TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (Before TIME) Before TIME Editor's Note </title> <history>TIME Almanac-1900s Highlights</history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Before TIME Editor's Note </hdr> <body> "Progress" was the watchword of the first two decades of the 20th Century. World-wide attempts to deal with rapid industrial growth brought changes in technology, ideas, and political and social institutions that were to shape the century. In the years that followed the first issue of TIME (March 3, 1923), the magazine looked back on many events of the first two decades of the century. These retrospective articles are included in this section: Before TIME. Advances in communication; the telegraph, radio, motion pictures; sped knowledge of events throughout cities and rural areas. Airplanes and automobiles widened the geographic boundaries of people's lives. In December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright successfully flew the first powered heavier-than-air vehicle. In 1908 Henry Ford introduced his Model-T, a mass-produced automobile available at the affordable price of $850. In 1920, KDKA broadcast the first radio reporting of presidential election results. The Progressives who held political control in the US throughout the period worked to increase democratic participation in the government and other institutions. Through their social reform movements, they attempted to improve people's lives by advocating prohibition of alcoholic beverages, the regulation of working conditions. and the improvement of living conditions. The booming cities were populated by immigrants who saw America as the land of opportunity. Immigration to the US reached its peak in 1907 with 12,000 arrivals a day, but would continue to be an issue for Americans until the end of the century. Prohibition, legalized by the 18th Amendment in 1919, would challenge law enforcement officials into 1930s. Both Republican and Democratic parties pursued a Progressive agenda from 1900 through 1920. Republicans Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft pressed for democratic reforms in local, state and national government,restrictions on business monopolies, and advocated social and economic benefits for American citizens. Democrat Woodrow Wilson advocated reforms in banking, tariffs, trusts and labor and sought the development of democracy internationally. Government and business became more democratic. Big business was a negative and positive force for change; industry's treatment of workers created the pressure for labor reform; municipal governments modeled their management structures on business organizations. President Theodore Roosevelt led a campaign to "bust the trusts." On May 15, 1911, the Supreme Court dissolved the monopoly of the Standard Oil Company. The people became more directly involved with government. The passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 provided for the popular election of Senators. Women lobbied for and won a voice in government with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution on August 8, 1920. The US became more involved with Latin America and East Asia; signing a treaty to build and operate the Panama Canal in 1903, mediating peace between Russia and Japan following the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, sending marines to Nicaragua in 1912, Haiti in 1915, and the Dominican Republic in 1916. If TIME had been published during these two decades, the WORLD section would have chronicled the nationalist-ethnic consciousness in Europe and the scramble for colonies. National rivalries ignited into war in 1914. The world's attention focused on Sarajevo on June 28 when the Austria-Hungarian Crown Prince Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian national. Mainly a European fight in the beginning, in 1917 the US sent troops. It was the war to "make the world safe for democracy." The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 ended the war and redrew the map of Europe; countries like Bosnia-Herzogovina disappeared from the map; Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia appeared as separate national entities. The conditions of German surrender and reparations were severe. Woodrow Wilson proposed a League of Nations to insure that a world war would never again happen, but his own nation refused to join. Attempting to return to "Normalcy" after the war, the American people elected Warren G. Harding as President in 1920. Various groups, public and private, demonstrated a growing intolerance through Ku Klux Klan activities and the Red Scare, a government action that prompted the arrest of 2,700 suspected Communists and other radicals in 1920. Congress passed an Emergency Quota Act to stem the tide of immigration in 1921. On the international front, the post-war years witnessed Ghandi's leadership of the National Congress in India in 1920, Ireland's independence in 1921, the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, and Mussolini's rise to power in Italy in 1922. The first issue of TIME, the Weekly Newsmagazine, published on March 3, 1923 reported on the continuing efforts to deal with the aftermath of the world war, the activities of women in American government, the efforts of the labor movement, the technological and scientific wonders of the day, and the people in the news. </body> </article> </text>