1. For many Americans, the dynamic changes produced by industrialization, mass immigration, urbanization, and the "closing" of the frontier raised troubling questions about where the United States was heading and what kind of society it would become. Why did these changes cause so much anxiety? Compare and contrast how three of the following groups of Americans attempted to resolve those anxieties and produce a better nation: a) imperialists; b) labor unions; c) Populists; and d) Progressive reformers such as Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt. To what extent did these groups offer fundamentally different visions of progress and a reformed American nation?
2. Compare and contrast the strategies and rhetoric used by African Americans and women suffragists to combat racial and gender discrimination during the Progressive Era. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their strategies in light of the key obstacles and popular prejudices that each group faced.
3. To what extent were Progressive reformers motivated by a desire to address social justice concerns and problems of economic inequality vs. a desire to achieve social control over immigrants and the working classes? How did immigrants and other working-class Americans respond to some reformers' paternalistic pattern of dividing the poor into the worthy and the unworthy? What alternative policies did they propose to address the problem of economic inequality?