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Robert La Follette
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 socialist, political activist, trade unionist, 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 Tarbell
Known as the muckraker who cracked the oil trust. -
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, democratic socialist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of functional psychology. -
Ida B. Wells
In African-American journalist, abolitionist and feminist who led an anti-lynching crusade in the United States in the 1890s. She went on to found and become integral in groups striving for African-American justice. -
Lincoln Steffens
Lincolm Steffens Exposed William "Boss" Tweed by writing "Tweed Days in St.Louis." Muckrakers wanted to expose and reform the government. He studied at the University of California at Berkely. Lincoln Steffens had a huge impact on the Progressive Era. -
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is an active international temperance organization that was among the first organizations of 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." -
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 -
Interstate Commerce Act
With this act, the railroads became the first industry subject to Federal regulation. In 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, making the railroads the first industry subject to Federal regulation. Congress passed the law largely in response to public demand that railroad operations be regulated. -
Sherman Antitrust Act
Approved July 2, 1890, The Sherman Anti-Trust Act was 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. -
National American Woman Suffrage Association
The National American Woman Suffrage Association was an organization formed on February 18, 1890 to advocate in favor of 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 leading organization promoting National Prohibition in the U.S. It was a non-partisan political pressure group that began in 1893. A single-issue lobbying group, it had branches across the country. It worked with churches in marshaling resources for the prohibition fight. -
Square Deal Policy
Enacted through Theodore Roosevelt's presidency in the early 20th century, the Square Deal was a set of policies that attempted to prevent further labor abuses and improve workplace safety, protect the natural landscape, and improve the overall health and well-being of Americans. -
Anthracite Coal Strike
The unions were willing to negotiate but the coal miners refused to participate in the conciliation process until President Roosevelt intervened. The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 resulted in a victory for the hard-coal miners with a 10% increase in wages and an hours reduction in their working day. -
Northern Securities Antitrust
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 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. The United States Secretary of Commerce and Labor was the head of the department. -
The Jungle
The Jungle is a novel written in 1904 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. -
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. -
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. -
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory 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 U.S. history. -
The Progressive Party
The Progressive Party was 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
Established the popular election of United States Senators by the people of the states. -
Underwood Tariff
Its purpose was to reduce levies on manufactured and semi-manufactured goods and to eliminate duties on most raw materials. -
Federal Reserve Act
The Federal Reserve Act is an Act of Congress that created the Federal Reserve System, and which created the authority to issue Federal Reserve Notes as legal tender. The Act was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson -
Clayton Antitrust Act
An amendment, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1914, meant to further promote competition in U.S. businesses and discourage the formation of monopolies. This act prohibited price discrimination, price fixing, and exclusive sales contracts. -
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. Its principal mission is the promotion of consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anticompetitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. -
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 -
18th Amendment
The Eighteenth Amendment declared the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors illegal, though it did not outlaw the actual consumption of alcohol. Shortly after the amendment was ratified, Congress passed the Volstead Act to provide for the federal enforcement of Prohibition. -
19th Amendment
Provides men and women with equal voting rights. The amendment states that the right of citizens to vote "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
