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Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
an active temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform -
Interstate Commerce Act
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 Antitrust Act
a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law (or "competition law") passed by Congress in 1890 under the presidency of Benjamin Harrison -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
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 (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). -
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. -
Anti-Saloon League
was the leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century -
Anthracite Coal Strike
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
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
a short-lived Cabinet department of the United States government, which was concerned with controlling the excesses of big business -
Northern Securities Antitrust
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
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
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
novel written by the American journalist and novelist Upton Sinclair (1878–1968). Sinclair wrote the novel to portray the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the United States in Chicago and similar industrialized cities. His primary purpose in describing the meat industry -
Square Deal Policy
Theodore Roosevelt's domestic policy based on three basic ideas: protection of the consumer, control of large corporations, and conservation of natural resources. -
Triangle Shirtwaist 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 US history -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
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
so that 'the Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years...' -
Underwood Tariff
re-imposed the federal income tax after the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates from 40% to 25% -
Federal Reserve Act
an Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System (the central banking system of the United States), and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes -
Clayton Antitrust Act
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 -
Federal Trade Commission
an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
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 -
19th Amendment
prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex -
18th Amendment
effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal -
Robert La Follette
an American Republican and Progressive politician. He represented Wisconsin in both chambers of Congress and served as the Governor of Wisconsin -
Eugene V. Debs
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 -
Ida B. Wells
more commonly known as Ida B. Wells, was an African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, feminist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. -
Lincoln Steffens
a New York reporter who 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 -
Ida Tarbell
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 Dewey
an American philosopher, psychologist, Georgist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform -
Margaret Sanger
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
