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The 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. -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) 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 (NWSA) and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). -
Sherman Antitrust Act
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 -
Ida Tarbell
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. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
A strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners were on strike asking for higher wages, shorter workdays and the recognition of their union. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
The public was greatly alarmed by the formation of Northern Securities, which threatened to become the largest company in the world and monopolize railroad traffic in the western United States. President William McKinley, however, was not willing to pursue antitrust litigation against Hill. -
Lincoln Steffens
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. -
Square Deal Policy
Aimed at helping middle class citizens and involved attacking plutocracy and bad trusts while at the same time protecting business from the most extreme demands of organized labor. -
Elkins Act
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. The United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor was the head of the department. -
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 -
Anti-Saloon League
The leading organization lobbying for prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. -
Ida B. Wells
An African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, Georgist, and an early leader in the Civil Rights Movement. -
Meat Inspection Act
United States Congress Act that works to prevent adulterated or misbranded meat and meat products from being sold as food and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. -
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair's novel that inspired pro-consumer federal laws regulating meat, food, and drugs -
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. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
Deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in US history -
Progressive (Bull Moose) Party
Bull Moose Party, formally Progressive Party, U.S. dissident political faction that nominated former president Theodore Roosevelt for the presidency in 1912; the formal name and general objectives of the party were revived 12 years late -
17th Amendment
Established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states -
Underwood Tariff
reduced levies on manufactured and semi-manufactured goods and eliminated duties on most raw materials. Compensated for the loss of revenue, the act also levied a graduated income tax (made legal by ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment earlier that year) on U.S. residents. -
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. -
Federal Reserve Act
Act of Congress that created and established the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States, and granted it the legal authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes -
Clayton Antitrust Act
Provides further clarification and substance to the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. -
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act -
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act
Limited the working hours of children and forbade the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor. -
John Dewey
American philosopher, psychologist, Georgist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. -
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
First mass organization among women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity. -
19th Amendment
Prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. -
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 -
Robert La Follette
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette Sr. was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1906 to 1925 -
18th Amendment
The separate Volstead Act set down methods of enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which "intoxicating liquors" were prohibited, and which were excluded from prohibition.
