Roosevelt And The Progressive Era

Time struck the 1900’s as the United States faced a roadblock, the industrialization era had just ended and with this came political and social problems. The United States had a choice, either take notice of the problems or continue on the downhill spiral that they had succumbed to. Although, Americans couldn’t breakout of this problem alone; they needed help from someone that would listen and rectify these issues. Thus, the era of Progressivism was born and the Progressive Presidents were introduced.

The first Progressive President was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt would set the basis for Progressivism and help guide America out of their abominable position and into correction. Roosevelt was part of the Republican Party and was elected in

Continuing, companies would neglect their laborers by invoking long work hours for minimum wage, ultimately, forcing workers to stay with the company as they had no other alternative. Roosevelt became to be known as a “trust-buster” for his efforts of destroying trusts that only caused harm, although, Roosevelt did believe in regulating trusts that helped the community unlike Wilson and Taft in which they wanted to destroy all trusts. Following, these trusts would take advantage of not only their workers but also their consumers by increasing prices and controlling the industry. This leads to Roosevelt’s second component of the Square Deal which was consumer protection. A man by the name of Upton Sinclair published a book known as, “The Jungle” which uncovered the unsanitary and disgusting conditions of the slaughterhouse industry. Roosevelt caught a hold of this book and demanded that Congress mend to these conditions in which they passed the Meat Inspection Act and The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. As a result of the passing of the acts, Americans felt safe once again that their food was fine for consumption. Moreover, this lead to

Taft was appointed by Roosevelt as the next best choice as president, as he didn’t want to run for more than two terms even though he very well could have. Taft was a Republican like Roosevelt and continued his legacy as a “trust-buster”, dismantling double the amount of trusts as Roosevelt. However, Taft caused a disturbance to the Progressives by proposing the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909, wanting to both raise and lower different tariffs, causing a split in the Republican Party. Another contribution Taft made was Dollar Diplomacy. Furthermore, Taft “substituted dollars for bullets” by investing in Latin American countries and permitting the United States to have a spot on their land. Not to forget, one of Taft’s overlooked greatest accomplishments was helping pass the 16th amendment to the