LAD #35: F.D.R.'s Executive Order 9066

Franklin D. Roosevelt starts immediately by stating and citing that he has the right to do everything in his power to protect the United States "against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities." In this opening paragraph, Roosevelt states that he authorizes the construction of military areas in any location, ones that can house any one that may be helping the government of an enemy. Too, it also reads that the military officers need to respect the liberties of the detainees and must provide to them sufficient transportation, shelter, food, and other accommodations. Roosevelt then places the Attorney General in charge of all of these camps. The president gives power also to the commanders of the camps, such as the implementing of federal troops and the aid of state and local agencies. Roosevelt authorizes departments in charge of "hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies." The president then closes the letter, stating that this order cannot be changed unless stated explicitly by him.

LAD #34: F.D.R.'s Declaration of War

Franklin D. Roosevelt, president during the year 1941, was astonished to learn that on December 7, Japanese fighter planes had hailed death from the skies at Pearl Harbor. The planes killed 2,335 military soldiers, but failed to destroy major targets like the U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers. Roosevelt, on the very next day, assembled Congress and gave one of the greatest speeches in American history. Here, he delivered an oration so powerful that it rivaled even Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Martian Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech. He starts of the address with it's famous line, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." He explains that the United States was at peace with Japan and Japan wanted to maintain peace in the Pacific. Roosevelt stated too that the attack came one hour before the Japanese Ambassador delivered a message that revealed no threat of an attack at all. To Roosevelt it was obvious that this attack was premeditated for many weeks. Ironically, the Japanese government was misleading the United States at this time by making it appear as though they were hoping for a continued peace throughout the Pacific. Many Americans lost their lives at Pearl Harbor, and Japanese forces also attacked many other islands such as Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippine Islands. Roosevelt proclaims that we the American people must defend this nation no matter how long it takes; he does not hesitate to assert that, regardless of the danger, "we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God." War then was declared on December 8, 1941 on Japan and three days later the United States entered war also with Italy and Germany.

LAD #33: F.D.R.'s First Inaugural Address

Before Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, the economy of the United States was declining rapidly. Businesses were failing, banks were declining, and Americans who had once experienced comfortable living conditions now found themselves on the streets. "Hoovervilles" were constructed outside major cities and numerous impoverished, dirt people crawled the cities in search of work. Wilson, horrified of the conditions, could do nothing but wait. Even after Franklin D. Roosevelt had been elected, he boosted the spirits of the American people through the power of his first inaugural address. He begins his speech by asserting that "our distress comes from no failure of substances." The new president claims that this is to show the people that the failures of the past years is not something they could control. "We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep." He continues to assert that the money changers that were the sole reason for the failure of the banks had fled, but people can work together to restore economic order. This implies that F.D.R. has faith in the country to overcome the greed that had once consumed it to become stable once again. He also calls for action at that very moment in order to help the struggling economy. The president exclaims that the American people must recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and shift their focus from the spoils of industry to the promise and growth of agriculture. Instead of Wilson's ideas of letting the people solve the problems of the nation through hands off policies, F.D.R. decides to take initiative and offer solutions to the people of the nation. 

LAD #32: Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact

In order to promote the welfare of mankind, this pact declared the renunciation of warfare as an instrument of national policy. With this renunciation, it was meant to promote friendly and peaceful relations between nations as well as institute unions between the more civilized nations of the world. It explicitly states that any nation that resorts to war to promote its national interests should not gain the advantages and benefits of the treaty. To be put into place as soon as possible, the treaty declared condemnation of "recourse to war for the solution of international controversies."Afghanistan, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, China, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Ethiopia, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Kingdom of the Serbs, Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Panama were all signers of the Pact. "Convinced that all changes in their relations with one another should be sought only by pacific means and be the result of a peaceful and orderly process, and that any signatory Power which shall hereafter seek to promote its national interests by resort to war a should be denied the benefits furnished by this Treaty."

LAD #31: Wilson's Fourteen Points

Wilson's Fourteen Points focus primarily on calling for an international policy of open relations and peace.  "The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world." Too, he urges the American people to come together through a new sense of national unity, stating that "all the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest." Together, his fourteen parts are as follows:

1. Calling for diplomacy,

2. Freedom of the seas both during peace and war,
3. Equal trading conditions throughout the globe,
4. A reducing of national arms,
5. The adjustment, impartially, of colonial claims,

6. Evacuation of the Russian Territory and aiding Russian Government,

7. Freedom for Belgium,

8. A correction by France for the wrongs done against Prussia in 1871,

9. Readjusting the territories of Italy,

10. Free opportunity for the people of Austri-Hungary to autonomous development,

11. Evacuations of the countries of Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania,

12. Dardenelles permanently opened to free trade and freedom to Turkey from the Ottomans,

13. Erection of a free Polish State,

14. And mutual guarantees of territorial and political stability and independence for small nation states.

LAD #30: Schenck vs. United States Case

Due to the  “mailing of printed circulars in pursuance of a conspiracy to obstruct the recruiting and enlistment service”, “an unlawful use of the mails for the transmission”, and for an “offence against the United States...to use the mails for the transmission of matter declared to be non-mailable,” Schenck was found guilty on March 3rd, 1919. Congress, stating that Schenck's documents posed as a threat and a serious danger, had a right to halt their distribution despite his first amendment right to free speech. With regards to the testimony, it was claimed that Schenck was the general secretary for the socialist party and was in charge of the headquarters from where the dangerous documents were being distributed. “The document in question upon its first printed side recited the first section of the Thirteenth Amendment, said that the idea embodied in it was violated by the Conscription Act and that a conscript is little better than a convict.” Schenck’s primary intentions were: “"Do not submit to intimidation” and “Assert your rights”. His socialist document was to prevent the draft. “It denied the power to send our citizens away to foreign shores to shoot up the people of other lands, and added that words could not express the condemnation such cold-blooded ruthlessness deserves”. Due to the fact that these were distributed in times of warfare rather than peace, they were considered to be outside of the realm of acceptable practice. “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force.” Schenck obstructed the recruiting forces, that was his crime.

LAD #29: Keating-Owen Child Labor Act

In the year 1916, the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act limited the number of hours that a child could work and forbade the sale of goods produced through child labor to be sold across state borders. Ranging from young children to smaller teens, a census showed that nearly two-million girls and boys were working across America at the beginning of the twentieth-century. This finding called for an end to be brought to child labor. Muckrakers such as Lewis Hines used photography of children fixing dangerous machinery and working in filthy coal mines to further this movement. Many influential individuals, such as Carl Marx and Charles Dickens, sided with these muckrakers against child labor. Dickens used his works of literature, such as Oliver Twist, showing the lives of young orphans working and living in poorhouses in London. First proposed in the year 1906, the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act "banned the sale of products from any factory, shop, or cannery that employed children under the age of 14, from any mine that employed children under the age of 16, and from any facility that had children under the age of 16 work at night or for more than 8 hours during the day." Eventually being passed by Congress and instituted by Woodrow Wilson, the act was later found to be unconstitutional in the Supreme Court case of Hammer vs. Dagenhart. It was not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, an Act still in place today, was an effective labor act set into motion in the United States.