Category Archives: 1900-1916

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, formally known as FBI, is an agency of the United States Department of Justice and was formed in 1908. The FBI works as a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency. The main motto of FBI is “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.” The importance of FBI in American history or in American society is unimaginable.

In 1908 the Congress passed a law that forbade the use of Treasury employees by the Justice Department, so Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte made a new Bureau of Investigation (BOI or BI). In 1935 the Bureau of Investigation changed its name to Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI.

Until 1886, there was no organization that have the power to regulate interstate commerce. When the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 passed, the FBI’s jurisdiction derived from this Act. FBI’s first official job was to visit and make surveys of the houses of prostitution in preparation for enforcing the “White Slave Traffic Act,” or Mann Act, passed on June 25, 1910. Later on, the FBI performed a lot of remarkable federal investigation efficiently that it can be considered as “symbol of trust” in the Americans’ mind.

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16th Amendment

The 16th Amendment was passed by the 61st Congress on July 12, 1909, and ratified on February 3, 1913. This Amendment overruled Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. case in 1895 which limited the authorization of the Congress to collect an income tax. It states that

” The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

Before the ratification of this Amendment, the Congress could not collect a direct tax. The Congress was concerning about allowing wealthy people to have too much money because it could increase a gap between rich and poor. This Amendment became the base of income tax we pay today and created the distribution of the wealth.

Image from The National Archives: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=57

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Theodore Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address


Return to: AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History


Theodore Roosevelt

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1905


The energetic Republican President had taken his first oath of office upon the death of President McKinley, who died of an assassin’s gunshot wounds on September 14, 1901. Mr. Roosevelt had been President himself for three years at the election of 1904. The inaugural celebration was the largest and most diverse of any in memory–cowboys, Indians (including the Apache Chief Geronimo), coal miners, soldiers, and students were some of the groups represented. The oath of office was administered on the East Portico of the Capitol by Chief Justice Melville Fuller.

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My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness. To us as a people it has been granted to lay the foundations of our national life in a new continent. We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.

My short summary of the paragraph (Roosevelt’s inaugural contained appreciation to US’s achievement, and mentioned that the goodness that US should remained in strong and achieve the best under a democratic government. )

Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.

Short summary: (US are a great nation and US should maintain the greatness in front of other nations. US should respect all the nations by doing good actions toward them to recognize their rights. Also, US should secured other nations’ safety and refrain them from wrongdoing others. (He is pro imperialism)

Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee. Modern life is both complex and intense, and the tremendous changes wrought by the extraordinary industrial development of the last half century are felt in every fiber of our social and political being. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic. The conditions which have told for our marvelous material well- being, which have developed to a very high degree our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative, have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers. Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn. There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.

Short summary: (US should feel strong and steady in terms of facing problems. US have a strong responsibility to secure self-government countries. )

Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our fathers who founded and preserved this Republic, the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done, remains essentially unchanged. We know that self-government is difficult. We know that no people needs such high traits of character as that people which seeks to govern its affairs aright through the freely expressed will of the freemen who compose it. But we have faith that we shall not prove false to the memories of the men of the mighty past. They did their work, they left us the splendid heritage we now enjoy. We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged to our children and our children’s children. To do so we must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.

Return to: WWW-VL: United States History Index

http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/30roos1.htm

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Roosevelt Corollary

The Roosevelt Corollary was an additional policy to Monroe Doctrine by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. It showed that U.S. have the right to exercise “an international police power”in the Western Hemisphere against European intervention. The Roosevelt administration encouraged American banks to invest into Dominican Republic, Cuba and Costa Rica, and he believed economic control was the best way to spread American values. And this policy influenced economy and politics of these small countries a lot.

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Building Panama Canal in 1906

This image was captured in 1906. It shows the workers were building the Panama Canal which was launched by the United States in the second effort. It is an important picture because over 5000 deaths occurred in order to open the canal; and, the Panama Canal, which joins the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, became a main conduit for the international trade of the United States at that time period.

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Radio Broadcast in 1906

This imge is from http://www.radiocom.net/Fessenden/

   President George W. Bush celabrated 100years anniversary of the first radio station in Massachusetts.  Reginald Aubrey Fessenden got this honor due to his invention of the world’s first radio broad cast.  He worked for Thomas Edison in his New Jersey laboratory as a canadian engineer, and he tried to produce the “wireless telegraph” to carry human voice through the air.  The first extended broadcast of human voice was transmitted on December 24, 1906 in Brant Rock in Massachusetts. As President mentioned about how the radio station have done the important role in American society, Fessenden had opened the technological improvement as much as the development in people’s standard of living.

Posted in 1900-1916, Cultural History, Social History | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Wright Brothers Soar

Beyond what most minds could imagine, in 1903 the Wright Brothers did what was thought of in the past as impossible. Orville and Wilbur Wright launched the first successful flight via airplane in 1903. Although the planes at that time may not have the same power of those of today, the ideas and concepts used by the Wright Brothers allowed for progressive and innovative ideas on travel to this present day decreasing travel time that would usually take longer on feet.

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Child Labor in Fall River, Massachusetts.

This photo was found under a collection called National Child Labor Committee Collection.  The photo was taken by Louis Wickes Hine 1916 who published over 5,000 photos depicting child labor. This 16 year old child whose name was Louis Pelissier was mentally challenged and didn’t know where he was supposed to work so he made his way to a mill and they couldn’t help him. He was a sweeper but the work was too hard for him.

Posted in 1900-1916, June 28 assignment, Social History | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Child Labor

This is a picture taken by Lewis W. Hine in Tampa, Florida during the early nineteenth century. Hine, an investigator of National Child Labor Committee exposed pictures of many youngsters who were being exploited as a source of cheap labor. The picture reveals young workers who were all under the age of 14 at the cigar making company. These pictures left a great rermark for the Americans and revealed how rapid industrialization and a lack of regulation left these kids in such a state.

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The First Nobel Prizes Awarded – 1901

Alfred Nobel created dynamite. Since he didn’t want to be remebered as a creator of such a deadly device, Nobel created a will that left a bulk of his fortune to the establishment of five prizes; physics, chemistry, medicine or physiology, peace and literature. On December 10, 1901, five years after Alfred Nobel’s death, the first five Nobel Prizes were awarded. Since it’s only awarded to people who had done a great deed, we can easily see and recorgnize who has done what. Also awards usually boost people to achieve a better result.

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