1901 – 1912

 The Gilded Age:  “predatory wealth” & “conspicuous consumption”  The Greenback Labor Party & Populist Party  1870s and 90s  Responding to industrialist

 Early writers  Jacob Riis  How the Other Half Lives (1890)  Henry Demarest Lloyd  Wealth Against Commonwealth (1894)  Thorstein Veblen  Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)

 Muckrakers (early 1900s)  Phrase coined by Theodore Roosevelt  Topics  Life insurance co.  Tariff lobby groups  Trusts and Monopolies  Trafficking of women  Slums  Pharmaceuticals  Industrial accidents

 Famous Muckrakers  Ida Tarbell  History of the Standard Oil Company  Upton Sinclair  The Jungle

 Modernizing American Institutions  Goals  1) to use the government to curve monopolies  2) improve the common person’s conditions at work and home  Initiative:  Voters can petition directly for a law to be placed on a general ballot.  Referendum:  Place laws on the ballot for final approval for the people.  Recall:  Allowed people to get rid of elected officials who were not fulfilling their obligations.

 17 th Amendment:  Direct election of senators  After the local victories using the primary election  Secret ballot  Inspired by the Australian ballot

 Taking out the political machine  Robert La Follette: Wisconsin governor, militant progressive  Took out the monopolies of lumber and railroad

 Entering the public square to take up the fight  Women and Children’s labor laws  Food safety  Work conditions  Temperance (Woman’s Christian Temperance Union)  Used the traditional role as an argument for lobbying against unfair practices  Muller v. Oregon

1911 – New York City 146 employees killed Got the attention of America that reform was needed in business and labor. Strikers for shorter hours and better conditions pushed the New York legislature into action

 Control of corporations  Worked for labor reform that would benefit the public  Coal strike in 1902: threatened the coal industry with government takeover.  Corporations  Elkins Act: Heavy fines on railroads and shippers who dealt rebates.  Hepburn Act: expanded the role of Interstate Commerce Commission to include sleeper cars, express co., & pipeline  Trustbuster: 1902 defeated Northern Securities Co.’s attempt to create a monopoly on railways.

 Consumer protection  Looked to benefit corporations and consumers  Meat Protection Act (1906)  Meat shipped over state lines was subject to federal inspection  Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)  Prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and drugs

 Conservation of natural resources  7 th Annual Address to Congress  Resources are not inexhaustible  Hired Gifford Pinchot: head of Division of Forestry  Set aside 125 million acres

 Roosevelt was blamed  But it stirred up the people to make reforms  Aldrich-Vreeland Act: banks can issue emergeny currency

 Roosevelt hand picked Taft to keep his policies going strong  Taft beat William Jennings Bryan  What did Roosevelt leave behind?  A more powerful executive branch  Gave power to the progressive movement

 Mild progressive  Didn’t want the presidency

 Supporting U.S. financial and political investments abroad  Manchurian railroads  Caribbean

 90 suits in 4 years versus  Roosevelt’s 44 suits in 7 ½ years  1911: Supreme Court ruled Standard Oil to be dissolved  Taft brings suit against U.S. Steel Corporation. Angers Roosevelt who was in on one of the questionable mergers.

 Payne-Aldrich Bill  Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel

 Roosevelt was not happy with Taft’s handling of Ballinger-Pinchot quarrel, the Payne-Aldrich Bill, and big business  Roosevelt runs against Taft for the Republican nomination  He can do this because Republicans are split between mild and ardent progressives