Chapter 28: Progressivism and the Republican Roosevelt, 1901-1912
At the beginning of the 20th Century, the ethnically and racially mixed American people were
convulsed by a reform movement. The new crusaders, who called themselves "progressives,"
waged war on many evils including monopolies, corruption, inefficiency, and social injustice.
Progressive Roots
Well before 1900, politicians and writers had begun to pinpoint targets for the
progressive attack. ______________________ assailed the Standard Oil Company in
1894 with his book Wealth Against Commonwealth. ________________ shocked
middle-class Americans in 1890 with How the Other Half Lives which described the
dark and dirty slums of New York.
Socialists and feminists were at the front of social justice.
Raking Muck with the Muckrakers
Popular magazines began to appear in American newsstands in 1902. They exposed the
corruption and scandal that the public loved to hate. The reform-minded journalists who
wrote articles in these magazines were called Muckrakers by President Roosevelt.
In 1902, New York reporter, _____________ launched a series of articles in McClure's
titled "The Shame of the Cities" which unmasked the corrupt alliance between big
business and municipal government.
_________________ published a devastating but factual depiction of the Standard Oil
Company.
_________________ published a series, "The Treason of the Senate" in Cosmopolitan
that charged that 75 of the 90 senators did not represent the people but they rather
represented railroads and trusts.
Some of the most effective attacks of the muckrakers were directed at social evils. The
suppression of America's blacks was shown in ________________ Following the Color
Line (1908). _________________ wrote of the abuses of child labor in The Bitter Cry of
the Children (1906).
Political Progressivism
Progressive reformers were mainly middle-class men and women.
The progressives sought 2 goals:
Progressives wanted to regain the power that had slipped from the hands of the people
into those of the "interests." Progressives supported direct primary elections and favored
"_____________" so that voters could directly propose legislation themselves, thus
bypassing the boss-sought state legislatures. They also supported "______________"
and "_________." Referendum would place laws on ballots for final approval by the
people, and recall would enable the voters to remove faithless corrupt officials.
As a result of pressure from the public's progressive reformers, the ______ Amendment
was passed to the Constitution in 1913. It established the direct election of U.S. senators.
Progressivism in the Cities and States
States began the march toward progressivism when they undertook to regulate railroads
and trusts. In 1901, the governor of Wisconsin and significant figure of the progressive
era, _________________________ took considerable control from the corrupt
corporations and returned it to the people.
Governor of California, __________________ helped to break the dominant grip of the
Southern Pacific Railroad on California politics in 1910.
Progressive Women
A crucial focus for women's activism was the ________________________. Settlement
houses exposed middle-class women to poverty, political corruption, and intolerable
working and living conditions.
Most female progressives defended their new activities as an extension of their traditional
roles of wife and mother.
Female activists worked through organizations like the ______________________ and
the _________________________________.
_______________________ took control of the National Consumers League in 1899
and mobilized female consumers to pressure for laws safeguarding women and children
in the workplace.
Caught up in the crusade, some states controlled, restricted, or abolished alcohol.
TR's Square Deal for Labor
President Roosevelt believed in the progressive reform. He enacted a "Square Deal"
program that consisted of 3 parts:
In 1902, coal miners in Pennsylvania went on strike and demanded a 20% raise in pay
and a workday decrease from 10 hours to 9 hours. When mine spokesman,
____________________ refused to negotiate, President Roosevelt stepped in and
threatened to operate the mines with federal troops. A deal was struck in which the
miners received a 10% pay raise and an hour workday reduction.
Congress, aware of the increasing hostilities between capital and labor, created the
________________________________ in 1903.
TR Corrals the Corporations
Although the Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887, railroad barons
were still able to have high shipping rates because of their ability to appeal the
commission's decisions on high rates to the federal courts.
In 1903, Congress passed the __________ Act, which allowed for heavy fines to be
placed on railroads that gave rebates and on the shippers that accepted them. (Railroad
companies would offer rebates as incentives for companies to use their rail lines.)
Congress passed the _____________ Act of 1906, restricting free passes and expanding
the Interstate Commerce Commission to extend to include express companies, sleepingcar companies, and pipelines. (Free passes: rewards offered to companies allowing an
allotted number of free shipments; given to companies to encourage future business.)
In 1902, President Roosevelt challenged the __________________________ Company,
a railroad trust company that sought to achieve a monopoly of the railroads in the
Northwest. The Supreme Court upheld the President and the trust was forced to be
dissolved.
Caring for the Consumer
After botulism was found in American meats, foreign governments threatened to ban all
American meat imports. Backed by the public, President Roosevelt passed the
_______________________ Act of 1906. The act stated that the preparation of meat
shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection.
