Chapter 11 section 3

Progressivism Under Taft and

Wilson

President William Howard Taft

• Roosevelt’s chosen successor.

• Continued Roosevelt’s Progressive program by pursuing antitrust cases.

President Taft continued• Progressives in congress unlike Taft, favored

low tariffs.• Progressives first became furious with Taft

over the protective Payne-Aldrich Tariff.• President Taft’s Secretary of the Interior was

Richard Ballinger, who angered conservationists by siding with business interests that sought unrestricted development of federal lands in the West.

Split in the Republican Party• When Gifford Pinchot accused Richard

Ballinger of corruption, before Congress, Taft fired Pinchot.

• The Progressive faction of the Republican Party protested Taft’s handling of the Ballinger-Pinchot affair.

• When the House passed a resolution allowing full membership, instead of the Speaker, to appoint the Rules Committee the Republican Party was split.

New Nationalism

• Was Roosevelt’s name for his Progressive reform program, at the time of the midterm elections of 1910.

• Included Roosevelt’s call for business regulation, welfare laws, workplace protection for women & children, income & inheritance taxes, and voting reform.

Presidential Election of 1912• Theodore Roosevelt challenges his old

friend President Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.

• Even though Roosevelt was more popular, Taft won the Republican nomination because he controlled the National convention.

• Roosevelt’s supporters broke from the Republican party and formed the Progressive Party.

Election of 1912 continued• When Roosevelt was giving a speech and he

was shot but continued to speak for an hour and a half. Roosevelt said “it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.”

• The Progressive party became nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party.”

• The Bull Moose party supported women’s suffrage on its platform.

• Woodrow Wilson was the democratic candidate in 1912.

• Wilson called his policy “The New Freedom” which promised to enforce antitrust laws without threatening free economic competition.

Even More on the Election of 1912

• Wilson wins the election of 1912.

• A major reason that Wilson won the election of 1912 was that Roosevelt split the Republican vote.

• Wilson’s reform platform during the 1912 campaign differed from Roosevelt’s in that he promised to preserve free economic competition.

Clayton Antitrust Act• Passed with Wilson’s guidance in 1914

to strengthen the Sherman Antitrust Act.

• Spelled out specific activities that big business could not do.

• Prevented antitrust suits from being brought against unions and prohibited court injunctions against strikes.

Federal Reserve System

• Was established by Woodrow Wilson to reorganize the federal banking system.

• Was intended to prevent bank failures.• Wilson wanted it to promote competition in

the industry and to ease the frequent panics that destabilized the U.S. economy.

• System was supervised by the Federal Reserve Board appointed by the President.

Federal Reserve System Continued• Every national bank was required to become

a member of the the Federal Reserve bank in its district.

• Each bank was required to deposit some capital the Federal Reserve bank in its district.

• Member banks could borrow from the Federal Reserve Bank to help meet short term demands this helps prevent bank failures.

• The system also created a new national currency know as Federal Reserve notes.

• The FED could now expand or contract the amount of currency in circulation. (control the money supply)

Progressivism was halted by

•World War I

Women’s Suffrage Movement• American women first officially demanded to

right to vote in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York.

• Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were major players at this convention.

• When Susan B. Anthony joined to joined the cause she and Stanton became the nation’s most celebrated champions of women’s suffrage.

Suffragist Strategies• The National Woman Suffrage Association,

including Stanton and Anthony fought for a Constitutional Amendment to for suffrage.

• The American Woman Suffrage Association worked on the state level to win voting rights.

• When Wyoming entered the union in 1890, it became the first state to grant women full suffrage.

• In 1872 Susan B. Anthony led a group of women to the polls in Rochester, New York, insisting on voting. Anthony was arrested and convicted for the act of civil disobedience.

Suffrage at the turn of the century• In 1890, veteran leaders of the suffrage

movement, including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were joined by younger leaders in forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

• After the deaths of Stanton and Anthony, the woman who eventually led NAWSA to victory was Carrie Chapman Catt

Split in the Suffrage Movement

• Alice Paul transformed the NAWSA committee that was working on the passage of a congressional suffrage Amendment into a new organization the Congressional Union.

• Paul’s action resulted in a split in the suffrage movement.

• Paul’s CU called for an aggressive, militant campaign for the constitutional amendment.

• She planned to bypass existing state suffrage organizations and set up new one’s in each state.

• The leadership of NAWSA opposed Paul’s plan, believing it would alienate moderate supporters. In 1914 they expelled the Congressional Union from its organization.

• When New York gave the right to vote to women, Presidential candidates now had to court the New York women’s vote because of its large number of electoral votes.

• Women’s activities in WWI resulted in more Americans supporting their right to suffrage.

• The battle for women’s suffrage ended with the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.