1. The Wilson Years Election of 1912
Moose: Progressive or Bull Moose Party
Donkey: Democratic Party
Elephant: Republican Party

2. The Candidates
1912 campaign featured a current president, a former president and an academic who had entered politics only 2 years earlier.
Conservatives rallied behind Taft and he received the Republican nomination.
Progressives supported Roosevelt and he ran Independent under the newly formed Progressive Party.
Democratic candidate was Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson won because Taft and Roosevelt split the republican vote. Although he did not win a majority of the popular vote, he won in the Electoral College.

3. Wilson vs Roosevelt Roosevelt and New Nationalism:
Favored legislation to protect women and children in the labor force and supported workers’ compensation.
Wilson and New Freedom:
Felt monopolies should be destroyed, not regulated. Freedom in Wilson’s opinion was more important than efficiency.
“The history of liberty, is the history of the limitation of governmental power…If America is not to have free enterprise, then she can have freedom of no sort whatever.”
- Woodrow Wilson

4. Wilson's Reforms
Wilson crafted reforms affecting tariffs, the banking system, trusts, and workers’ rights.
Wilson believed that lowering tariffs would benefit BOTH American consumers and manufacturers. With tariffs being lowered, it would lead American manufacturers to IMPROVE their PRODUCTS and LOWER their PRICES due to foreign competition.
To restore public confidence in the banking system, Wilson supported the establishment of a Federal Reserve System. The central bank of the U.S.

5. Limits of Progressivism
Progressivism failed to address RACIAL and RELIGIOUS discrimination.
African American leaders met at Niagara Falls to demand full rights for African Americans.
They had to meet on the Canadian side of the falls because no hotel on the American side would accept them.
This meeting was one of many steps that led to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
W.E.B. Du Bois and other NAACP founders believed that VOTING RIGHTS were essential to end LYNCHING and RACIAL DISCRIMINATION such as segregation and Jim Crow Laws.