Women Rights

1. Many groups (e.g. industrial workers, farmers, women, good government advocates, journalists, immigrants, socialists) reacted against the concentration of economic and political power in fewer and fewer hands between 1865 and 1990. What did each of these groups want (i.e. agenda)? Looking at the records of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as prior presidents, assess how each of these groups succeeded in achieving these aims from 1880 to 1920.

Women of the nineteenth century were mostly housewives who like any other family are mostly housewives and nothing more. But some women wanted the liberation of being free and so some stay single and fight for women rights both at home and society itself. During the 1890s, an association called "National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) which is the largest women suffrage around that time. Their leaders were Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony who at the time were at their seventies; leadership was passed down to younger moderate women. There were several issues the NAWSA wanted to address to the nation which includes voting rights, women in labor force, divorce laws, birth control and promoted women's union.

National organizations of U.S. farmers, established to advance their social, educational, financial, and political interests. The alliances reflected frustration at the decline in the standard of farm living, a result of steadily lower prices of farm products. Their protest targets included banks, for refusal to reduce interest rates (a great financial burden to farmers, who often met expenses by borrowing against future crop income); railroads, for discriminatory freight rates; and in some areas, local law officials, for laxity in prosecuting cattle thieves. Farmer's reacted with anger when prices of their crops decline after civil war. Many farmers argued that the waning prices is not attribute to fluctuations of supply and stipulate but rather monopolistic practices of grain and cotton buyer. Many farmers both black and white realize that only through gathering that their action could they improve rural life. For example, the Interstate Act of 1887, requiring that railroad rate is sensible and just, that rate schedules be made public and that rebates and similar practices be discontinue. The act also created the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, empowers to investigate and take legal action criminal. The Homestead Act of 1862 has been called one the most important pieces of Legislation in the history of the United States. Signed into law in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln after the secession of southern states, this Act turned over vast amounts of the public domain to private citizens. Millions acres or 10% of the area of the United States was claimed and settled under this act.

By the middle of the 19th century the major source of immigration no longer came from western Europe, and had shifted to southern and eastern Europe, although Germany continued to be a major source of emigration. The search for work and the need for workers coincided. American employers eager for cheap labor gladly supported the search for the new immigrant. In 1882 Congress passed the first immigration statute, barring Chinese immigrants. Prejudice, formerly just vocally expressed, now became part of American law as it applied to immigration. Most of these immigrations came to United States to have freedom that they don't have on their old country. Almost everyday, immigrant comes flooding and it is increasing. To stop the flooding government implements