APUSH Period 7 Reading Notes

Progressives

Believed that society was capable of improvement and that continued advancement was the nation’s destiny

Muckrakers

Crusading journalists who began to direct public attention toward social economic, and political injustices

Charles Francis Adams Jr.

Muckraker that uncovered corruption among railroad barons

Ida Tarbell

Produced a study on the Standard Oil Trust

Lincoln Steffens

Portrayed machine government and boss rule in cities

Social Justice

A movement that seeks justice for whole groups or societies

Social Gospel

The effort to make faith a tool of social reform; the movement was chiefly concerned with redeeming the nation’s cities

Settlement Houses

Helped immigrant families adapt to the language and customs of America

Jane Addams

Made Hull House, a famous settlement house

Thorstein Veblen

Proposed a new economic system in which power would reside in the hands of highly trained engineers

American Medical Association

Association that called for strict, scientific standards for admission to the practice of medicine

National Farm Bureau Federation

Network of agricultural organizations designed to spread scientific farming methods

Boston marriages

Lesbian relationships between reformers in secrecy

Social Security System

Provided pensions to widowed or abandoned mothers with small children

Children’s Bureau

Bureau directed to develop policies to protect children

Nineteenth Amendment

Guaranteed voting rights to women

Secret ballots

Ballots that allowed for anyone to be elected without the supervision of political bosses

Nonpartisan commissions

Elected in replacement of mayors in many cities

City managers

Professionals hired to take charge of city government

Seventeenth Amendment

Transferred the right to elect U.S. senators from the state legislatures to ordinary voters

Initiative

Allowed reformers to bypass state legislatures by submitting new legislation directly to the voters in general elections

Referendum

Provided a method by which actions of legislature could be put to the electorate for approval.

Direct Primary Election

An attempt to remove the selection of candidates from the bosses and give it to the people

Recall

Gave voters the right to remove a public official from a special election, which could be called after a sufficient number of citizens had signed a petition

Robert M. La Fallete

Governor of Wisconsin and most celebrated state-level reformer

Interest Groups

Other power centers replacing a portion of Democrat and Republican power

Tammany Hall

New York political machine led by Charles Francis Murphy

Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Fire swept through it, led to multiple regulations and reforms on labor laws

Booker T. Washington

Encouraged black men and women to work for immediate self-improvement rather than long-range social change

WEB Du Bois

Launched an open attack on the philosophy of Washington, accusing him of encouraging white efforts to sustain segregation and limit aspirations of his race

Niagara Movement

Movement that encouraged talented blacks to accept nothing less than a full university education and aspire to the professsions

Ida B Wells-Barnett

Worked with the National Association of Colored Women and Women’s Convention of the National Baptist Church to try expose lynching and challenge segregation

Temperance movement

Movement that wanted to prohibit the sale and manufacturing of alcohol

Anti-Saloon League

League that pressed for the legal abolition of saloons as a step toward eradicating drinking altogether

Eighteenth Amendment

Prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages

Eugenics

Began as the science of altering the reproductive process of plants and animals to produce new hybrids and breeds. Grew to be the belief that human inequalities were hereditary and that immigration was contributing to the multiplication of the “unfit”

Industrial Workers of the World

Radical labor Union that wanted reform through military action. Known to opponents as the “Wobblies” and led by William “Big Bill” Haywood

McKinley

President that was shot by Leon Czolgosz, Theodore Roosevelt took his place

Theodore Roosevelt

President who promoted cautious moderate change. Known as the “trust buster”

The Square Deal

Roosevelt’s domestic program, which reflected his three major goals: conservation of natural resources, corporate law, and consumer protection

Election of 1904

Election in which Roosevelt won through promoting the Square Deal

Pure Food and Drug Act

Restricted the sale of dangerous or ineffective medicines

The Jungle

Book that included appalling descriptions of conditions in the meatpacking industry. Led to the Meat Inspection Act

Meat Inspection Act

Act that helped eliminate many diseases once transmitted in impure meat

Conservationists

Promoted policies that protected land for carefully managed development

National Reclamation Act

Act that used funds raised by the sale of public lands in the west for the construction of dams, reservoirs, and canals; projects that would “reclaim” arid lands for cultivation and later provide cheap electric power

Naturalists

People committed to protecting the natural beauty of the land and health of its wildlife

John Muir

Nation’s leading preservationist and founder of the Sierra Club

National Park System

System that protected land from exploitation and development

Hetch Hetchy Valley

Valley in Yosemite National Park in San Francisco where people wanted to build a dam. After a devastating earthquake and fire, they gained enough support to build it

Gifford Pinchot

The first director of the US Forest Service, approved for the dam’s construction

Panic of 1907

Panic where Roosevelt acted quickly to reassure business leaders that he would not interfere with their recovery efforts

William Howard Taft

Assumed presidency in the Election of 1908 due to seeming acceptable to almost anyone

Payne-Aldriff Tariff

A Progressive Tariff during Taft’s Administration that barely reduced tariff rates

James R Garfield

Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior

Richard A Ballinger

Taft’s secretary of the interior

Louis Glavis

Person who charged Ballinger with having once connived to turn over valuable public coal lands in Alaska to a private syndicate for personal profit

New Nationalism

A set of principles which argued that social justice was possible only through a strong federal government whose executive acted as the “steward of the public welfare”

Bull Moose Party

New Progressive party launched by Roosevelt after he lost Republican candidacy to Taft.

Woodrow Wilson

Democratic candidate and progressive leader in the Election of 1912, won presidency

The New Freedom

Wilson’s presidential program that supported a progressive agenda

Edward M. House

Wilson’s most powerful advisor; held no office and only claim to superiority was his personal intimacy with the president

Underwood-Simmons Tariff

Progressives believed that this tariff provided cuts significant enough to introduce real competition into American markets and thus help break the power of trusts.

Sixteenth Amendment

Permitted the graduated income tax

The Federal Reserve Act

This act created a national currency and a monetary system that could respond effectively to the stresses in the banking system and create a stable financial system.

The Federal Trade Commission Act

This act created a regulatory agency that would help businesses determine in advance whether their actions would be acceptable to the government. The agency would also be able to launch prosecutions against “unfair trade practices” and would have wide power to investigate corporate behavior

The Clayton Antitrust Bill

Bill established during Wilson’s presidency that proposed stronger measures to break up trusts; was later greatly weakened by conservative assaults

Louis Brandeis

First Jew and most advanced progressive to serve in the Supreme Court

Keating-Owen Act

This act proposed during Wilson’s presidency prohibited shipment of goods produced by child labor across state-lines; Supreme Court struck it down

Smith-Lever Act

This act made during Wilson’s presidency offered matching federal grants to support agricultural extension education