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Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union 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
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 is 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 federal law passed in 1890 that committed the American government to opposing monopolies. The law prohibits contracts, combinations, or conspiracies “in the restraint of trade or commerce.” -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was formed on February 18, 1890 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
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York is an early publication of photojournalism by Jacob Riis, documenting squalid living conditions in New York City slums in the 1880s. -
Anti-Saloon League
The Anti Saloon League, founded in 1893 in Oberlin, Ohio began life as a state organization. ... The League was a non-partisan organization that focused on the single issue of prohibition. The League had branches across the United States to work with churches in marshalling resources for the prohibition fight. -
Anthracite coal strike
The Coal strike of 1902 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. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. , was 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. -
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 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. This organization's main purpose is to create jobs, promote economic growth, encourage sustainable development and improve standards of living for all Americans. -
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
The Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 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. -
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. also to expose the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry. His description of diseased, rotten, and contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws. -
Square Deal Policy
The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt's domestic program. He explained in 1910: ... Roosevelt reflected three basic goals: conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection. These three demands are often referred to as the "three C's" of Roosevelt's Square Deal. -
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 US history. The tragedy, killing 146 workers, brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers. -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
Roosevelt struck out on his own and formed the first Progressive Party, saying he was as fit as a bull moose, from which came the colloquial name "Bull Moose Party." His platform called for tariff reform, stricter regulation of industrial combinations, women's suffrage, prohibition of child labor, and other reforms. -
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
Congressional measure to provide the a substantial reduction of rates, and the first ever implementation of a graduated income tax on incomes $3000+ -
Federal Reserve Act
It was created by the Congress to provide the nation with a safer, more flexible, and more stable monetary and financial system. The Federal Reserve was created on December 23, 1913, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act into law. -
Clayton Antitrust Act
The Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, 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. -
Federal Trade Commission
a federal agency, established in 1914, that administers antitrust and consumer protection legislation in pursuit of free and fair competition in the marketplace. -
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 years of age. -
18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution effectively established the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal. -
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. -
Robert La Follette
Robert M. La Follette was an American Republican and politician who is best known as a proponent of progressivism and a fierce opponent to corporate power. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Governor of Wisconsin and a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin during his career. -
Eugene V. Debs
Eugene Victor 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. -
Ida B. Wells
Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, 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
Lincoln Joseph Steffens was 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
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 Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, Georgist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey believed that human beings learn through a 'hands-on' approach. This places Dewey in the educational philosophy of pragmatism. Pragmatists believe that reality must be experienced. -
Margaret Sanger
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.
