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Interstate Commerce Act
By the means of congressional legislation, compelled railroads to publish standard rates, and prohibited rebates and pools. Railroads quickly became adept at using the Act to achieve their own ends, but the Act gave the government an important means to regulate big business. -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
Focused on all women's suffrage, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. They argued society would improve if the electorate consisted of women because it would be less corrupt. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
A law that was intended to restrain trade unions due to court bias, however it became a law that forbade trusts or combinations in businesses, targeting monopolies and corporate power. -
Ida B. Wells
An African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Through the title of an activist she first became prominent because she brought international attention to the lynching of African Americans in the South. -
How the Other Half Lives
A book written by Jacob Riis, a Danish immigrant, who became a reporter that pointed out the terrible conditions of the tenement houses of the big cities where immigrants lived. -
Anti-Saloon League
A leading organization that lobbied and promoted national prohibition across the U.S -
Woman's Christian Temperance Union
Reformers who wanted to ban alcohol use and prostitution. -
Eugene V. Debs
Was five times the candidate of the socialist party, imprisoned in the 1890s for illegally encouraging a railway strike, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and an American Union leader. -
Square Deal Policy
Progressive concept by Roosevelt that would help capital, labor, and the public through control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources. It was the essential element to trust busting. -
Robert La Follette
Republican Congressman who feuded with his state's (Wisconsin) conservative party leadership and contributed to the Wisconsin Idea. He became governor, adopted the direct primary system, set up railroad regulatory commission, and limited campaign spending for his state. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The United Mine Workers Union called a strike to gain higher wages and shorter hours, and recognition as a union. After an act of threatening, they won reluctant acceptance of an arbitration commission to settle the dispute. The miners were granted a 10 percent wage increase and reduced their working day from 10 to 9 hours. -
Elkins Act
Applying to corporate reforms, this was aimed primarily at rebate or overpayment. Therefore heavy fines could be imposed on the railroads that gave rebates and on the shippers that accepted them. -
Department of Commerce and Labor
This department was meant to probe businesses engaged in interstate commerce and clearing the road for trust-busting era -
Northern Securities Antitrust Act
The Supreme Court upheld Theodore Roosevelt's desire for this railroad trust to be dissolved. -
John Dewey
A philosopher who believed in "learning by doing" which formed the foundation of progressive education. He believed that the teachers' goal should be "education for life and that the workbench is just as important as the blackboard." -
Pure Food and Drug Act
This forbade the manufacture or sale of mislabeled or adulterated food or drugs, it also gave the government broad powers to ensure the safety and efficacy of drugs in order to abolish the "patent" drug trade. -
Lincoln Steffens
A journalist that started an era of muckraking journalism. Through writing for McClure's Magazine, he criticized the trend of urbanization with a series of articles under the title Shame of the Cities. -
Meat Inspection Act
authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to inspect, and condemn, any meat product found unfit for human consumption and was designed to work in combination with the Pure Food and Drug Act. -
The Jungle
Contributed or led to the Meat Inspection Act, work by Upton Sinclair pointed out the abuses of the meat packing industry. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Women workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory died in a fire b/c the owners of the building locked them in the building in case they stole. NY legislators passed worker protection laws, fire safety inspections of factories, and made employees liable for job-related injuries or deaths after this. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
An American political party that was formed after a split in the Republican Party between incumbent President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt -
Ida Tarbell
A muckraker that contributed to exposing the corruption of the oil industry through the publication of the book called, The History of the Standard Oil -
Federal Reserve Act
Created a central banking system, consisting of twelve regional banks governed by the Federal reserve Board in an attempt to provide the U.S with more flexible currency. -
Seventeenth Amendment
Stated that Senators were now elected by popular vote from the citizens due to "direct primaries" being adopted. -
Underwood Tariff
Reduced import fees and was a landmark in tax legislation because it tied into the sixteenth amendment. It was issued to battle the tariff part of the triple wall of privilege, and provided a substantial reduction of tariff rates. -
Clayton Antitrust Act
Specified illegal business practices., New antitrust legislation was constructed to remedy deficiencies of the Sherman Antitrust Act, It weakened monopolies, upheld rights of unions. -
Federal Trade Commission
Administered antitrust and consumer protection legislation in pursuit of free and fair competition in the marketplace. -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
Law enacted to protect against child labor by prohibiting the interstate shipping of goods in which someone under 14 worked for -
Eighteenth Amendment
Prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcohol, therefore making it illegal -
Nineteenth Amendment
Stated that the right of citizens voting wise shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. -
Margaret Sanger
American leader of the birth control legalization movement, was a nurse in the poor parts of New York, a women's rights activist, and founded the first birth control clinic in the U.S as well as the American Birth Control League, also known as Planned Parenthood.
