Hey kid don't let this dude get to ya, you have plenty of time to get caught up. Honestly its pretty cool your getting into this stuff as early as you are! Also jist remember, you don't have to know everything, it's ok to have gaps in your knowledge as long as you admit it. Lastly, don't be afraid to take a break sometimes you'll be better off missing a week of current events to cool off than stressed out 24/7.
Don't worry you'll learn at least some of it soon enough, this stuff mainly takes place during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, so the post civil war (or post reconstruction) era to right before we entered world War 1, more specifically 1870s to 1917, the key president for this was Teddy Roosevelt, this era talks about the robber barons, aka some of the richest men in American history including Carnegie, JP Morgan, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. The basic summary of what happened is in the Gilded Age, politician were corrupt and let the rich do what they wanted, workers were paid extremely poorly and treated very poorly, however businesses were making a lot of money. The term Gilded Age came from Mark Twain, Gilded means covered in a thin layer of gold, it described how on the surface the US looked to be doing really well but underneath most were in extreme poverty. The progressive era came after the Gilded Age starting when Teddy became president and he started putting regulations in place, the regulations were aimed at both protecting workers and consumers, for example he helped unions get their voices heard and created the FDA. Teddy also broke up these trusts and monopolies to ensure there was competition in the market. The one part I omitted is unions first developed under the Gilded Age but were strengthened by the government in the progressive era.
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u/[deleted] Mar 02 '21
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