Category:Politics and Law

Politics and Law

Politics and Law in the 1910s were influential in the modern framework of the country. Beginning with the Progressive Era and ending in World War I, politics established many laws defining what it means to be a American citizen.

1910 

1911
 * The Mann Act  prohibited interstate transport of women for immoral purposes. This was a victory for women's sufferage as exploitation of prostitutes was a wide spread business.
 * The law was alternately used to subdue Jack Johnson, the world's first black boxing champion. Jack Johnson challenged the role of what was socially acceptable for a black man in America, publicly indulging in alcohol and white women.(AHAB)

1912
 * In  Bailey vs. Alabama, the Supreme Court overturned southern "peonage" laws that made it a crime for sharecroppers to break their labor contracts. This was one of the the few landmark victories of the Progressive Era for racial justice.(797 GML)


 * The Election of 1912 ended with a victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson over Theodore Roosevelt, who represented different spectrums of Progressivism. The main topic of the election was the problem of corporate corruption of the government.

1913  1914 1916 1917
 * Wilson feared big government as much as he feared the power of corporations, calling his platform The New Freedom. A series of worker's rights acts were passed after his election.
 * Roosevelt countered that the nation must accept the the benefits of big government and corporations, but more government intervention to counteract abuses of power.(760-61 GML)
 * The 16th Amendment was ratified giving congress the power to levy a federal income tax without apportioning it among states.
 * The 17th Amendment was ratified establishing direct election of United States Sentors by popular vote. (AHAB)722 gml
 * The Clayton Act enumerated workers rights, by exepting labor unions from antitrust laws and barring courts from issuing injunctions discouraging the right to strike.(761,765 GML)
 * The  Keating-Owen Act , a federal law passed outlawing child labor in manufacture of goods sold in interstate commerce.(761,765 GML)
 * The  Adamson Act  established a eight-hour work day for railroad workers.(761-2,765GML)
 * The Election of 1916 After making advances in citizen's rights, Wilson was re-elected president.

The United States entering WWI ends the Progressive Era and begins an era of conservative war-time legistlation that compomised the meaning of "freedom". The War seemed to bring an end to Wilson's fear of a "big government". Many citizens were imprisioned for their anti-war centiments under new legistlation. 1918 1919
 * The Selective Service Act  required 24 million men to register for the draft, and the army ranks soon rose from 120,000 to 5 million men.(780 GML)
 * The  Espoinage Act restricted freedom of speech. It prohibited spying and interfering with the draft, but also prohibited "false statements" that might impede military sucess. The postmaster general barred from the mails several newspapers and magazines critical of the administration.(786 GML)
 * The Sedition Act further impeded freedom of speech by making it a crime to make spoken or printed statements that display "contempt, scorn or disrepute" on the "form of government", or that rallied for interference of the war effort.(786 GML)
 * Wilson annouces his war aims in the Fourteen Points, and US forces arrive in Europe in large numbers.(778 GML)
 * The 18th Amendment was ratified prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor.
 * During the Red Scare and Palmer raids, over 5,000 people were arrested in America without warrants and held without charge, while hundreds of others were deported under the idea that many people were involved in a world wide communist conspiracy.
 * IWW and many moderate unions were destroyed, and the government collected files on suspected radicals.(802-803)