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Interstate Commerce Act
The Interstate Commerce Act created an Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the conduct of the railroad industry, and as a result the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation. -
How the Other Half Lives
A novel by Jacob Riis about the lives of the immigrants and those who live in the tenements that shocked Americans with his open portrayal of dirt,disease, vice, and misery of New York slums. -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
This association was formed from the merged National Woman Suffrage and American Woman Suffrage Associations, and pushed for the ratification of enough state suffrage amendments to force Congress to approve a federal amendment granting women sufferage. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act was the first Federal Act to outlaw monopolistic business practices. -
Ida B. Wells
After facing many injustices herself, she published articles on racism and politics, worked as a civil rights activists, investigated the lynching of African Americans in the South, and became one of the founding members of the NAACP. -
Anti-Saloon League
An organization lobbying for the prohibition of alcohol by attempting to close down saloons, believing that alcohol consumption would decrease if there weren't any places to buy it. -
Eugene V. Debs
This man was a labor organizer and socialist leader who was elected to the Indiana State Assembly, organized the American Railway Union, was the Socialist party’s standard-bearer in five presidential elections, and was sentenced to 10 years in jail for opposing US involvement in WWI. -
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
The WCTU was founded in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio growing until its platform included campaigning for labor laws, prison reform and suffrage. After Frances Willard's death in 1898, it focused more on prohibition and membership slowly declined. -
Square Deal Policy
Roosevelt's domestic program which included a promise to battle large industrial combinations, or trusts, which threatened fair trade, by initiatng suits against the large corporations. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The United Mine Workers threatened a coal famine in order call to attention their low wages, long hours, and poor conditions. -
Ida Tarbell
Concerned by the proliferation of monopolies and trusts. Tarbell conducted extensive research on the Standard Oil Company and John D. Rockefeller’s business practices in a series of articles titled The History of the Standard Oil Company. -
Elkins Act
Act upheld the rates published by the Interstate Commerce Commission. outlawed rebates and made the railroad company itself liable for punishment along with the entity receiving the refund. -
Department of Commerce and Labor
This short-lived Cabinet department was created by Roosevelt to merge the powers of the Department of Commerse and the Department of Labor, believing that the two should work well together due to having much in common. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
Roosevelt instructed his Justice Department to break up the Northern Securities Company , a railroad monopoly, by using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act on the grounds that it was an illegal combination acting in restraint of trade. -
Lincoln Steffens
An editor of McClure's Magazine, who began a series of articles on corruption in various American cities which portrayed a pattern of shocking corruption in municipal government throughout the country and along with Ida Tarbell launched the popularity of "muckraking" journalism. -
Robert La Follette
La Follette was an American Republican supportive of progressivism and a fierce opponent to corporate power. He was elected governor of Wisconsin, was a US Senator, and an unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Progressive Party. -
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair's fictionalized account of Chicago's Packingtown, in which he exposed the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
Was the first law to regulate the manufacturing, sale, and shipment of foods and drugs by prohibiting dangerous additives, inaccurate labeling, and impurities. -
Meat Inspection Act
Law that reformed the meatpacking industry by prohibiting the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Act provided for the issuance of emergency currency and created the National Monetary Commission to determine what changes were necessary to the nation’s monetary system and laws related to banking and currency. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The tragedy of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory, in which 145 workers died, brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protectected workers, as the deaths were largely preventable. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
U.S. political faction that opposed conservatism seen in the Republican Party and nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt as its candidate in the presidential election of 1912. -
17th Amendment
This Amendment to the Constitution allowed voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators, instead of senators being chosen by state legislatures. -
Underwood Tariff
This tariff' reduced levies on manufactured and semi-manufactured goods, eliminated duties on most raw materials, and levied a graduated income tax on U.S. residents. -
Clayton Antitrust Act
Amendment to clarify and supplement the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 which regulated and limited monolpolistic business practices that dicouraged fair competition. -
Federal Trade Commission
The FTC was created when Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act with the intent of it protecting consumers and promoting competition as a continuation of "trust-busting." -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
Limited the age and amount of working hours for children, and outlawed the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor. -
John Dewey
Educator who originated the experimentalism philosophy, advocate of social change and progressive education reform, and most importantly founded The New School for Social Research. -
18th Amendment
Adopted at the urging of a national temperance movement, this amendment prohibited the making, transporting, and selling of alcoholic beverages. -
19th Amendment
This amendment to the Constitution granted women the right to vote. -
Margaret Sanger
In 1921, Sanger, a feminist and women's rights activist, established the American Birth Control League (a precursor to today's Planned Parenthood Federation of America) and coined the term "birth control" while working towards its legalization.
