AP U.S. History 7.1: Contextualizing Period 7

Across Period 7 the United States kept moving from a rural, farming economy to an urban, industrial one led by large companies. By the end of the 19th century, the National Archives notes, trusts had come to dominate a number of major industries, destroying competition. A trust placed the shares of several companies in the hands of one set of trustees, so the companies ran as one.

Congress answered with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which President Benjamin Harrison signed on July 2, 1890. Every contract or combination "in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal."

Growth expanded opportunity, but it came with instability and hard conditions. The 1900 census found about 2 million children working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores and city streets. In the Progressive Era of the early 20th century, reformers answered problems like these, and political corruption, by calling for greater government action. The Keating-Owen Act, approved September 1, 1916 and signed by President Woodrow Wilson, kept out of interstate trade the goods of any factory where "children under the age of fourteen years have been employed or permitted to work." The Supreme Court struck it down in 1918, and federal protection for children waited until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

Sources: Sherman Anti-Trust Act (National Archives); Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (National Archives).

In the 1930s the Great Depression brought mass unemployment and social upheaval. Before the 1930s, the National Archives notes, support for the elderly was a matter of local, state and family concern, not a federal one, except for veterans' pensions. The widespread suffering of the Depression built support in Congress for a national old-age insurance system.

The Social Security Act of 1935 was "An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits," with more besides. It set up old-age benefits for workers, unemployment insurance, and aid for dependent mothers and children and for people who are blind or have disabilities.

Historians call the result a limited welfare state. The federal government took lasting responsibility for the economic security of some of its people, through named programs for named groups. Unlike many European nations, the United States paid for its old-age insurance with taxes on workers' wages and employers' payrolls rather than directly from government funds. Opponents still called it governmental overreach into the private sphere.

The New Deal's view, that government should act to protect people from economic insecurity, redefined modern American liberalism.

Source: Social Security Act (National Archives).

New technology in communications changed everyday life. Radio and cinema spread a national culture and also made Americans more aware of regional cultures. Mass culture, the same songs, programs and films reaching millions of people at once, grew in influence. It drew argument too. In the 1920s Americans debated gender roles, modernism, science, religion, race and immigration, and many asked what popular culture was doing to public values, morals and the national identity.

Migration rose and fell sharply with the economy, with wars and with new laws. Immigration from Europe reached its peak in the years before World War I. During and after that war, nativist campaigns against some ethnic groups brought quotas that restricted immigration, especially from southern and eastern Europe, and raised new barriers to Asian immigration.

Inside the country, the demand for war production drew people to cities in both world wars. In the Great Migration during and after World War I, African Americans escaping segregation, racial violence and limited opportunity in the South moved to the North and West, where they found new opportunities and still met discrimination. Migration from Mexico and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere grew as well.

This chunk follows the AP U.S. History course framework's own summary of Period 7.

Abroad, the United States grew into a world power through a series of conflicts, and each renewed the argument at home over its proper role in the world.

In 1897 President McKinley had said, "We want no wars of conquest; we must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression." A year later came war with Spain. In the treaty of December 10, 1898, Spain ceded Puerto Rico (printed as "the island of Porto Rico"), Guam and the Philippines to the United States, and a public debate followed over whether to hold overseas possessions at all.

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for war on Germany: "The world must be made safe for democracy." Afterward the Senate never adopted the peace treaty, and the United States never joined the League of Nations that Wilson had fought for.

Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Congress declared war the next day. The war transformed American society. Women were called to take men's places on the production line, and millions of new defense jobs drew large numbers of African Americans to cities in the North and West, where they often met violence and discrimination. Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the victory of the United States and its allies left the country in a position of global political and military leadership.

Sources: Treaty with Spain (Avalon Project); Wilson's war message; 14 Points; Women in the work force; Executive Order 8802 (National Archives).