Period 7: Progressivism, World Wars, and Depression, 1890–1945
Progressivism and war
Progressives sought to tame industrial capitalism through regulation and expertise. Muckrakers exposed corruption; municipalities adopted initiative, referendum, and recall; the Sixteenth Amendment authorized the income tax, the Seventeenth provided direct Senate election, the Eighteenth imposed Prohibition, and the Nineteenth granted women suffrage. Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal, Taft's trust-busting, and Wilson's New Freedom expanded federal power. World War I began with neutrality, but unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram brought intervention. The Committee on Public Information sold the war; the Espionage and Sedition Acts suppressed dissent, upheld in Schenck v. United States ('clear and present danger'). The Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty and League of Nations.
Twenties to forties
The 1920s mixed prosperity, consumer credit, and cultural conflict: Harlem Renaissance, Scopes trial, nativist quotas, and the second Klan. The Great Depression began in 1929; the New Deal created Social Security, the Wagner Act, and the TVA, though it did not end the Depression. World War II mobilized the economy, interned Japanese Americans (Korematsu), and ended with the atomic bomb.
Traps: do not confuse the Progressive amendments' numbers. The New Deal did not produce full recovery-war spending did. Schenck upheld conviction; the 'clear and present danger' test was not a free-speech victory.
Worked example: if asked what most expanded federal power from 1933 to 1945, cite the New Deal's regulatory agencies plus wartime economic mobilization.
Rule of thumb: crisis expands the state-progressives, the Depression, and war each enlarged federal authority.