Unit 3: Chapter 11

A political debate produced many plans for bringing about progress. Hence, historians refer to the period from about 1890 to 1920 as the Progressive Era.

Journalists such as Upton Sinclair played a key role in alerting the public to wrongdoing in politics and business. Theodore Roosevelt called such writers muckrakers. A muckrake is a rake or pitchfork used to clean manure and hay out of stables.

If unions succeeded in forming, business leaders could often count on courts to issue injunctions, court orders that prohibit a certain activity.

Progressives also believed that government ought to increase its responsibility for the welfare, or well-being, of people. They sought more social welfare programs, which help ensure a minimum standard of living.

Many of the earliest Progressive reforms were made at the city, or municipal, level.

Some municipal reformers worked for home rule, a system that gives cities a limited degree of self-rule. Home rule allowed cities to escape domination by state governments controlled by political machines or by business or rural interests.

In Wisconsin, reform governor Robert M. La Follette instituted a direct primary, an election in which citizens vote to select nominees for upcoming elections.

Many states also instituted the initiative, a process in which citizens can put a proposed new law directly on the ballot in the next election by collecting voters' signatures on a petition.

Another lawmaking reform was the referendum, a process that allows citizens to approve or reject a law passed by the legislature.

The recall procedure permits voters to remove public officials from office before the next election.

Northern Securities was a holding company, a firm that buys up stocks and bonds of smaller companies.

Taft's choice for Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, angered conservationists, people who favor the protection of natural resources. Ballinger opposed conservation policies on federal lands in the West, siding with business interests that sought unrestricted development.

He called for business regulation, welfare laws, workplace protection for women and children, income and inheritance taxes, and voting reform. TR called his plan the New Nationalism.

With Wilson's guidance, in 1914 Congress passed the Clayton Antitrust Act to strengthen the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Instead of simply making trusts illegal, as the Sherman Act had done, the Clayton Act spelled out specific activities that big businesses could not do.

To enforce the Clayton Act and set up fair-trade laws, in 1914 Wilson and the Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC was given the power to order firms to "cease and desist" the practice of business tactics found to be unfair.

Civil disobedience is a nonviolent refusal to obey a law in an effort to change it.

In 1890, veteran leaders of the suffrage movement, including Anthony, Stanton, and Lucy Stone, were joined by younger leaders in forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).