6 America Comes of Age Roosevelt and Taft however soon began to quarrel Roosevelt believed that Taft was too conservative and betrayed the policies for which Roosevelt had fought so hard Their fight divided the Republican Party In 1912 Taft received a renomination for a second term and Roosevelt decided to run for president on a third-party ticket When Roosevelt said that he felt as vigorous as a bull moose his party received the title of the Bull Moose Party Woodrow Wilson Words to Know Bull Moose Party BUL MOOSS PAR-tee A third party officially called the Progressive Party founded in 1912 by former president Theodore Roosevelt and other Insurgent Republicans Peace and War Because the Republican vote split between Roosevelt and Taft the Democrats won the 1912 presidential election In March 1913 Woodrow Wilson a former college professor became president of the United States His eight years in office proved to be one of the most significant periods of change in U S history President Wilson enacted many of the reforms that Roosevelt had supported He established the Federal Reserve which was a national banking system He also passed other measures to break up monopolies in order to guarantee the right of competition in American business However Wilson became increasingly preoccupied with America’s role in foreign affairs In 1914 Europe was plunged into a great war World War I The people of the United States wanted to stay out of the war and Wilson did attempt to keep the nation from being involved But German submarines were attacking American ships which were bringing goods and weapons to Great Britain The German attacks angered the nation and by 1917 President Wilson felt that he had no other choice but to go to war In April of that year the U S Congress at the request of the president declared war against Germany
World War I World War I brought about major changes in American life The draft raised an army of 4 million men More than 2 million of them received orders to go to France to fight with the other allied powers Great Britain the Soviet Union and France against Germany America Comes of Age 7 At home women worked in factories and volunteered as nurses to help in the war effort Another great change was the movement of African Americans from the South to the cities of the North in search of work and a better life People across the land lived on rations for the duration of the war A soldier holds up a U S flag during World War I
8 America Comes of Age Women and Voting One movement that would have a major impact on life and politics in the 1900s was the women’s suffrage or the movement to obtain the right to vote for women Groups pushing for the right of all women in the United States to vote formed in the previous century Until the 1890s prominent women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton led them She believed that educated women would best promote women’s influence in public life Other women however believed that women’s rights were much broader than simply the right to vote One of these was Harriet Stanton Blatch Cady Stanton’s own daughter Blatch wanted the fight for women’s rights to touch on economic issues as well She believed that women should receive equal pay to men for their work and that suffrage would be valuable because it would give all women influence in society There was always a division in the suffrage movement between middle and upper-class women on the one hand and poor working women on the other By 1912 nine states in the West had granted women the right to vote These modest successes pushed women to press for a constitutional amendment granting all women the right to vote In the years after 1912 women picketed and protested and advertised their cause in newspapers and magazines The final victory the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 came about largely because of the heroic work of American women from 1917 to 1918 during World War I Legislators realized that they could no longer deny women their basic right to vote after having served as nurses medical volunteers and factory workers during the conflict The first group of suffrage supporters take part in a political campaign in 1914
In addition certain civil liberties were restricted during the conflict For example an arrest for treason was liable for anyone attacking such institutions as the draft This was a clear violation of the right of free speech The Roaring Twenties When the war ended in 1918 the American people wanted nothing more than to return to their prewar happiness During the election year of 1920 the Republican presidential candidate Warren Harding called for a return to normalcy meaning the way things had been But the 1920s would not be a return to the good old days they would be a period of dramatic social change American families acquired radios and automobiles on a wide scale Women’s skirts became shorter a dramatic change from the floor length dresses common throughout all of American history A period known as Prohibition made the sale of alcohol illegal throughout the nation during the 1920s Liquor was available in underground saloons called speakeasies They received this name because a secret code word was required to gain admittance Very few people paid any attention to the law While these and other striking changes were occurring in society during the 1920s a series of bland and relatively weak presidents sat in the White House America Comes of Age 9 Warren Harding died in office in 1923 and Calvin Coolidge became his successor He was a man who said and did little The action seemed to be not in the White House but in the private sectors of business and entertainment The presidency for the time being would play a smaller role in American life World War 1 brought great changes to the lives of women many worked outside the home for the first time Words to Know normalcy NOR-muhl-see A term coined by Warren Harding in 1920 and meaning the state of being normal Although grammatically incorrect at the time it has since become a recognized word in the English language
