APUSH - Chapter 28

Social Gospel

A reform movement led by Protestant ministers who used religious doctrine to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor. It brought middle-class, Anglo-American service volunteers into contact with immigrants and working people.

muckrakers

Reporters wrote articles that exposés corruption in American society. Their subjects included business manipulation of government, white slavers, child labor, and the illegal deeds of the trusts and helped spur the passage of reform legislation.

Initiative

A progressive reform measure allowing voters to petition to have a law placed on the general ballot.

Referendum

A progressive reform procedure allowing voters to place a bill on the ballot for final approval, even after being passed by the legislature.

Recall

A progressive ballot procedure allowing voters to remove elected officials from office.

Australian Ballot

A system that allows voters privacy in marking their ballot choices.

Muller v. Oregon

A Supreme Court case in which Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of limiting the hours of women workers.

Lochner v. New York

A setback for labor reformers, this Supreme Court decision invalidated a state law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company

Fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City, resulting in 146 worker deaths. Made people create more fire safety rules.

Elkins Act

Law passed by Congress to impose penalties on railroads that offered rebates and customers who accepted them.

Meat Inspection Act

A law passed by Congress to subject meat shipped over state lines to federal inspection. Came after seeing the truth of meat processing.

Pure Food and Drug Act

A law passed by Congress to inspect and regulate the labeling of all foods and pharmaceuticals intended for human consumption. This is to make sure we know what we are eating.

Hetch Hetchy Valley

The federal government allowed the city of San Francisco to build a dam here in 1913.

panic of 1907

A financial panic that gripped the United States in October 1907, triggering widespread bankruptcies and causing the stock market to lose half its value from the previous year.

Brownsville Affair

Two white men were shot and Texas, blamed the African-American soldiers from the segregated 25th Infantry Regiment.

dollar diplomacy

Diplomacy influenced by economic considerations. Mostly by Taft

Payne-Aldrich Bill

While intended to lower tariff rates, this bill was eventually revised beyond all recognition, retaining high rates on most imports.

New Nationalism

State-interventionist reform program devised by journalist Herbert Croly and advocated by Theodore Roosevelt during his Bull Moose presidential campaign.

New Freedom

Platform of reforms advocated by Woodrow Wilson in his first presidential campaign, including stronger antitrust legislation to protect small business enterprises from monopolies, banking reform, and tariff reductions.

Ida Tarbell

Famous woman in the muckraking movement and one of the most respected business historians of her generation. Published "Mother of Trusts" which reveals the history of the Standard Oil Company

Henry Demarest Lloyd

A muckraking journalist and reform leader whose book Wealth Against Commonweath (1894) excoriated the sins of the Standard Oil Company.

Thorstien Veblen

An eccentric Norwegian American economist who savagely attacked "predatory wealth" and "conspicuous consumption" in his most important book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).

Eugene V. Debs

American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five times the candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States.

Jacob A. Riis

Danish-born police reporter and pioneering photographer who exposed the ills of tenement living in his 1890 book illustrated with powerful photographs, How the Other Half Lives. His work led to the establishment of "model tenements" in New York City.

Robert M. La Follete

La Follette was one of the most militant of the progressive Republican leaders.

Florence Kelley

A tireless crusader for women’s and labor rights, Kelley was Illinois’s first chief factory inspector and a leader of the National Consumers League, an organization dedicated to improving working conditions for women and children.

Frances E. Willard

This pious leader of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union wished to eliminate the sale of alcohol and thereby "make the world more homelike."

Gifford Pinchot

A friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Pinchot was the head of the federal Division of Forestry and a noted conservationist who wanted to protect, but also use, the nation’s natural resources, such as forests and rivers.

John Muir

This noted naturalist split with conservationists like Gifford Pinchot by trying to protect natural "temples" like the Hetch Hetchy Valley from development. In 1892 he founded the Sierra Club, which is now one of the most influential conservation organizations in the United States. His writings and philosophy shaped the formation of the modern environmental movement.

Herbert Croly

Political thinker and journalist whose book The Promise of American Life (1910) influenced the New Nationalist reform platform of Theodore Roosevelt.