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 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.