1. Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal
Ch 6 sec 3

2. I. Roosevelt’s view of the Presidency
Theodore Roosevelt was governor of New York, and the political bosses wanted him out of the way, so they got him nominated to be vice president.
When McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Roosevelt became the youngest president, and promptly began to push Progressive ideas from the White House.

3. I. Roosevelt’s view of the Presidency
His first test came the next year when coal miners went on strike. As winter neared, Roosevelt was afraid that the coal shortage would be a huge problem.
He told the miners and the mine owners to accept arbitration, where a third party settles the dispute. The mine owners refused, so Roosevelt threatened to take over the mine.

4. I. Roosevelt’s view of the Presidency
After 3 months, the strike was settled by both sides compromising. This was the first time the federal government had intervened in a strike to help the workers.
Roosevelt called the settlement a “square deal”, and that became his campaign slogan in the 1904 election. He easily won reelection.

5. II. Regulating Big Business
Roosevelt supported big business, but he wanted them to behave responsibly and ethically.
When the Northern Securities Company was formed by the merger of 3 large railroad companies, Roosevelt ordered the Attorney General to sue them for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

6. II. Regulating Big Business
The Supreme Court sided with the Attorney General, and so Roosevelt went after other monopolies and trusts that he felt damaged the economy or endangered the public.
His administration also regulated the railroads, limiting how much they could charge customers for shipping their goods.

7. II. Regulating Big Business
Roosevelt also began protections of consumers. Tainted food was sold, drug companies sold medicine that did not work, or contained narcotics.
When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, exposing practices in the meatpacking industry, the government investigated the packing houses.

8. II. Regulating Big Business
The report was so bad that the government passed two laws to protect consumers from bad practices in food and medicine production.
The Meat Inspection Act required federal inspection of meat shipped across state lines, and the Pure Food and Drug Act forbade the use of harmful products in food and drugs, and required labeling of ingredients.

9. III. Environmental Conservation
Roosevelt felt strongly that the nation’s resources needed to be conserved, and not used as if they would never end.
Congress passed the Newlands Reclamation Act that used irrigation projects to make dry land productive.

10. III. Environmental Conservation
He appointed Gifford Pinchot as the head of the newly created U.S. Forest Service that controlled 150 million acres of forest land throughout the country.

11. In your notebooks
Research and list the 18 National Monuments established by Roosevelt and the Antiquities Act of 1906.