The Age of Reform

Top 10 Facts

1. 1890 - National American Women's Suffrage Association is founded.

2. 1901 - President William McKinley is assassinated.

3. 1902 - Oregon adopts initiative system for proposing legislation.

4. 1904 - The National Child Labor committee is established.

5. 1905 - Industrial Workers of the World is founded.

6. 1913 - Sixteenth Amendment authorizes federal income taxes.

7. 1913 - Seventeenth Amendment provides for direct election of United States senators.

8. 1914 - Federal Trade Commission is passed.

9. 1914 - The Clayton Antitrust Act is passed.

10. 1920 - Nineteenth Amendment guarantees women the right to vote.

Quotes

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common,"

Industrial Workers of the World.

"Machine control is based upon misrepresentation and ignorance. Democracy is based on knowledge." Robert La Follette.

Summary

Robert Wiebe's said, "the search for order," was what America was all about at the turn of the century. The United States was becoming more urban, industrial, mechanized, centralized, and complex. The muckrakers were a group of people who hoped to slow this progressive movement by printing editorials in Atlantic Monthly and McClure's. Progressives sought to arouse the conscience of the people in order to purify American life. In 1900 labor leader Eugene V. Debs ran for president of the Socialist ticket. Political reform occurred in the cities with a city manager system. Then the states reformed by establishing commissions and agencies to handle such matters as railroad regulation, tax assessment, conservation, and highway construction. The leader of progressivism was the state of Wisconsin. State social legislation began to improve working conditions for laborers. Daily working hours were reduced for women and children. New laws were established which made employers provide suitable working conditions. Some places even initiated a minimum wage law. Political reform in Washington was led by the American Women's Suffrage Association which focused on making it legal for women to vote. The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution was written authorizing federal income taxes.

The Seventeenth Amendment was made requiring the popular election of senators. President William McKinley was shot in 1901 and died eight days later. Theodore Roosevelt became president and became known as a trustbuster. He tried to regulate big business by breaking down trusts. Roosevelt showed his authority when ordering coal strikers back to work in 1902. He was also known for his "square deal." William Howard

Taft became the next president. The Republican party was divided into the progressives

and the Old Guard. Woodrow Wilson came to the table in 1912 as the Democratic presidential candidate with the New Freedom platform.