9.5 Wilson’s New Freedom
How did Wilson’s election in 1912
continue Progressivism after Taft
and Roosevelt left office?
Wilson’s Effect on Business
• Wilson, former governor of New Jersey,
pushed for many progressive causes
• He also passed two antitrust measures:
– Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, which made it
more difficult to form monopolies, said that
(1)people who ran companies could be held
personally responsible for violations to the
law, and (2) ruled that labor unions were not
considered trusts (making strikes and
boycotts legal)
Continued
• He also passed the Federal Trade Act of 1914,
which set up the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC), an agency that had the power to
investigate businesses for the government
• He also worked to lower tariffs, because he
believed that high tariffs encouraged monopolies
• He raised the cost of imported goods to cut
competition against American goods
Problems
• Without money from tariffs, the government
needed another source of money and turned to
an income tax through the 16th Amendment
• Wilson also changed the banks through the
Federal Reserve System, dividing the country
into 12 districts controlling the country’s banks
• This system controlled the money supply and
made credit more easily available
Women’s Suffrage Makes Progress
• Local organizations used door to door
campaigns to win support, college educated
women joined in reaching out to working class
women, and women used bold tactics of British
suffragists to get attention
• World War I was the catalyst to get women the
vote because of their support of the war effort
and active role in public life
• The Nineteenth Amendment was finally passed
in 1919, and ratified in 1920
Hypocritical View on Civil Rights
• Wilson, like Roosevelt and Taft, backed away
from civil rights; he won support from the
NAACP in 1912 by promising to treat African
Americans equally, and promised to speak out
against lynching
• However, he later opposed federal laws against
lynching b/c he felt states and not the
government should enforce such laws
• He also chose cabinet members who extended
segregation
• As World War I developed, the public became
less and less concerned with reform