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Woman’s Christian Temperance Union founded
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union was the first mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." It was influential in the temperance movement, and supported the 18th Amendment. -
Eugene V Debs elected to Indiana State Assembly
Eugene V Debs was an American union leader, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies, as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States. -
Interstate Commerce Act Approved
The Interstate Commerce Act created an Interstate Commerce Commission to oversee the conduct of the railroad industry. With this act, the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation. -
John Dewey
The overriding theme of Dewey's works was his profound belief in democracy, be it in politics, education or communication and journalism. As Dewey himself stated in 1888, while still at the University of Michigan, "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous." -
National American Woman Suffrage Association founded
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed to work for 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 published
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York was an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. -
Sherman Anti-Trust Act Approved
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. -
Anti-Saloon League Founded
This organization's members believed that American society was in moral decline. As people moved from rural areas to urbanized ones, many Americans believed that they were losing touch with their religious values. One way that people were violating God's desires was by consuming alcohol. -
Ida B Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs
Trying to organize African-American groups across the United States, in 1896, Ida B. Wells founded the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the National Afro-American Council. -
Theodore Roosevelt took office and action of his Square Deal Policy
The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program formed upon three basic ideas: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.[1] These three demands are often referred to as the "three C's" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The Coal strike of 1902, also known as the anthracite coal strike, was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. -
The United States Department of Commerce and Labor Created
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 Passed
The Elkins Act is a 1903 United States federal law that amended the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Act authorized the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to impose heavy fines on railroads that offered rebates, and upon the shippers that accepted these rebates. The railroad companies were not permitted to offer rebates. Railroad corporations, their officers, and their employees, were all made liable for discriminatory practices. -
Lincoln Steffens "The Shame of the Cities"
Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine.[1] It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major U.S. cities, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, though Steffens later claimed that this work made him "the first muckraker."[2] -
Northern Securities Case Decided
The 1904 Northern Securities case was a federal prosecution in which President Roosevelt ordered the Department of Justice to take the Northern Securities Company to court for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act in his “trust-busting” efforts to break up Big business monopolies. -
Ida Tarbell's "The History of the Standard Oil Company"
The History of the Standard Oil Company was an expose of the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history. Originally serialized in 19 parts in McClure's magazine, the book was a seminal example of muckraking, and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust laws in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries. -
Robert M La Follette began serving in the Senate
Robert M. La Follette was a charismatic politician who created major innovations in public policy. He was the recognized leader of the Progressive Moment. -
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair published
The Jungle is a 1906 novel written 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. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Pure Food and Drug Act as well as the Meat Inspection Act after Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, an expose of the meatpacking industry. -
Meat Inspection Act Passed
The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded livestock and derived products as food and ensured that livestock were slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in US history. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party. It was formed by former President Theodore Roosevelt, after a split in the Republican Party between him and President William Howard Taft.The party also became known as the Bull Moose Party after journalists quoted Roosevelt saying "I feel like a bull moose" shortly after the new party was formed. -
17th Amendment Ratified
Passed by Congress May 13, 1912, and ratified April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment modified Article I, section 3, of the Constitution by allowing voters to cast direct votes for U.S. Senators. Prior to its passage, Senators were chosen by state legislatures. -
Underwood Tariff Ratified
The Underwood Tariff re-imposed the federal income tax following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates from 40% to 25%, well below the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909. It was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on October 3, 1913, and was sponsored by Alabama Representative Oscar Underwood. -
The Federal Reserve Act Ratified
The Federal Reserve Act is an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and granted it the legal authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes (the U.S. Dollar) and Federal Reserve Bank Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. -
Federal Trade Commission Act
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, during Woodrow Wilson's president -
The Clayton Antitrust Act Ratified
The Clayton Antitrust Act 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 anticompetitive practices in their incipiency. That regime started with the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, the first Federal law outlawing practices considered harmful to consumers (monopolies, cartels, and trusts). -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act Ratified
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, mines that employed children younger than sixteen, and any facility where children under two worked at night or more than 48 hours daily. -
Margaret Higgins Sanger opened birth control clinic
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. -
18th Amendment Ratified
The Eighteenth Amendment of the US Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol (though not the consumption or private possession) illegal. -
19th Amendment Ratified
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.
