Reform Movements and the Progressive Era
Roots and tools
Progressives responded to industrial cities, corruption, and inequality, drawing on Populist ideas and on journalists called muckrakers. At the municipal level they pushed commission and city-manager plans; at the state level they introduced the initiative, referendum, recall, and direct primary. The Seventeenth Amendment (1913) provided for direct election of senators.
National reform
Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal included arbitration of the 1902 coal strike, antitrust action against Northern Securities, the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (1906) after The Jungle, the Hepburn Act, and conservation policy. Taft continued antitrust suits but split the party over tariffs and conservation, enabling Wilson's 1912 victory. Wilson's New Freedom delivered the Underwood Tariff and the Sixteenth Amendment, the Federal Reserve Act (1913), the Clayton Antitrust Act, and the Federal Trade Commission (1914). Roosevelt's New Nationalism had favored stronger federal regulation instead.
Amendments and limits
The Eighteenth Amendment (1919) imposed prohibition; the Nineteenth (1920) extended the vote to women. Social reformers included Jane Addams and Hull House, the NAACP (1909), and Margaret Sanger. Progressivism was uneven: many reformers accepted segregation, and Wilson segregated federal offices.
Traps. Watch amendment order, and remember that New Freedom means antitrust and decentralization while New Nationalism means regulation and centralization.
Rule of thumb. Sort reforms by level: city, state, or federal.
Worked example. An excerpt from The Jungle points to meat inspection and food and drug laws, not to prohibition or antitrust.