Essential Question
- What is the government’s role in solving society’s problems
Taft Takes Over
- Theodore Roosevelt pledges not to run for a third term - handpicks his secretary of War, William Howard Taft as the Republican party Candidate.
- Taft defeated William Jennings Bryan (Democrat) in the 1908 election
- Cautiously Progressive Agenda - sought to consolidate rather than expand Roosevelt’s reforms.
- Broke apart more than 90 trusts in his 4 year term
The Payne-Aldrich Tariff
- Taft Campaigned on a platform of lowering tariffs.
- Payne-Aldrich Tariff compromised that only moderated the high interest rates on imported manufactured goods.
- Progressives begin to believe that Taft has abandoned progressivism
Disputing Public Lands
- Taft appoints lawyer Richard Ballinger as Secretary of the Interior
- Ballinger dissaproved of conservationist controls on western land
- Gifford Pinchot, Roosevelt’s Director of the US Forest Service, accused Ballinger of letting commercial interest exploit the national resources that rightfully belonged to the public.
- President Taft sided with Ballinger and fired Pinchot from the US Forest Service
The Rise of the Bull-Moose Party
- Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” Bull Moose Party
- Federal government exerts its power for the “welfare of the people”
- Election of 1912
- Bull Moose Party - Progressive Republicans - Theodore Roosevelt
- Republicans - Incumbent William Howard Taft
- Democrats - Reform governor of New Jersey Woodrow Wilson
Wilson’s Key Antitrust Measures
- Clayton Antitrust Act - Prohibited corporations from acquiring the stock of another if doing so would create a monopoly
- Guaranteed labor unions and farm organizations right to exist.
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC) - watchdog agency that investigated possible violations of regulatory statutes.
New Tax System and the Federal Reserve
- 1913 Underwood Act- reduced tariff rates for the first time since the Civil War
- So how will the US make up for lost revenue?
- Federal Income Tax - 16th Amendment
- Legalized federal income tax on individual earning and corporate profits
- Federal Reserve System - Set up 12 districts within the US with a regional centrla bank in each district
- Strengthened the ways in which banks were run
- Allowed government to quickly adjust the money supply
Progressive Era Amendments
- 16 - Federal Income Tax
- 17 - Direct Election of Senators hello
- 18 - Prohibition
- 19 - Womens Suffrage