9.3 Teddy Roosevelt’s Square
Deal
How did Roosevelt promote
reforms at the national level?
Presidency
• Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901;
he was bold, ambitious, and full of energy
• In the Spanish American War he led a fighting
unit called the Rough Riders
• He used his popularity to get programs passed;
he wanted to see that the common people
received what he called a Square Deal, or set of
progressive reforms sponsored by his
administration
Problems of Government
• Roosevelt used his power of government to deal
with trusts, or large companies that had control
over their markets
• By 1900, trusts controlled about 80 percent of
US industries
• Roosevelt supported big business, but also
wanted to stop trusts that harmed people
• He was known as a trustbuster because he
worked to file antitrust suits against these
companies
Continued
• He also worked to resolve disputes among
strikers, using the government to step in to
help reach agreements
• He also stepped in to fix the ICC, which
wasn’t working to regulate the railroad
industry; his reform resulted in fairer
shipping rates and less corruption in the
railroad industry
Public Health and the Environment
• After reading The Jungle by Upton
Sinclair, Roosevelt pushed for the Meat
Inspection Act
• Passed in 1906, Congress passed the
Pure Food and Drug Act, which halted the
sale of contaminated foods and medicines
and called for truth in labeling
Continued
• John Muir persuaded Roosevelt to set
aside 148 million acres of forest reserves
and other land for waterpower sites and
mineral and water resources
• Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot as
head of the US Forest Service
• Pinchot believed in conservation of the
land, whereas Muir believed in complete
preservation of the wilderness
Roosevelt and Civil Rights
• Roosevelt supported individual African
Americans, but did not help them in
general
• In 1909, W. E. B. Du Bois founded the
NAACP, or National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
• The progressive movement, however,
continued to focus on the needs of middleclass whites