TaftFrom Progressive to Conservative

From Shoe In to Shown Out!

• Hand picked by TR to become president in 1908 and continue on TR’s agenda (programs)

• Busted 90 trusts in his 4 year term

• Problems• Conservation –

Ballinger/Pinchot Affair led to a loss of trust among his progressive following because he fired a famous progressive conservationist

• Tariffs – lost support from both conservatives and progressives by passing tariff (Payne-Aldrich) that hurt consumers and business leaders

Election of 1912How Wilson won w/ only 42%!

Teddy Roosevelt (Progressive) – Bull Moose Party

• New Nationalism

• Abandonment of laissez faire

• Federal Trade Commission

• Minimum wage

• Child labor ban

• Workers’ compensation

• Women’s suffrage

• Government mediation of labor disputes

Woodrow Wilson (Democrat)

• New Freedom

• Against “Triple Wall of Privilege”• Banks

• Tariff

• Trusts

“Don’t interfere when your enemy is destroying itself.”

William Howard Taft (R)

• Quiet Confidence

• Becomes the conservative representative

• Gerrymandering plays into his favor, and against TR’s

Results of 1912 Election

• 6.2 million for Wilson (42%)

• 4.1 million for Roosevelt

• 3.4 million for Taft

Wilson’s 1st Two Years

• Lowered tariff

• Federal Reserve Act

• Clayton Anti-Trust Act

• Progressives win big in midterm elections

Accomplishments

• Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 – strengthened Sherman Antitrust

• Federal Trade Commission – Watchdog of corporations so they wouldn’t abuse the working class.

• 16th Amendment – Federal Income Tax; larger incomes taxed at larger rates

• Federal Reserve System – creates basis, to this day, of the nations’ banking system

Wilson Limits Progressive Goals

WWI ends the Progressive Era – US to busy fighting

Appointed segregationists to run federal agencies which resulted in a segregated military and

federal govt

Despite promising to promote anti-lynching laws and equality for Af-Am during his campaign, he had segregation re-instated at the capital once

elected and said lynching was a state issue

Know :

• Referendum, initiative, and recall

• 16, 17, 18 & 19th Amendments

• WEB DuBois v. Booker T. Washington

• NAACP

• Ballinger v. Pinchot

• John Muir, conservation, preservation & National Parks