11th grade US history help!?

[Ashley Smith]

tomorrow i have to write an essay about how the US changed socially and politically from 1880's to 1945. i need to do good on this and its timed but we can use our notes. i have tonight to put anything i need in my notebook in order to write this essay tomorrow and it would be awesome if someone wrote out an example essay or told me what to write about.
it should be about 1-2 pages long with 2 body paragraphs.. one about socialism and one about politics..it needs to include events from the gilded age progressives, 1920s 1930s and up to WWII

[Whaddup!]

Well it's tough because I don't know how much detail you need, but considering the time period I would just write about both of the world wars.

Edit:

Well that's sort of odd. In the 1920s, the U.S. were extreme capitalists and believed in laissez-faire economics. This means that the government should not have a hand in economical matters because the market's supply and demand will work itself out as consumers behave reasonably (this is also called Smithian economics). However, the economist Keynes argued that the success of this system is contingent on continuous economic growth. Thus, is the market becomes stagnant, it is easy to fall into a repression. In times of a repression, consumers get scared and spend less, causing what's called growth aggregate to decrease, which can lead to a depression (ironically Romney wanted to shift back towards this!). Keynes argued that a repression can be resolved by keeping growth aggregate up (such as increasing government spending to offset the decrease in consumer spending like Obama did to miraculously save the U.S from falling deeper into the recession). Thus, pure capitalism, and letting the market work itself out doesn't really work; it was capitalism that drove the US into the Great Depression.

At the time, Russia (Soviet Union) was socialist country. The American political system encouraged its citizens to take pride in capitalism and saw socialism as a force opposed to capitalism (this was major factor in the cold war). Also, the Russian government was corrupt at times, and Americans began to associate socialism with a corrupt government (much like how communist governments are viewed today). So socialism in Russia helped fuel capitalism in the US. This importance of capitalism led to the adoption of Smithian Laissez-faire economics, which resulted in the Great Depression. Thank you to Obama adopting Keynsian economics, the U.S. avoided plunging into a deeper recession than it may have. Perhaps if the U.S. adopted Keynsian economics on the 1920's (although he hadn't come up with them yet!) the U.S. could have decreased the extent of the financial crisis of the Great Depression

[Matt]

Well socially it changed with the mass immigration from Europe. The Industrial Revolution happened. The 20's had an economic boom, while the 30's featured a dramatic stock market crash. Socially things changed in the 30's because of the amount of working and non-working people below the poverty line. You can write about the New Deal and WWII both revitalizing the economy.
As far as the Gilded Age I have this: The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. One main goal of the Progressive movement was purification of government, as Progressives tried to eliminate corruption by exposing and undercutting political machines and bosses. Many (but not all) Progressives supported prohibition in order to destroy the political power of local bosses based in saloons. At the same time, women's suffrage was promoted to bring a "purer" female vote into the arena. A second theme was achieving efficiency in every sector by identifying old ways that needed modernizing, and emphasizing scientific, medical and engineering solutions.
Many people led efforts to reform local government, public education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas. Progressives transformed, professionalized and made "scientific" the social sciences, especially history, economics, and political science. In academic fields the day of the amateur author gave way to the research professor who published in the new scholarly journals and presses. The national political leaders included Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Charles Evans Hughes and Herbert Hoover on the Republican side, and William Jennings Bryan, Woodrow Wilson and Al Smith on the Democratic side.
Initially the movement operated chiefly at local levels; later it expanded to state and national levels. Progressives drew support from the middle class, and supporters included many lawyers, teachers, physicians, ministers and business people. The Progressives strongly supported scientific methods as applied to economics, government, industry, finance, medicine, schooling, theology, education, and even the family. They closely followed advances underway at the time in Western Europe and adopted numerous policies, such as the banking laws which became the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Reformers felt that old-fashioned ways meant waste and inefficiency, and eagerly sought out the "one best system". They enacted Prohibition and exposed government corruption on all levels. Hope this helped.