Progressive Movement under Taft and Wilson

Ch 11, Sec 3-4

William Howard Taft• TR’s Sec. of War; TR’s handpicked successor.– Elected 1908.– Progressive, not strong or decisive as TR.

• Tried, failed to reduce tariffs.• Did not conserve US land like TR, allowed

exploitation.• 1910, TR returns from African safari to see US

dislike of Taft; begins Bull Moose Party (Progressive 3rd Party) to challenge Taft.

William Howard Taft

Taft’s Tub

• Bull Moose Party wanted: tariff reduction, women’s suffrage, 8 hour workday, ban child labor.– TR shot in attempted assassination while

campaigning.• 1912-4 way election:– Republicans – William Taft– Bull Moose (Progressive) – Theodore Roosevelt– Democrats – Woodrow Wilson– Socialists – Eugene V. Debs (labor leader)

• Woodrow Wilson won.

Woodrow Wilson• President of Princeton, governor of New Jersey,

reputation as reformer.• Passed tariff reduction.• Created first income tax.• Passed Clayton Antitrust Act; laid out activities that

business couldn’t do.• Created Federal Reserve System; created 12 Federal

Reserve banks, served as banks for the banks, would prevent panics.– Banks kept money in FR bank, could borrow money to

meet short term needs.• 1916 - won 2nd term on Progressive policies, “he kept

us out of war (WWI)”.

Woodrow Wilson

Federal Reserve Map of USA

• Progressives did not mess with race relations.– Maintained Jim Crow and segregation.

• Progressivism wound down during WWI.

Women’s Suffrage• For 70 years, US women pushed for voting rights.• 1848-Seneca Falls Convention-Elizabeth Cady

Stanton, Lucretia Mott.• Susan B. Anthony-big suffragette, brought

attention using civil disobedience.– nonviolent refusal to obey a law in effort to change it.

• Anthony & others pushed for state amendments for suffrage, constitutional amendment.

• 1890-Wyoming first state to let women vote.

Lucretia Mott

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

New Generation of Suffragettes• Stanton died in 1902, Anthony in 1906.• Alice Paul, Lucy Burns took over movement.– Held protests, burned Wilson in effigy, got

arrested, held hunger strikes.• Pushed harder and harder.• 1919, Congress finally debated suffrage

amendment, passed it, sent it to states.• 1920-19th Amendment ratified.– Can’t deny right to vote based on sex.

Alice Paul

Lucy Burns

19th Amendment - 1920