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Northern Security Antitrust
The Roosevelt administration brings an antitrust suit against the Northern Securities Company, which bankers have created in order to pool the holdings of the largest railroad tycoons. -
Coal Miner Strike
Anthracite coal miners go on strike in Pennsylvania, protesting the deplorable working conditions of the mines and in the mining towns. -
Elkins Act
Congress passes the Elkins Act, which is intended to strengthen the Interstate Commerce Act. The Elkins Act makes it a crime for railroads to grant freight rates other than those which they have published. Railroad companies themselves have lobbied for this regulation because most are tired of the rebating practice. With rebates, some rail lines—especially the larger ones—grant off-the-books discounts to important customers. These special customers are usually trusts who demand s -
The Jungle
Socialist author Upton Sinclair publishes The Jungle, a sensationally graphic account of the meatpacking industry in Chicago's stockyards. Sinclair is trying to raise public awareness of corporate corruption and the deplorable conditions in which poor workers toil, but most of the resulting public outcry instead centers on demand for more food safety provisions. -
Hepburn Act
The Hepburn Act is passed at President Roosevelt's behest, expanding the powers of the ICC beyond railroads to express companies and other forms of transportation (like ferries, sleeping-car companies, etc.). The ICC can now reduce rates that it finds unreasonable. -
Meat Inspection
On the same day as it passes the Pure Food and Drug Act, Congress also approves its second Meat Inspection law to date. The U.S. Drug Administration must inspect all animals destined for human consumption—cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and swine—before they are slaughtered. Carcasses are subject to post-mortem inspections and slaughterhouses and processing plants must uphold cleanliness standards. -
Food and Drug Act
Congress passes the Pure Food and Drug Act in response to exposés of the patent-drug, meatpacking, and food industries. -
Muller v. Oregon
In Muller v. Oregon, the Supreme Court holds that Oregon can constitutionally pass a law limiting women's work in factories and laundries to ten hours a day. The Court has allowed states to regulate child labor within their borders, but until now, it has taken a more restrictive approach to laws concerning the conditions of adult female workers because it used to consider such regulations to be violations of adult employees' freedom of contract. The Muller decision -
Taft Wins
President Roosevelt chooses Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor. Taft secures the Republican nomination and wins the presidency against Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan in November. -
Progressive Movement
The word "Progressive" enters common parlance as a description of the burgeoning political movement that seeks to reform various aspects of American society and politics. -
Mann-Elkins Act
The Mann-Elkins Act is passed in order to strengthen the Interstate Commerce Commission. -
Standard Oil Antitrust
The Taft administration uses the Sherman Antitrust Act to act against the Standard Oil trust and the American Tobacco Company. -
Department of Labor
The Taft administration creates the Department of Labor. -
Wilson Elected
With the Republican vote split between Taft and Progressive candidate Roosevelt, the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson is elected president. Wilson only polls a plurality of the popular vote (41.9%), but a commanding electoral majority of 435. Roosevelt embarrasses the incumbent Taft by winning 27.4% of the votes to his 23.2%. Socialist Eugene V. Debs wins 6% of all votes cast, or just over 900,000 people. -
Sixteenth Amendment
The Sixteenth Amendment is ratified, empowering Congress to levy income taxes. -
Federal Trade Commission Act
Wilson signs the Federal Trade Commission Act, creating the five-person Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to regulate businesses and investigate possible violations of antitrust laws. Like the ICC (its predecessor), the FTC gradually succumbs to the influence of the very businesses it is supposed to regulate. -
Progressive Movement
Benjamin P. DeWitt, a twenty-four-year-old professor of English and government at New York University, publishes The Progressive Movement, his only book. It seeks to offer (as its subtitle stipulates) a "non-partisan, comprehensive discussion of current tendencies in American politics" and is an instant success.1 -
Wilson Reelected
Woodrow Wilson is successfully reelected after campaigning with the slogan "He kept us out of war."2