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Eugene V. Debs born
He entered politics as a Democratic City Clerk in 1879, and in 1885 he was elected to the Indiana State Assembly with broad support from Terre Haute’s workers and businessmen. Debs organized the American Railway Union, which waged a strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago in 1894. -
Ida Tarbell was born
Ida Minerva Tarbell was an American teacher, author and journalist. She was one of the leading "muckrakers" of the progressive era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is thought to have pioneered investigative journalism. -
John Dwewy Born
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, Georgist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. -
Lincoln Steffens born
Lincoln Joseph Steffens was a New York reporter who launched a series of articles in McClure's that would later be published together in a book titled The Shame of the Cities. -
Interstate Commerce Act
Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, making the railroads the first industry subject to Federal regulation. -
How the Other Half Lives
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. -
NAWSA
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed on February 18, 1890 to work for women's suffrage in the United States. -
Sherman Antiturst Act
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was the first Federal act that outlawed monopolistic business practices. -
Ida B. Wells is born
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. -
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. -
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. -
Square Deal Policy
Theodore Roosevelt became president in September 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley. Although he had been vice president under McKinley, Roosevelt did not share McKinley's conservative, pro-business policies. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The groundwork for the 1900 anthracite coal strike was laid by the unexpected results of strikes in the bituminous or soft coalfields in 1897. A depression in 1893 forced down wages and, according to a Pennsylvania legislative committee, many miners lived "like sheep in shambles." A spontaneous uprising had forced many mine owners to sign a contract with the United Mine Workers. Both sides struck a bonanza as operators raised both wages and prices. Coal companies prospered, and union membership -
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. -
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. -
Pure Food and Drug Act
The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was a key piece of Progressive Era legislation, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt on the same day as the Federal Meat Inspection Act. -
The Jungle
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. -
Triangle Shirtwaste Fire
he Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in US history. -
Progrssive ( 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 that he felt "fit as a bull moose" shortly after the new party was formed -
Underwood Tarrif Act
The United States Revenue Act of 1913 also known as the Tariff Act, Underwood Tariff, Underwood Act, Underwood Tariff Act, or Underwood-Simmons Act (ch. 16, 38 Stat. 114, October 3, 1913), 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 Under -
17th Ammendmant 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. -
Federal Reserve Act
It took many months and nearly straight party-line voting, but on December 23, 1913, the Senate passed and President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act. -
Federal Trade Commission
To prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers; to enhance informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process; and to accomplish this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity. -
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, mines that employed children younger than sixteen, and any facility where children under fourteen worked after 7:00 p.m. or before 6:00 a.m. or more than 8 hours daily. The basis for the action was the constitutional clause -
19th Ammendmant Ratified
Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote. The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote.