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Women's Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is an active international temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that linked with religon -
Interstate Commerce Act
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is a United States federal law that was designed to regulate the railroad industry, particularly its monopolistic practices. The Act required that railroad rates be "reasonable and just," but did not empower the government to fix specific rates -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was the first measure passed by the U.S. Congress to prohibit trusts. Several states had passed similar laws, but they were limited to intrastate businesses. -
National American Women Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an organization formed on February 18, 1890 to advocate in favor of women's suffrage in the United States. It was created by the merger of two existing organizations, the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association. -
How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. -
Anti-Saloon League founded
The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. -
Eugene V. Debs
The workers at Pullman laid down their tools and appealed for help from the American Railroad Union whose leader, Eugene V. Debs, directed railroad workers not to handle any trains with Pullman
cars. The union's boycott tied up rail transportation across the country. -
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, democratic socialist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of functional psychology. -
Ida Tarbell Magazine series
She was one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and pioneered investigative journalism. Her series "The History of the Standard Oil Company" ran in McClure's Magazine starting in 1902 -
Lincoln Steffens Magazine series
Lincoln Steffens was an American investigative journalist and one of the leading muckrakers of the Progressive Era in the early 20th century. He launched a series of articles in McClure's, called Tweed Days in St. Louis, that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The Coal strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major American cities. -
Department of Commerce and Labor started
The United States Department of Commerce and Labor was a short-lived Cabinet department of the United States government, which was concerned with controlling the excesses of big business -
Elkins Act
The Elkins Act is a United States federal law that amended the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Act authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates. -
Robert La Follette introduced Direct Primary
the Progressive governor of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, introduced a new system for bypassing politicians and placing the nominating process directly in the hands of the voters the direct primary. By 1915, some form of the direct primary was used in every state -
Square Deal Policy begins
Enacted through Theodore Roosevelt's presidency in the early 20th century, the Square Deal was a set of policies that attempted to prevent further labor abuses and improve workplace safety, protect the natural landscape, and improve the overall health and well-being of Americans. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, was a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1903. The Court ruled 5 to 4 against the stockholders of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroad companies, who had essentially formed a monopoly, and to dissolve the Northern Securities Company. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act forbade the manufacture, sale, and transportation of adulterated or mislabeled foods and drugs after the publication of "The Jungle". -
Meat Inspection Act
The Meat Inspection Act is an American law that makes it a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products being sold as food, and ensures that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. -
The Jungle
The Jungle is a novel written in 1904 by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. -
Ida B. Wells
Ida B. Wells was an African-American investigative journalist, educator, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. She was one of the founders of the NAACP. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party founded
The Progressive Party is a third party in the United States formed in 1912 by former President Theodore Roosevelt after he lost the presidential nomination of the Republican Party to his former protégé, incumbent President William Howard Taft. -
17th Amendment
Essentially, the 17th Amendment gives voters the power to directly elect their senators. It also states that the U.S. Senate includes two senators from each state, and that each senator has one vote in the Senate. -
Underwood Tariff
The Underwood Tariff re-imposed the federal income tax after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act is an Act of Congress that created the Federal Reserve System, and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. -
Clayton Anti-Trust Act
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, was a part of United States antitrust law with the goal of adding further substance to the U.S. antitrust law regime; the Clayton Act sought to prevent anti-competitive practices in their incipiency. -
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act. Its principal mission is the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anti-competitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. -
Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood
Margaret Sanger advocated birth-control education, especially
among the poor. Over time, the movement developed into the Planned Parenthood organization. Women made progress in securing educational equality, liberalizing marriage and divorce laws, reducing discrimination in business and the professions, and recognizing women's rights to own property. -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
The Keating–Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 also known as Wick's Bill, was a short-lived statute enacted by the U.S. Congress which sought to address child labor by prohibiting the sale in interstate commerce of goods produced by factories that employed children under fourteen -
18th Amendment ratified
The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of "intoxicating liquors" in the United States.
