Because of the large amounts of profit they were making, they ended up buying more land and equipment on credit. However, when the war ended, the economy was disastrous once again, with farmers having to default onto this credit as a result of a lower amount of profit they were making. To fix these economic problems, Harding implemented a number of economic policies. The Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act was passed, which allowed Harding to raise any tariff by 50%. The act also emplaced the Tariff of 1922.
To the government the whole reason of the law was to guarantee land owners profits of which they had became accustomed to during the war. However opponents of the regime both inside and outside of the regime only saw the law as a class piece of legislation in which the law saved landowners from three things: cheaper foreign grain, stabilised prices and making corn more expensive for the consumer. This concept and idea was not new, a similar law 1804 had been introduced to guarantee 80 shillings a quarter. In spite of this the government had problems to face including riots, petitions and demonstrations. The main protest for this law, was the Luddism riots and machine breaking.
Congress believed that farmers were right and passed the Interstate Commerce Act, in order to regulate railroads and ensure fair rates to all people. Overall, farmers were fully justified in their claim against railroads. The deflation of American currency was yet another blow directed directly at the farmers’ pockets. Representing farmers, the People’s party petitioned for the coinage of silver, in order to stop deflation. The farmers’ anger was further deepened at the government when the crisis remained unresolved.
However, structuralists have argued that towards the end of this period, and the start of the War in 1914, the Kaisers power was being slowly degraded from mass political movements (particularly socialist,) which would suggest that the authoritarian nature of Germany was not entrenched and subject to change from below. The constitution of the 2nd Reich gave key powers to the Kaiser, allowing him the de jure right to rule in an autocratic nature. The Kaiser was also the King of Prussia. He could also appoint or dismiss the chancellor whenever he pleased, dissolve the Reichstag with consent from the Bundesrat, and had control over foreign and military policies. Weltpolitik or “world policy” was the Kaisers attempt at dominating the political scene worldwide, a policy which is often cited as one of the reasons behind WWI.
The Imperial secretary Sang Hongyang declares “abolition of these measures is not expedient.” This statement means that Legalists believe the policies are necessary to keep the empire running and that it is not practical to abolish them, for then the treasuries would be depleted and funding for defense for the soldiers would be obsolete. Then he goes on to explain how “equitable marketing” was established and how it contributes to their country. Before this system, the people would send respective products as tributes to support the country, but the Legalists think that people are untrustworthy and should be governed by laws to force them to do good. They came up with this set of laws, i.e. setting up transportation offices, forcing the people to send their goods to these places because the government did not trust the quality of the products sent from the people.
Explain why in the years 1906 to 1911, Stolypin attempted to reform agriculture. (12 marks) Stolypin attempted to reform agriculture for many reasons, one of the most important being to strengthen tsarist autocracy. He strongly believed that the future of Russia depended on building a prosperous peasantry. There was widespread rural poverty but an upper class of peasant that farmed efficiently and were wealthier, they were known as the Kulaks. Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy.
They preferred a pretty strict construction of the constitution and look down on Hamilton’s ideas for a national bank and saw them as unconstitutional. The party promoted states' rights and they were threatened by the supposed, the far too powerful tendencies of the Federalist Party which they had seen before with Great Britain. These Democratic Republicans favored Agriculture and opposed the tariffs that Hamilton had proposed; for these supporters mostly included skilled workers, small scale farmers, and plantation owners. So it is safe to say the majority of these types of supporters were vast in the southern frontier states as opposed to their rivals in the northeastern states who were more on the business side of things. Democratic Republicans all in all wanted things to remain the same in the U.S government because they felt that giving more power to the national government by way of national bank or tax would slowly get rid of the people’s voice in politics creating a rerun of the previous outcome with Great Britain.
The German Emperor has considerable powers, he had personal control over the armed forces and he could appoint and dismiss all ministers including the Chancellor. Secondly, the Federal Council (Bundesrat) represented the different states of the Empire. It had 58 members. It had the powers to change the constitution however no change could be made if the 14 delegated from Prussia did not approve. Thirdly, the parliament was elected by universal male suffrage and secret ballot.
His “Great Turn” can be seen as a realistic and attractive policy, suited to the rank and file of the party, that he did not adopt earlier in the 20’s since it was not a fitting policy at the time. The problems in ideology could be seen to link to the problems with agriculture as it was the Kulak class that Stalin held responsible for hoarding the grain and demanding higher prices for it, thus if the ideology changed to rid Soviet society of such elements, then haste could be seen to be of importance. However this was not the only problem with Russian agriculture. Farming methods were
Both Count Camillo Cavour of Italy and Prussian Prime Minister Otto Von Bismarck brought their respective nations to unify in their own respective ways. In 1852 Cavour, the Prime Minister on Piedmont, he looked onto other liberal Italian principalities. His greatest contribution was his establishment of diplomacy; the negotiations between states. Meanwhile Prime Minister Otto Von Bismarck had a different view on the unification on his country; he was against diplomacy and remained scornful towards liberals. “The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood” (Bismarck).