Teacher Key - Fasttrack to America's Past

Fasttrack to America's Past
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Background for the discussion questions

1. What were the goals of the...

   The goals of the Progressive movement included a wide range of reforms intended to help improve American life, especially for the working classes. They rejected the "every man for himself" attitude common in business and American society at the time. Instead, they argued that society has an obligation to help create a decent life for all citizens.
   Progressives wanted government at all levels to take a more active role, for example, in restricting child labor. They sought laws to force employers to pay compensation to workers who were injured on the job, and they wanted something done about excessively long work hours.
   Most progressives also sought to strengthen labor unions so that workers would have a bigger voice in negotiations with factory owners. They favored laws to restrict or break up the big industrial monopolies and trusts.
   At the level of local government, people in the movement also sought such basics as better public schools, health regulations for food products, and more park space for the poorer areas of cities.
   Another common goal of Progressives included winning women's right to vote.
   As is often true of reform movements in America, the Progressive movement had strong roots in the Judeo-Christian religious traditions. A number of religious leaders were prominent in the movement.
The Progressive movement did not achieve all its goals quickly, but it did win important victories and laid a foundation for later reforms of the New Deal era.

2. What were the main reasons...

   World War One was caused by a number of factors, but chief among them was the fact that the nations of Europe had entered into networks of competing alliances, some of them secret. In addition, leaders in a number of countries, especially Germany, were eager for a fight that might allow them to expand their territory. The result was that when the heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated in 1914 by a Serbian, one nation after another began marching to war.
   The war was especially deadly because the European nations had built up their armies in the preceding years to frightful proportions. New weapons like the machine gun, the submarine, and poison gas caused horrific casualties. Trench warfare tended to result in deadly stalemates on the battlefield, in which neither side could decisively defeat the other.
   As the war began, a spirit of isolationism was widespread in America. But as the war continued, Germany's actions, including submarine attacks on ships, tilted public opinion toward the Allies. In 1917, America entered the war. A strong anti-German feeling swept the nation, and opposition to American involvement suddenly was considered almost treason.
   With victory, President Wilson hoped his Fourteen Points plan would eliminate some of the causes of war, such as secret treaties. Part of the plan also called for creation of a League of Nations that he hoped would provide a place for leaders to talk out their conflicts, rather than going war.

3. What were the main reasons...

   The stock market grew rapidly in the late 1920s in part because businesses were growing, but also because investors bid prices higher and higher in a frenzy often called a "bubble."
   America had emerged from World War One as an industrial and agricultural giant. There were some problems, such as the sudden excess supply of grain and other products that resulted from the end of the war. But business was generally good in the 1920s as new products were developed and sold to consumers. Cars and electric appliances for homes all became common in this period, for example.
   Stock market prices rose steadily through most of the decade. But in the last year or two of the 1920s, investors excited by climbing stock values kept bidding prices higher and higher. They hoped and expected the trend to continue at least long enough to sell at even higher prices.
   As always happens in investment bubbles like this, the crash came suddenly and without warning.   Once the balance of buyers and sellers tipped just slightly toward sellers, prices began falling. Once prices started falling, more stock holders rushed to sell. That caused prices to drop even faster, resulting in the Crash of 1929.

4. Explain the main steps...

   Franklin Roosevelt promised a "New Deal" to Americans to end the Great Depression, and this term came to stand for a wide range of actions he initiated as president to solve the economic crisis. These included programs aimed at three main goals: relief, recovery, and reform.
   Relief meant direct payments to the most desperately needy families, and also direct hiring of the unemployed on public works projects. The Civilian Conservation Corps is a good example.
   Recovery measures included new laws and programs to help industry and farms deal with over-production and falling prices. For example, the AAA program paid farmers to leave some of their land unplanted.
   Reform measures were designed to make the nation's business and investment system more open and honest. The SEC, for example, provided new regulations for the stock market and investors.
   Roosevelt's programs were successful in some ways, but did not quickly end the Great Depression. Certainly many families were saved by the relief programs that FDR began. Economists still debate whether FDR's programs were, on the whole, beneficial or not. But there is no doubt that as president, he inspired hope at a time when hope was desperately needed.
   There is also no question that Roosevelt's New Deal programs changed forever the role of the federal government in the lives of ordinary Americans. New federal agencies were created with wide powers to plan and regulate many aspects of the nation's farms and businesses. Social Security became accepted as a vast federal program designed to improve life for working people.
   FDR moved America toward what is usually now called a welfare state, that is, a nation whose government is actively involved in planing and improving the welfare of its citizens.

5. An American leader during...

   The Axis nations represented a threat not just of land conquest, but a threat to ideas and ideals that had developed in the Western world over a period stretching back to the ancient Greeks and Hebrews.
   Franklin Roosevelt and other leaders in America recognized this fact and spoke specifically about it. In his speech before Congress in January, 1942, FDR warned that the fascist dictators intended to overturn the most basic moral teachings about the nature and rights of man. "Those on the other side," Roosevelt said, "are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image, a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom."
   In the same speech, Roosevelt made clear what the Allies were fighting for. These became known as The Four Freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.
   The development of those freedoms is, to a great extent, the history of the most important ideals of Western Civilization. The fascist dictators showed in countless ways that such ideals would have no place in the world if they won the war.

6. How did America respond...

   The years just after World War Two saw a new threat emerge on the world stage, this time, from the communist Soviet Union. The conflict that resulted is called the Cold War, and lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union around 1990.
   One early warning about the threat of the Soviet Union came from the British leader Winston Churchill. In a famous speech he made in the United States in 1946, he warned of an "iron curtain" that had descended across Central Europe. Behind that line, he said, communist parties were taking control of governments. The new governments took their orders from the Soviet Union, not from the wished of their own citizens.
   Further, Churchill warned, communists were determined to spread their power and doctrines throughout the world.
   The United States responded with the "Truman Doctrine," the Marshall Plan, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO.)
   Truman spelled out, in 1947, his belief that the U.S. should give support to any nation seeking to resist communist take-over. He also pointed out that communism rarely gains a foothold in areas where people are prosperous and hopeful about the future.
   The Marshall Plan built upon that observation. The U.S. poured millions of dollars into helping the nations of Europe rebuild and recover from World War Two. As a result, communist parties had little success in the nations of Western Europe.
   NATO was a military alliance intended to protect Western European nations from any possible attack by the Soviet Union. Under the treaty, NATO members pledged that any attack by the Soviet Union on one country would be considered an attack on all.

Copyright 2018 by David Burns. All rights reserved. Illustrations and reading selections appearing in this work are taken from sources in the public domain and from private collections used by permission. Sources include: the Dover Pictorial Archive, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, The Hart Publishing Co., Corel Corporation and its licensors, Nova Development Corporation and its licensors, and others. Maps were created or adapted by the author using reference maps from the United States Geological Survey and Cartesia Software. Please see the home page for this title for more information.