Unit 3-Progressive Era-Vocabulary Assignment
Word
Civil service
Definition
Government departments and their nonelected employees
Pendleton Civil
Service Act
Gold standard
Law that created a civil service system for the federal government in an attempt to hire employees
on a merit system rather than on a spoils system
Policy of designating monetary units in terms of their value in gold
Fiat money
Currency not backed by gold or silver
Muckraker
Writer who uncovers and exposes misconduct in politics or business
Progressivism
Movement that responded to the pressures of industrialization and urbanization by promoting
reforms
Settlement
houses
NAWSA
Community center organized at the turn of the twentieth century to provide social services to the
urban poor
National American Woman Suffrage Association; group founded in 1890 that worked on both the
state and national levels to earn women the right to vote
16th amendment
1913 constitutional amendment that gave Congress the authority to levy an income tax
17th amendment
Constitutional amendment that provided for the direct election of senators
19th amendment
Constitutional amendment that gave women the right to vote
Initiative
Process in which citizens put a proposed new law directly on the ballot
Referendum
Process that allows citizens to approve or reject a law passed by a legislature
Recall
Process by which voters can remove elected officials from office before their terms end
Direct primary
Election in which citizens themselves vote to select nominees for upcoming elections
Hepburn Act
1906 law that gave the government the authority to set railroad rates and maximum prices for
ferries, bridge tolls, and oil pipelines
Pure Food and
Drug Act
National
Reclamation Act
New
Nationalism
Progressive
Party
New Freedom
1906 law that allowed federal inspection of food and medicine and banned the interstate shipment
and sale of impure food and the mislabeling of food and drugs
1902 law that gave the federal government the power to decide where and how water would be
distributed through the building and management of dams and irrigation projects
President Theodore Roosevelt’s plan to restore the government’s trustbusting power
Clayton AntiTrust Act
Trustbuster
1914 law that strengthened the Sherman Antitrust Act
Political party that emerged from the Taft-Roosevelt battle that split the Republican Party in
1912(Bull Moose)
Woodrow Wilson’s program to place government controls on corporations in order to benefit small
businesses
Government official who attempts to break up business trusts
Secret ballot
Voting in private
Third party
A political party in addition to the Republican and Democratic parties
Social Gospel
Reform movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century that sought to improve society by
applying Christian principles
The Jungle
A book written by Upton Sinclair which exposed the despair of immigrants working in Chicago’s
stockyards and the unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry; eventually prompted
legislation to ensure food safety
Meat Inspection
Act
Suffrage
1906 law that allowed the federal government to inspect meat sold across state lines and required
federal inspection of meat processing plants
The right to vote
Square Deal
President Theodore Roosevelt’s program of reforms to keep the wealthy and powerful from taking
advantage of small business owners and the poor
National
Consumers
League
Temperance
movement
Federal Reserve
Act
Group organized in 1899 to investigate the conditions under which goods were made and sold and to
promote safe working conditions and a minimum wage
Federal Trade
Commission
Hull House
Movement aimed at stopping alcohol abuse and the problems created by it
1913 law that placed national banks under the control of a Federal reserve board, which runs
regional banks that hold the reserve funds from commercial banks, sets interest rates, and supervises
commercial banks
Government agency established in 1914 to identify monopolistic business practices, false advertising,
and dishonest labeling
Settlement house opened by Jane Addams in Chicago; the success of Hull House inspired other
college-educated, middle-class women to become social workers