U.S. Progressive Era and Social Reforms: Trust Busting, Amendments, and Movements

Trust Busting

Breaking up large business monopolies (trusts)

Muckraking

Journalists who dig into corporate and government corruption and report the facts to help create change.

Sherman Anti-Trust Act

Law that made it illegal for companies to become monopolies or unfairly control markets.

17th Amendment

People vote directly for senators instead of state legislatures picking them.

18th Amendment

Prohibition, banning the sale and consumption of Alcohol.

19th Amendment

Women get the right to vote.

Labor Unions

Organizations formed by workers to protect their rights and improve working conditions.

What conditions were labor unions fighting for?

Higher wages, Shorter hours, and Better working conditions.

Yellow Dog Contract

Businesses made workers pledge not to join unions.

Black List

Had names of union workers and organizers; businesses wouldn't hire these people.

Jane Addams

A reformer who created Hull House to help poor immigrants and improve living conditions in cities.

Hull House

A settlement house in Chicago that helped poor immigrants by offering education, job training, and social services.

Temperance

A movement to reduce or ban alcohol because people believed it was causing major social problems.

Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

A women's group that fought to ban alcohol and also supported broader social reforms like women's voting rights.

Carrie Nation

Temperance worker who became famous for destroying saloons with rocks and bricks and eventually hatchets mostly around Kansas.

Prohibition

Ban on alcohol in the U.S.

Why did prohibition fail in the United States?

People still wanted alcohol; illegal drinking continued and crimes increased.

Populism

Political movement of farmers and working class.

Plessy vs. Ferguson

Supreme Court case that legalized racial segregation in the United States by upholding the 'separate but equal'.

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; fought segregation and racism.

W.E.B. DuBois

Leader of NAACP, immediate equality and education for Black Americans.

Booker T. Washington

African American leader who wanted vocational education and gradual equality.

Progressive Presidents

Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson.

Teddy Roosevelt

Became president in 1901 after McKinley is assassinated and was a 'Trust-buster' (broke monopolies).

William Howard Taft

Continued trust-busting; limited power of big business, added land to national forests.

Woodrow Wilson

Wilson was governor of New Jersey and served as President of Princeton University for a while.

WWI

1914-1918; The U.S. is neutral for the first few years of the war.

Isolationism

U.S. policy of not being involved in the affairs of other nations.

Sinking of the Lusitania

Cruising ship that contributed to U.S. involvement in WWI.

President William McKinley

McKinley was assassinated, and Teddy became president in 1901; he was the youngest president ever at age 42.

Bull Moose Party

Created by Theodore Roosevelt and split from Republicans.

Election of 1912

Woodrow Wilson wins because Republican vote split between Taft and Roosevelt.