“The year of the massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890, it was officially declared by the Bureau of the Census that the internal frontier was closed. The profit system, with its natural tendency for expansion, had already begun to look overseas. The severe depression that began in 1893 strengthened an idea developing with the political and financial elite of the country: that overseas markets for American goods might relieve the problem of under consumption at home and prevent the economic crises that in the 1890s brought class war.”

Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States, 1492–Present,” 1995
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 290.

“Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of international police power….

“we would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or has invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations.”

Theodore Roosevelt, Speech to Congress, Dec 6,1904

“Worst of any, however, were the fertilizer men, and those who served in the cooking rooms.  These people could not be shown to the visitor - for the odor of a fertilizer man would scare any ordinary visitor at a hundred yards, and as for the other men, who worked in the tank rooms full of steam, their particular trouble was that they fell in the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them worth exhibiting - sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them has gone out to the world as Durham’s Pure Leaf Lard!”

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906

“As the early years at Hull House show, female participation in that area of reform grew out of a set of needs and values peculiar to middle-class women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Settlement workers did not set out to become reformers. They were rather women trying to fulfill existing social expectations for self-sacrificing female service while at the same time satisfying their need for public recognition, authority, and independence. In the process of attempting to weave together a life of service and professional accomplishment, they became reformers as the wider world defined them.”

— Robyn Muncy, historian, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935, published in 1991

Whoever, when the United States, is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies…and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States…and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States…shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both...

Source: Espionage Act, 1918

“It is not alone members of Congress that the war party in this country has sought to intimidate.  The mandate seems to have gone forth to the sovereign people of this country that they must be silent while those things are being done by their government which most vitally concern their well-being… It appears to be the purpose of those conducting this campaign to throw the country into a state of terror, to coerce public opinion, to stifle criticism, and suppress discussion of the great issues involved in this war.  I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace.  But…more than all, the citizen and his representative in Congress in time of war must maintain his right of free speech…to discuss in an orderly way frankly and publicly and without fear…every important phase of this war; its causes, the manner in which it should be conducted, and the terms upon which peace should be made.”

Senator Robert M. LaFollette, speech before the Senate, “Free Speech in Wartime”, October 6, 1917

“As a group, workers faced severe limitations on their political influence.  The conservative nature of the major parties, institutional discrimination against third parties, and ethnic divisions that made some workingmen Democrats and others Republicans all placed obstacles in front of even those most empowered workers, the white men possessing citizenship.  Far more striking was the way America’s political system victimized female…and African-American workers through disenfranchisement… These barriers extinguished any possibility that American workers could become a united political force during the Gilded Age.”

Julie Green, Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism,  1881–1917, 1998

 “The United States will, indeed, undertake under Article X to ‘respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League [of Nations]’ and that engagement constitutes a very grave and solemn moral obligation.  But it is a moral, not a legal, obligation, and leaves our Congress absolutely free to put its own interpretation upon it in all cases that call for action.”

Woodrow Wilson, Testimony before the Senate over Article X of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919