916

Answer 41

authorized loans on the security of staple crops—another Populist idea.

Question 42

the Arabic

Answer 42

British liner, was sunk in August 1915, with the loss of two American lives, Berlin reluctantly agreed not to sink unarmed and unresisting passenger ships without warning.