The __________________________________ Act of 1906 was designed to prevent the
adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals.
Earth Control
The first step towards conservation came with the _________________ Act of 1887,
under which the federal government sold dry land cheaply on the condition that the
purchaser would irrigate the soil within 3 years. A more successful step was the
____________________________ Act of 1891. It authorized the president to set aside
public forests as national parks and other reserves. The _____________ Act of 1894
distributed federal land to the states on the condition that it be irrigated and settled.
President Roosevelt, a naturalist and rancher, convinced Congress to pass the
______________ Act of 1902, which authorized the federal government to collect money
from the sale of public lands in western states and then use these funds for the
development of irrigation projects.
In 1900 Roosevelt, attempting to preserve the nation's shrinking forests, set aside 125
million acres of land in federal reserves.
Under President Roosevelt, professional foresters and engineers developed a policy of
"multiple-use resource management." They sought to combine recreation, sustainedyield logging, watershed protection, and summer stock grazing on the same expanse of
federal land. Many westerners soon realized how to work with federal conservation
programs and not resist the federal management of natural resources.
The "Roosevelt Panic" of 1907
Theodore Roosevelt was elected as president in 1904. President Roosevelt made it
known that he would not run for a ______ term.
A panic descended upon ________________ in 1907. The financial world blamed the
panic on President Roosevelt for unsettling the industries with his anti-trust tactics.
Responding to the panic of 1907, Congress passed the ________________ Act in 1908
which authorized national banks to issue emergency currency backed by various kinds of
collateral.
The Rough Rider Thunders Out
For the election of 1908, the Republican Party chose ______________________,
secretary of war to Theodore Roosevelt. The Democratic Party chose
____________________________.
____________________________ won the election of 1908.
In Roosevelt's term, Roosevelt attempted to protect against socialism and to protect
capitalists against popular indignation. He greatly enlarged the power and prestige of the
presidential office, and he helped shape the progressive movement and beyond it, the
liberal reform campaigns later in the century. TR also opened the eyes of Americans to
the fact that they shared the world with other nations.
Taft: A Round Peg in a Square Hole
President Taft had none of the arts of a dashing political leader, such as Roosevelt, and
none of Roosevelt's zest. He generally adopted an attitude of passivity towards Congress.
The Dollar Goes Abroad as a Diplomat
Taft encouraged Wall Street bankers to invest in foreign areas of strategic interest to the
United States. New York bankers thus strengthened American defenses and foreign
policies, while bringing prosperity to America.
In China's Manchuria, Japan and Russia controlled the railroads. President Taft saw in
the Manchurian monopoly a possible strangulation of Chinese economic interests and a
slamming of the Open Door policy. In 1909, Secretary of State ____________________
proposed that a group of American and foreign bankers buy the Manchurian railroads and
then turn them over to China. Both Japan and Russia flatly rejected the selling of their
railroads.
Taft the Trustbuster
Taft brought _______ lawsuits against the trusts during his 4 years in office as opposed to
Roosevelt who brought just 44 suits in 7 years.
In 1911, the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of the ______________ Company,
stating that it violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
Also in 1911, the Courts handed down its "____________________"; a doctrine that
stated that only those trusts that unreasonably restrained trade were illegal.
Taft Splits the Republican Party
President Taft signed the _____________________ Bill in 1909, a tariff bill that placed a
high tariff on many imports. With the signing, Taft betrayed his campaign promises of
lowering the tariff.
Taft was a strong conservationist, but in 1910, the ____________________ quarrel
erased much of his conservationist record. When Secretary of the Interior
_____________________ opened public lands in Wyoming, Montana, and Alaska to
corporate development, he was criticized by chief of the Agriculture Department's
Division of Forestry, ____________________. When Taft dismissed Pinchot, much
protest arose from conservationists.
By the spring of 1910, the reformist wing of the Republican Party was furious with Taft
and the Republican Party had split. One once supporter of Taft, Roosevelt, was now an
enemy.
The Taft-Roosevelt Rupture
In 1911, the National Progressive Republican League was formed with
__________________ as its leading candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination.
In February of 1912, ________________________, with his new views on Taft,
announced that he would run again for presidency, clarifying that he said he wouldn't run
for 3 consecutive terms.
The Taft-Roosevelt explosion happened in June of 1912 when the Republican
convention met in Chicago. When it came time to vote, the Roosevelt supporters claimed
fraud and in the end refused to vote. Taft subsequently won the Republican nomination.