Being a sharecropper or raising cotton in 1875 in Mississippi is exhausting, demeaning and destroys personal initiative. Being a share cropper might mean that you will have a little something left over for yourself if you have a very good crop. But without good crops, you will have nothing. My family and I work in the fields from sun up to sundown. We don’t own the land we work on. Our owner lets us grow crops on his land and takes a percentage of any profit. Sometimes we make enough money to have enough to eat and clothe ourselves. But it is more often that we just barely scrimp by. We eat what we can grow and on occasion, we can kill a chicken that we have raised. It is not a life you would wish on anyone.
What are the following choices?
By the 1890's Americans were sick and tired of their 1870 and prior image of being just backwoods farmers staying at home from the world. Americans in the 1890's were conscious of the great power of American industry, wealth, inventions, natural resources and wanted to take their place among the great powers of the world. They were aware of all the great progress America had made in every field.
<span>A new political movement the progressives wanted even more progress and aimed at the future to make America 'great'. This was the motivation for the new foreign policy. Examples: kicking Spain out and taking Cuba,(1898), buying Panama and building the American Panama Canal there (1904). President Theodore Roosevelt building the 1st mighty US Navy (1901-1909).</span>
