American Government Election Update Edition

It was early in a new century and a new millennium. I was working on the revisions of the tenth edition of this textbook on American government. My thoughts turned to the political system of the United States one hundred years ago. How did it compare with the system that operated at the start of the twenty-first century? Had we improved American democracy in the past hundred years? A detailed examination of these questions would require the production of a book-length manuscript and I was faced with publishing deadlines for this volume. But I have put together a few thoughts on the state of American democracy then and now. My overall conclusion is that despite some weaknesses in our present system, our political system is markedly improved and far more democratic today than it was a hundred years ago. Consider the following facts. In 1900, African Americans in the South lived in a segregated society. Separation of the races existed in both the private and public spheres. Private companies and individuals were free to discriminate and government laws required racial segregation in all public facilities from schools and parks to bathrooms and drinking fountains. The entire system of segregation was given legal sanction by the 1896 decision of the United States Supreme Court inPlessy v. Ferguson.This case held that government could require the separation of the races so long as the facilities provided to each group were equal. In reality," separate but equal" meant separation but not equality for black Americans. It was only with the 1954 Supreme Court case ofBrown v. Board of Educationand the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that racial segregation was gradually brought to an end in this country. Voting rights in the United States were also restricted in 1900. Despite the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that protected African Americans from being denied the right to vote because of their race, very few voted in the American South. Devious legal schemes, intimidation, and violence kept most African Americans from voting in this region of the nation. It was not until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that blacks were freely able to vote in the South. Similarly, few women voted in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although women had been granted the right to vote in a number of states, no constitutional provision existed to bar the states from denying them the right to vote. That changed in 1920 with the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. In the decades since this change occurred, more and more women have participated in American politics. Indeed, in recent presidential elections, more women have voted than men. In 1900, United States senators were chosen by the state legislatures. Most often this meant that a few influential state political leaders made these important decisions. In 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, making United States senators popularly elected by the voters in each state. Finally, in 1900, there was little in the way of social legislation to protect Americans when they became unemployed, disabled, ill, or when they retired. They were forced to depend on relatives or on charity provided by churches and other private organizations. The country did not even have child labor laws to protect children from working long hours in factories and mines. Although some European countries had established social security systems by 1900--Germany, for example--it was not until 1935 that the United States adopted legislation that established the Social Security retirement system. Later in the same decade, Congress also enacted laws that established the maximum number of hours a person could work each week, created a minimum wage, outlawed child labor, and formulated a program of unemployment insurance. And it was not until the 1960s that Congress passed legislation tVolkomer, Walter is the author of 'American Government Election Update Edition', published 2004 under ISBN 9780131856356 and ISBN 0131856359.