• 1904: The day after his election Theodore Roosevelt announced he would not seek another term as president.

• 1908: William Howard Taft ran for president and the encouraging of his wife and President Roosevelt.

• Taft was Secretary of War in Roosevelt’s presidency.

• Republican Taft won the election in 1908 over Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

• Taft pledged to follow in Roosevelt’s footsteps.

• However, from the beginning Taft found his predecessors shoes hard to fill.

• He created disappointment from the start by not appointing any Progressives to the cabinet.

• 1908: Taft had run on a Republican platform of lower tariffs.

• 1909: Taft called a special session of Congress to pass tariff reductions.

• Although the Senate passed some reductions, they also added some highly protective tariff increases.

• This infuriated the Progressives.

• Progressives also felt betrayed by Taft on the issue of the management of public lands.

• Taft’s Secretary of the Interior, Richard A. Ballinger, angered conservationists.

• Ballinger’s views put him in conflict with Gifford Pinchot, head of the U.S. Forest Service.

• Taft fired Pinchot, who remained a public hero, while Taft’s popularity began to decline.

• Angry Republican Progressives in the House teamed up with Democrats to attack opponents of reform in the Republican Party.

• This caused a split in the Republican Party.

• 1908: Following Taft’s election, Roosevelt set off an a long safari in Africa.

• He returned and campaigned for the Progressive candidates in the 1910 midterm elections.

• Roosevelt called his plan the New Nationalism.

• After the election Democrats gained control of both the House and Senate, with Progressive Democrats and Republicans placed firmly in both houses.

• 1912: Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican presidential nomination.

• Taft won the nomination.• The angry Progressive Republicans formed

their own party, nicknamed “The Bull Moose Party.”

• Leaders of this party were Roosevelt and California Governor Hiram Johnson.

• Roosevelt ran a vigorous campaign, with a platform that included tariff reduction, women’s suffrage, more regulation of business, a child labor ban, an eight hour workday, a federal workers’ compensation system, and the direct election of senators.

• Taft did achieve a noticeable record on progressive causes.

• He reserved more public lands and brought more antitrust suits in four years than Roosevelt had in seven.

• Yet Taft still remained at odds with Republican Progressives.

• The Democratic Party chose Woodrow Wilson.• Wilson also ran on a reform platform.

• Unlike Roosevelt, he criticized both Big businesses and big govt.

• He introduced his “New Freedom” policy.

• Four main candidates sought the presidency in 1912.

• Taft, for the Republicans.• Roosevelt, for the Bull Moose Progressives.• Wilson, for the Democrats.• Eugene V. Debs, for the Socialists.

• Wilson had acquired a reputation as a dedicated reformer.

• Believed that one of his main duties as President was to offer major legislation to Congress, promote it publicly, and help guide it to passage.

• He worked the Congress vigorously, keeping it in session for a full year and a half for the first time ever.

• Wilson’s first major victory was tariff reduction.

• The Underwood Tariff Act of 1913 reduced average tariffs from 40% to 25%.

• To make up for the lost of govt. revenue, Wilson signed into law a federal income tax (the Sixteenth Amendment).

• 1914: Wilson and Congress created the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

• The FTC was given the power to order firms to “cease and desist” the practice of business tactics found to be unfair.

• Congress did not give the FTC authority over banks.

• After a long and heated debate, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.

• This act created the Federal Reserve System. It divided the country into 12 districts, each with a Federal Reserve bank owned by its member banks.

• This system also created a new national currency known as the Federal Reserve notes.

• 1916: with the presidential election approaching, Wilson took a number of steps aimed partly at attracting progressive voters.

• Wilson nominated progressive lawyer Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court.

• Brandeis was known as “the people’s lawyer.”

• Wilson’s nominated of Brandeis drew a storm of protest.

• Brandeis was the first Jewish Supreme Court nominee.

• Brandeis was confirmed by the Senate and served on he court with distinction until 1939.

• 1916: TR did not want to run again, instead Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party supported Wilson’s Republican opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, a Supreme Court Justice.

• Wilson ran on the slogan that he’d kept the U.S. out of World War I which had erupted in Europe two years before.

• Wilson barely defeated Hughes, with 277 electoral votes to 254.

• Mid-1910s: Progressives had made broad changes in society, govt., and business.

• They had refined and enlarged the role of the govt.

• However, focused mainly on municipal problems, Progressives did little to aid tenant and migrant farmers, and nonunionized workers.

• The progressive Presidents took little action to pursue social justice reforms.

• Only a small group of Progressives, who helped found the NAACP, concerned themselves with the worsening race relations.

• Many African Americans felt ignored by Progressives.

• Some white Southern Progressives only approved of women’s suffrage because they realized it would double the white vote, putting African Americans further behind.

• As more and more nations became involved in World War 1, Americans worried about how long they could remain uninvolved.

• By 1916 calls to prepare for war had pretty much drowned out calls for American reform.