Today was dedicated to the finishing up for chapter nine, talking a little bit about some related subjects, and getting into chapter 10, finally. We started off by talking about president Woodrow Wilson. Here are some of Woodrow's accomplishments while he was serving in office.Woodrow Wilson is directly responsible for the Sherman Anti-Trust Act made in 1914. This act made it possible for the government to break up monopolies in the country. He made it legal for Labor Unions to exist and to have power. Strikes and boycotts were made legal under his authority. This gave a lot more power to the common people who wanted to have more of a voice in the workplace. They were tired of being trampled on by their employers and big companies. The Federal Trade Commissions was established to investigate large companies to look for any signs of monopolistic business. If the FTC found any evidence of a monopoly, they would break the monopoly up, effective immediately.The Underwood Tariff cut the the tariff rates in the country for the first time since the Civil War. The Sixteenth Amendment was ratified in 1913. The Sixteenth Amendment allowed the government to collect a graduated income tax from the common people. This tax took a percentage of people's income and it was put into government funding. The Federal Reserve System was set up during Woodrow's term as well.The Federal Reserve System strengthened banks. The Federal Reserve System made it much easier to control the amount of money in circulation. The Federal Reserve System broke the country into 12 districts. Each district (group of states) had a Federal Reserve bank. The banks in each district would basically do their banking in the Federal Reserve System. If a district would begin to run low on money, it could borrow money from the Federal Reserve System until it got back on it's feet.The 17th, 18th, and 19th Amendments were all passed during Woodrow's term. He led the country into World War Two. About the only thing that could be put against Woodrow's great presidential term was that he did basically nothing good for African Americans, and he reinstated segregation in Washington D.C.Now Mr. Bruns is talking about Chapter 10. He wanted to lead us into the chapter with some information that would prep us for what we need to learn. The title of chapter 10 is "America Claims and Empire". Imperialsim is the act of a country building an empire. One powerful country goes out and tries to conquer another country, or take another country over, and conform the land and people the the ways of the large country.The U.S, along with many European countries, Including Russia and Japan. Japan actually beat Russia in a war which shocked the world. People couldnot understand how a dark-skinned, small country could defeat a large, white-supremecist, world superpower country like Russia. Reasons that a country would want to expand like this would be for land, money, oil, resources, establish naval bases, power and respect, open and widespread markets around the world, refueling stations, and strategic position in foreign lands.I am going to leave today's blog as it is because we are running out of time. I learned quite a bit about Woodrow Wilson. He did many things during his presidency. He was around for the ratification of almost four United States Amendments. He seemed to be pretty cool except for the part about reinstating segregation in WAshington D.C.
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