Question

What are 7 different roles of the Federal Government in the Economy and Society between 1877-1929?

Answer 1

What are 7 different roles of the Federal Government in the Economy and Society between 1877-1929?

Answer-

1. The first major event of the federal government was the ratification of the Constitution in 1789. Before that, the United States was governed under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution is frequently praised as a document that protects the rights of individuals and limits the powers of government. But a comparison of the Constitution with the Articles reveals that just the opposite is true. Under the Constitution the federal government gained more power, was less accountable, and had greater latitude to determine its own scope of action. That is what the Constitution was intended to accomplish.
2. The Constitution established the Electoral College for the selection of presidents, but specified no method for choosing electors. Several methods were used, but in most states the legislatures picked them. The framers expected that in most elections no candidate would get a majority of electoral votes. That would permit the House of Representatives to name the president from the five top electoral vote getters. That system never worked as envisioned, and by 1828, with the election of Andrew Jackson, the current system of popular voting for electors had become firmly entrenched, and along with it the party system.From then on, successful candidates owed their success to the support of their parties, and in return used the political system to reward those who helped them get elected.
3. Undoubtedly the biggest event in the growth was the Civil War, which established Federal Government’s supremacy over the states. The Civil War brought much new power to the federal government, and laid the groundwork for the growth of interest groups.
4. The first interest group to systematically raid the Treasury for its own benefit was the war veterans. Originally, Union veterans were entitled to pensions only if they had been injured in battle; they had up to five years to claim them. In 1870 veterans pensions totaled $286 million and should have then declined. Instead they rose to $1,548 million by 1890, because the Republicans, who dominated the White House and looked to veterans for political support, increasingly liberalized the pension laws until every Union veteran of the Civil War qualified.
5. While veterans were a model for future interest groups, the Treasury at that time had decidedly limited means. At any rate, other groups were more interested in regulatory benefits. The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887, and the Sherman Antitrust Act passed in 1890.
6. The transformation of the U.S. government continued as the turn of the century ushered in the Progressive Era. The Food and Drug Administration was created in 1906, the Federal Reserve in 1913, and the Federal Trade Commission in 1914. A government initially committed to protecting the liberty of its citizens now seemed to be just as firmly committed to looking out for their economic welfare. The Progressive Era was interrupted by World War I, during which federal power advanced in unprecedented ways. The railroads were nationalized, waterborne shipping was regulated, and the United States Food Administration, created in 1917, controlled all aspects of the food industry, from agriculture to distribution to sales. Similar regulation was applied to fuels, and eventually to the whole economy.
7. When the federal income tax was introduced in 1913, the highest tax bracket was 7 percent for all income above $20,000. Because of the demand for war-related spending, by 1918 the highest rate rose to 77 percent beginning at $4,000. This was the context in which Warren G. Harding was elected to the presidency in 1920 with the theme, a “return to normalcy.” If one looks only at total federal spending, it appears that the Republican administrations of Harding and Coolidge are a period of retrenchment sandwiched between the big-spending Democratic administrations of Woodrow Wilson and FDR. The Hoover administration does not fit this view even when examined superficially, because the percentage increase in spending during those four years exceeded the growth in the first seven years of FDR’s New Deal, before World War II caused spending to skyrocket. Despite the conventional wisdom that big government began with FDR, a closer examination reveals that even the Harding and Coolidge administrations were periods of substantial government growth. It was masked, though, by the reduction in war-related spending following World War I.