Progressive Era - People of Interest

Theodore Roosevelt

President after William McKinley was assassinated
Jobs - Civil service member, NY police commissioner, Governor of NY, cowboy, war hero, Secretary of Navy, & VP (Harvard graduate)
Major Life Events -
1.Asmathic; doctors thought he wouldn’t live very long 2. Death of wife and mother on same day; daughter born that day too (wife’s C.o.D)

William McKinley

Assassinated in 1901

Robert Lafollette

Reformer from wisconsin; governor & congress (both); big on democracy & helping the people

Eugene Debs

leader of the labor movement, Eugene Debs opposed Woodrow Wilson as the Socialist Party candidate in the 1912 presidential election | (Debs v. US? - SCOTUS)

Booker T. Washington

Advisor to Rossevelt; born a slave & started the Tuskegee Institute

W.E.B. Dubois

NAACP; first African American to receive a Ph.D. (advocate for women’s rights)

Upton Sinclair

Muckraker (wrote “The Jungle”); exposed unsanitary conditions of meatpacking faculties - this led to federal food safety laws

William Howard Taft

Didn’t want to be President; loved the law
Jobs - SC of Ohio, Governor of the Philippines & AFTER on SCOTUS
Negatives - 1. Didn’t challenge the Speaker of the House (Joe Cannon); Cannon blocked leg.
2. They pushed for change Tariffs; he promised to lower but raised it while in office
3. Conservation; wanted to give the land that was reserved for Nat. Parks to logging. This caused conflict between him & Roosevelt - split Republican party

John Muir

famous naturalist and conservationist

William Jennings Bryan

Ran for president 6 times; lost every time

Woodrow Wilson

28th President; a leader of the Progressive Movement | very well educated; prohibited child labor, limited railroad workers to an eight-hour day

Ida Tarbell

Muckraker that wrote “The History if the Standard Oil Company”, attacked Rockeffeller’s corrupt business practices; part of the NAACP

Lincoln Stephens

Muckraker that wrote “The Shame of the Cities”, book about gov. corruption in cities