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John Dewey
John Dewey, (born Oct. 20, 1859, Burlington, Vt., U.S.—died June 1, 1952, New York, N.Y.), American philosopher and educator who was a founder of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, a pioneer in functional psychology, and a leader of the progressive movement in education in the United States. -
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio. After Frances Willard took over leadership in 1879, the WCTU became one of the largest and most influential women’s groups of the 19th century by expanding its platform to campaign for labor laws, prison reform and suffrage -
Interstate Commerce Act
In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, making the railroads the first industry subject to Federal regulation. Congress passed the law largely in response to public demand that railroad operations be regulated. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
Approved July 2, 1890, 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 Woman Suffrage Association
The two competing national suffrage organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association—lasted over two decades. Suffragists worked to mend the split from the start, but were unsuccessful. Alice Stone Blackwell, the daughter of the American association leader Lucy Stone, spearheaded successful negotiations to merge the two groups in 1890. -
How the Other Half Lives
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (1890) is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. -
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells (July 16, 1862 to March 25, 1931), better known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice. -
Anti-Saloon League
The Anti Saloon League, founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio began life as a state organization. Its first offices were in Columbus, Ohio; in 1909, the League moved to nearby Westerville, Ohio where it also operated the American Issue Publishing Company. -
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene V. Debs, in full Eugene Victor Debs, (born November 5, 1855, Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S.—died October 20, 1926, Elmhurst, Illinois), labour organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920. -
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. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. -
Elkins Act
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. -
Department of Commerce and Labor
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. The United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor was the head of the department. -
The Jungle
The Jungle is a novel written in 1904 by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968).[1] Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
In Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197 (1904), the U.S. Supreme Court held that a holding company formed to create a railroad monopoly violated the Sherman Antitrust Law. The government’s victory in the case helped solidify President Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a “trustbuster.” -
Square Deal Policy
The Square Deal was Theodore Roosevelt's domestic policy based on three basic ideas: protection of the consumer, control of large corporations, and conservation of natural resources. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
Excerpt from the Pure Food and Drug Act. An Act— For preventing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines, and liquors, and for regulating traffic therein, and for other purposes. -
Meat Inspection Act
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA) 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. -
Ida Tarbell
Tarbell’s association with McClure’s lasted until 1906. She wrote for American Magazine, which she also co-owned and coedited, from 1906 to 1915, the year the magazine was sold. -
Lincoln Steffens
Steffens began his career as a journalist at the New York Evening Post. He later became an editor of McClure's magazine, where he became part of a celebrated muckraking trio with Ida Tarbell and Ray Stannard Baker.He specialized in investigating government and political corruption, and two collections of his articles were published as The Shame of the Cities (1904) and The Struggle for Self-Government (1906). -
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.[1] The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and 23 men[2] – who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
The Progressive Party was 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. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 established the Federal Reserve System as the central bank of the United States to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. The law sets out the purposes, structure, and functions of the System as well as outlines aspects of its operations and accountability. Congress has the power to amend the Federal Reserve Act, which it has done several times over the years. -
17th Amendment
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures. -
Underwood Tariff
The Revenue Act of 1913, also known as the Tariff Act, the Underwood Tariff, the Underwood Act, the Underwood Tariff Act, or the Underwood-Simmons Act (ch. 16, 38 Stat. 114, October 13, 1913), re-imposed the federal income tax after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates -
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 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 anticompetitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. It is headquartered in the Federal Trade Commission Building in Washington, D.C. -
Clayton Antitrust Act
Clayton Antitrust Act, law enacted in 1914 by the United States Congress to clarify and strengthen the Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). The vague language of the latter had provided large corporations with numerous loopholes, enabling them to engage in certain restrictive business arrangements that, though not illegal per se, resulted in concentrations that had an adverse effect on competition -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins, September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee) 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.[2] -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
Congress drafted the Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 as a means to regulate youth labor. This Act was named for its sponsors, Democratic Representatives Edward Keating and Robert Latham Owen. The Act prohibited the shipment or delivery for shipment for interstate or foreign sale of any goods or services that were produced by laborers under the age of 14 in a factory, shop or cannery and under the age of 16 in a mine. -
18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment (Amendment XVIII) of the United States Constitution established the prohibition of "intoxicating liquors" in the United States. The amendment was proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and was ratified by the requisite number of states on January 16, 1919. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment on December 5, 1933. -
19th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. -
Robert La Follette
Robert Marion La Follette Sr. (June 14, 1855 – June 18, 1925) was an American lawyer and politician. He represented Wisconsin in both chambers of Congress and served as the Governor of Wisconsin. A Republican for most of his career, he ran for President of the United States as the nominee of his own Progressive Party in the 1924 presidential election.
