Rewrite Jeffrey Stefanucci
HIST paper Group C, Question 1 323001551
HIST 106 Section 515
The United States is known as the land of the free, but just how free? When discussing the idea
of freedom, three important aspects come to mind: the meaning of freedom, the current social conditions
that make freedom possible, and the boundaries of freedom, or in other words, who is and isn’t entitled to
enjoy it. World War I and World War II are major events in US history that exemplified how government
actions can easily influence which liberties its constituents desired, or even could possess, and how
society evolved into the society that is today.
Before WWI, the central idea of freedom most people were concerned with was freedom of
contract. However, due to unfair labor conditions and efforts from the government to reduce anti-war
sentiment among the American public, freedom of speech was greatly limited and in turn people sought
freedom from government. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, workers confronted an
irresistible power that subjectively set wages and working conditions that suppressed all efforts at union
