APUSH CHAP 28 Flashcards
A reform movement led by Protestant ministers who used religious doctrine to demand better housing and living conditions for the urban poor. Popular at the turn of the twentieth century, it was closely linked to the settlement-house movement, which brought middle-class, Anglo-American service volunteers into contact with immigrants and working people.
Social Gospel
Bright young reporters at the turn of the twentieth century who won this unfavorable moniker from Theodore Roosevelt but boosted the circulations of their magazines by writing exposés of widespread corruption in American society. Their subjects included business manipulation of government, white slavers, child labor, and the illegal deeds of the trusts and helped spur the passage of reform legislation.
muckrakers
A progressive reform measure allowing voters to petition to have a law placed on the general ballot. Like the referendum and recall, it brought democracy directly “to the people” and helped foster a shift toward interest group politics and away from old political “machines.”
Initiative
A progressive reform procedure allowing voters to place a bill on the ballot for final approval, even after being passed by the legislature.
Referendum
A progressive ballot procedure allowing voters to remove elected officials from office.
Recall
A system that allows voters privacy in marking their ballot choices. Developed in Australia in the 1850s, it was introduced to the United States during the progressive era to help counteract boss rule.
Australian Ballot
A landmark Supreme Court case in which crusading attorney (and future Supreme Court justice) Louis D. Brandeis persuaded the Supreme Court to accept the constitutionality of limiting the hours of women workers. Coming on the heels of Lochner v. New York, it established a different standard for male and female workers.
Muller V. Oregon
A setback for labor reformers, this Supreme Court decision invalidated a state law establishing a ten-hour day for bakers. It held that the “right to free contract” was implicit in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Lochner V. New York
On March 25, 1911, a ferocious blaze broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City, resulting in 146 worker deaths. When it was later determined that the fatalities could have been avoided by adhering to proper fire codes—such as leaving the stairwell and exit doors unlocked—the incident sparked widespread outrage and inspired legislation to improve workplace safety.
Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire
Law passed by Congress to impose penalties on railroads that offered rebates and customers who accepted them. The law strengthened the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The Hepburn Act of 1906 added free passes to the list of railroad no-no’s.
Elkins Act
A law passed by Congress to subject meat shipped over state lines to federal inspection. The publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle earlier that year so disgusted American consumers with its description of conditions in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants that it mobilized public support for government action.
Meat Inspection Act
A law passed by Congress to inspect and regulate the labeling of all foods and pharmaceuticals intended for human consumption. This legislation, and additional provisions passed in 1911 to strengthen it, aimed particularly at the patent medicine industry. The more comprehensive Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 largely replaced this legislation.
Pure Food and Drug Act
The federal government allowed the city of San Francisco to build a dam here in 1913. This was a blow to preservationists, who wished to protect the Yosemite National Park, where the dam was located.
Hetch Hetchy Valley
A financial panic that gripped the United States in October 1907, triggering widespread bankruptcies and causing the stock market to lose half its value from the previous year. Staunched only by J. P. Morgan’s timely intervention, the panic eventually led to the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, marking the panic as the last time that a major financial crisis was resolved by private means.
Panic of 1907
Following the shooting of two white men on August 13, 1906, residents of Brownsville, Texas, blamed the African-American soldiers from the segregated 25th Infantry Regiment stationed at nearby Fort Brown. Despite only tenuous evidence linking them to the crime, President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the dishonorable discharge of more than 150 of the “buffalo soldiers,” stripping them of their pensions and barring them from employment in federal civil service jobs. Roosevelt’s actions disillusioned many African-Americans, who began to wonder if his progressivism stopped at the color line. In 1972 Congress belatedly exonerated the men, all but one of whom were deceased.
Brownsville Affair
