Chapter 29 Flashcards
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.
Underwood Tariff
An act establishing twelve regional Banks and a 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.
Federal Reserve Act
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.
Federal Trade Commission Act
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.
Clayton Anti-Trust Act
Companies that own part or all of other companies’ stock in order to extend monopoly control. Often, it 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.
holding companies
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.
Workingmen’s Compensation Act
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).
Adamson Act
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.
Jones Act
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.
Tampico Incident
Germany and Austria-Hungary, later joined by Turkey and Bulgaria, made up this alliance against the Allies in World War I.
Central Powers
Great Britain, Russia, and France, later joined by Italy, Japan, and the United States, formed this against the Central Powers in World War I.
Allies
German submarines, named for the German Unterseeboot, or “undersea boat,” proved deadly for Allied ships in the war zone. These attacked playing an important role in drawing the United States into the First World War.
U-boats
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.
Lusitania
German foreign secretary 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.
Zimmermann note
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.
Fourteen Points
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.”
Committee on Public Information
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.
Espionage Act
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.
Schenck v. United States
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 industrial production in the United States increased 20 percent during the war.
War Industries Board
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. They particularly appealed to migratory workers in agriculture and lumbering and to miners, all of whom suffered from horrific working conditions.
Industrial Workers of the World
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.
general strike
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.
Great Migration
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.
19th Amendment
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.
Sheppard-Towner Maternity Act
