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In 1912, Progressivism dominated national politics to the extent that the presidential election included three major candidates, each of whom promoted their brand of reform.
William Howard Taft, who succeeded Theodore Roosevelt as president in 1909, ran for reelection in 1912. Although he was 6 ft tall and weighed 340 lb, Taft had big shoes to fill (Roosevelt’s) when formulating a social reform program to follow the Square Deal.
In some ways, Taft continued and expanded Roosevelt’s reform program.
EXAMPLE
In 1910, Taft signed the Mann-Elkins Act, which extended the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to include telephone and telegraph communication.Taft did not possess Roosevelt’s negotiating skills and defined the “public good” differently from his predecessor. These differences became apparent during the Ballinger-Pinchot affair.
Taft’s Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, believed that Theodore Roosevelt had exceeded his executive authority in declaring significant tracts of Western land as national forests. In 1909, when Ballinger tried to transfer national forests in Alaska back to the public domain (where they would be available to mining and timber companies), Chief Forester Gifford Pinchot objected. He publicly criticized Ballinger for violating the principles of conservation and the public interest. In response, Taft fired Pinchot.
Taft’s actions in the Ballinger-Pinchot affair, along with his subsequent support of conservative Republicans in the 1910 midterm elections, created a rift with Progressives in his party, most notably with Former President Theodore Roosevelt. Despite this division, Taft won the Republican nomination for president in 1912. Roosevelt and other Progressives left the Republican Party and formed a new party—the Progressive Party—which nominated Roosevelt for president.
Realizing that a split of the Republican vote gave them a good chance of winning the White House for the first time since the 1890s, the Democrats nominated Woodrow Wilson, a former history professor and president of Princeton University and the current governor of New Jersey.
The presidential campaign focused on Roosevelt and Wilson, each of whom put forth competing Progressive platforms, known respectively as the New Nationalism and the New Freedom.
Wilson won the election. Roosevelt came in second; Taft was a distant third. The internal split in the party also cost Republicans control of the Senate (the Democrats already had a majority in the House), along with the White House. Even though Wilson won only 42% of the vote, the Democrats were well positioned to implement their legislative agenda.
Upon taking office in the spring of 1913, Wilson began to implement his Progressive agenda. Although his “New Freedom” platform called for a smaller government to protect the public interest, Wilson’s Progressivism led to an increase in the government’s size and scope.
His program consisted of the following elements:
EXAMPLE
The Federal Reserve System remains the basis for banking today. It provides flexibility to banking institutions and borrowers in times of recession and prosperity. When the economy needs a boost, the Fed can lower interest rates to encourage borrowing, which puts more money into circulation and promotes spending and investment. When increased borrowing leads to excessive speculation or inflation, the Fed can raise the rates to discourage further borrowing.In early 1914, the Wilson administration succeeded in passing the Clayton Antitrust Act, which regulated business and labor organizations as follows:
Important Progressive Reform Measures Associated With the Election of 1916 | |
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Federal Farm Act | Provided oversight of low-interest loans to millions of farmers in need of debt relief |
Keating-Owen Child Labor Act | Prohibited the interstate distribution of goods produced by child workers younger than 14 |
Adamson Act | Implemented a federally mandated 8-hour workday for railroad workers |
These reforms impressed key sectors of the voting public and helped Wilson win a second term in a close election in 1916. His victory, combined with reforms enacted during his first term and the broadening crisis of the First World War, seemed to indicate that the last wave of Progressivism was at hand. The first-term reforms had been wide-ranging, beginning with grassroots efforts and culminating in national reform legislation.
In some ways, Wilson’s Progressive reforms continued the work of his predecessors and contributed to the emergence of a new American state. Laws, agencies, commissions, experts, and officials now protected citizens from the excesses of modern industrialism and urbanization. They also mediated the relationships between competing interests—like business and labor, and producers and consumers. In contrast to the Gilded Age, when citizens stood alone when dealing with political machines and corporations, the government—local, state, and federal—in the Progressive Era supported them by solving problems and resolving conflicts.
Mobilization for the First World War was a major test for President Wilson and the Progressive government. After the United States entered the war in April 1917, the federal government began to intervene in the everyday affairs of citizens to a greater extent than ever before. For example, the United States needed a large army to effectively support the Allied Powers, so the government acted to meet this need.
To increase the size of America’s armed forces, Congress passed the Selective Service Act in 1917. The Act initially required all men aged 21 through 30 to register for the draft. In 1918, it was amended to include all men between 18 and 45.
Through a campaign of patriotic appeals, the federal government and private organizations encouraged young men to register with their local draft boards. On the first national registration day, over 10 million men signed up for the draft. Those who met the qualifications of the Selective Service Act but failed to register were referred to as “slackers” and were subject to arrest.
Progressive reformers used the war to advance what remained on the Progressive agenda. During the war, reformers sought to make use of government power—the same power that built the nation’s large new fighting force—to change American social behavior. One of the most notable results of this effort was Prohibition.
Prohibition had been a Progressive goal for decades. Organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League linked alcohol consumption to a number of societal problems. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they worked with municipalities and counties to limit or prohibit the sale and use of alcoholic beverages on a local level.
EXAMPLE
By 1908, local and state antiliquor laws affected approximately 33 million Americans.With U.S. entry into the First World War, advocates of a national Prohibition amendment to the Constitution saw an opportunity for federal support for reasons including the following:
American participation in the First World War also provided an impetus for one of the longest-lasting legacies of the Progressive Era: women’s suffrage. Like Prohibition, women’s suffrage was a major issue on the Progressive agenda. Significant strides had been made at the local and state levels prior to the war, particularly in the West.
When the United States entered the First World War, supporters of women’s suffrage, including Carrie Chapman Catt (president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association), pointed out the contradiction in Wilson’s promotion of war “to make the world safe for democracy.” Catt argued that Wilson and other opponents of women’s suffrage acted hypocritically in sending American men to die for democracy while depriving American women of the right to vote. Alice Paul of the National Woman’s Party organized protests outside the White House and, later, hunger strikes by those who were arrested for protesting on behalf of suffrage.
Lobbying and protests during the war, along with persistent pressure applied by Wilson’s suffragist daughter, Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre, convinced the President and many in Congress to support legislation granting women the right to vote throughout the nation. In June 1919, Congress passed an amendment to the Constitution. The states ratified it by August 1920.
The Nineteenth Amendment prohibited efforts to deny the right to vote on the basis of sex. It went into effect in time for women across the United States to vote in the presidential election of 1920.
Source: This tutorial curated and/or authored by Matthew Pearce, Ph.D with content adapted from Openstax “U.S. History”. access for free at openstax.org/details/books/us-history LICENSE: CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 4.0 INTERNATIONAL