Progressive Era Conservation / Land Use Acts

Desert Land Act 1877 regulated the selling of arid land with the condition that the buyer would irrigate it.



Forest Reserve Act 1891 set aside public forests as national parks



Carey Act 1894 distributed federal land to the states on the condition that it would be irrigated and settled



Newlands Act 1902: Washington was authorized to collect money from the sale of land in the Western states and use the profits for the development of irrigation projects

As a whole, the progressives viewed the conservation of land as a necessary endeavor, although among them, their reasons varied somewhat (ie. the hunter and the animal-saver).

Progressive Era Foreign Policy Acts

Panama Canal Tolls Act of 1912 specially exepted American coast-to-coast shipping from tolls along the Panama Canal, heartily provoking the British. It was later repealed. (Issued during the Taft Adminsitration)



Jones Act of 1916 granted the Philippines territorial status and promised independence as soon as a stable government could be established (which would be in 1946). (Issued during the Wilson Administration).

New Federal Agencies

The Women's Bureau of 1920 and the Children's Bureau of 1912 were Department of Labor Wedges into the federal bureucracy giving female reformers a nationals tage for social investigation and advocacy.



Federal Trade Commission of 1914 (692)was another movement against the trusts by Wilson. This law empowered a presidentially appointed comission to turn a searchlight on industries engaged in interstate commerce.



Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was the most important piece of economic legislation between the Civil War and the New Deal. A new Federal Reserve Board, appointed by the president would oversee a nationwide system of 12 regional banks and was empowered to issue paper money. This would carry the U.S. through the financial crises of World War I.



Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 (693) made credit available to farmers at low rates of interest, as complying with the ideas of the populists.

Protecting Workers

The La Folette Seamen's Act of 1915 eased the troubles of seamen when it required decent treatment and a living wage on American merchant ships. This provided necessary compensation for their work. Likewise....



...The Workingmen's Compensation Act of 1916 granted assistance to federal civil-service employees during periods of disability. this was yet another necessary benefit for the common man that was now provided for.

Amendments to the Constitution

16th Amendment, 1913: This amendment gave congress the right to impose and collect income taxes without any restriction or order (ie. by population), which would lead to more debate concerning the fairness or excessiveness of said taxes...



17th Amendment, 1913: This amendment stipulated that senators shall be elected by popular vote. This would prevent officials from being placed in power merely by being in the favor of another official.



18th Amendment, 1919: This amendment of prohibition forbade the sale or manufacture of intoxicating liquors. This would cause pleasure for most women (who sought its enactment) and major outrage for men, to the point that it would later be repealed.



19th Amedndment,1920: This amendment gave women their long-awaited right to vote. While skeptical at first, most would later agree this to be another step towards equality in America.

Anti-Trust

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 forbade combinations in restraint of trade, without any distinction between "good" trusts and "bad" trusts. The problem was identified not be behavior, but by size. The law was generally ineffective, granting no specific authority, being full of loopholes. It did, though, get used to ur labor unions....




The Clayton Anti-Trust Act of 1914 lengthened the Sherman Act's lsit of business practices that were deemed objectionable, including price discrimination and itnelrocking directorates. It also conferred long-overdure benefits on labor, seekening to exempt labor and agricultural organizations from antitrust prosecution, while explicitly legalizing strikes and peaceful picketing.

Food Safety

The Meat Inspection Act of 1906, inspired by a nauseated public as a result of Sinclair's novel, "The Jungle", decreed that the preparation of emat shipped over state lines would be subject to federal inspection from corral to can. This would spur larger businesses to booming success (with more appealing products bearing the governement seal of approval) and protect consumers from buying dangerous unhealty meats.




The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was designed to prevent the adulteration and mislabeling of foods and pharmaceuticals. This would prevent drugstore companies from gaining extra profits with mislabeled products and so would protect consumers from ineffective or dangerously icnorrect medicines.

Railroads

The Elkins Act of 1903 was the beginning of new and effective railroad legislation. Heavy fines could now be imposed on both the railroads that gave rebates and on the shippers that impsoed them.



Even more effective was the Hepburn Act of 1906, in which bribe-infested free passes were now severely restricted. The Interstate Commerce Comission was expanded, now to include express companies, sleeping-car companies and pipelines. This marked the first time the comission was given real power to nullify existing rates and stipulate naximum rates.

An Oration for the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901

[I am writing this oration on behalf of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of 1901, which, being a treaty, cannot type. But don't let that discredit it...]

I am perhaps the most important event of my day! Just consider it! Before me, there was that annoying Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with Britain from way back when in the 1850s, which denied the United States the rights to build passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But then came the very need to do so- in Panama. Imagine the inconvenience of having to travel all the way around South America, a 3 or 4 week journey, when one could reach the same destination in just a few hours by cutting across Panama! The benefits are astronomical! And I, of course, provided those benefits. Because the Brits were so tangled up down there in Africa, they kindly consented to have me written, granting Americans right not only to build the canal but to fortify it, too! And thus the Hay-Pauncefote Trearty was born! Since, I have provided the way to amazing benfits of the wonderfully convenient crossing form Atlantic to Pacific in a few hours, via the Panama Canal!

The Fading Frontier

By 1890, the frontier line was no longer discernable. That is, all unsettled areas were enclosed by areas of settlement. Soon there would be no more land left to explore...



Frederick Jackson Turner wrote "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" in 1893., where he noted that the free land (land open to development) was going or had already gone.



It was predicted in 1827 that at least 500 years would be necessary to completely explore and develop the western U.S. Obviously, this was not true, and the speed at which the land was going drove home the point that the land was not inexhaustble. A plan was then developed to take measures to preserve it: The National Parks. Yellowstone was the first opened, in 1872, and Yosemite and Sequoia followed in 1890.

The passing of the frontier ended the romantic phase of internal development.



Safety Valve Theory: when life in the city brought unemployment, people would head to the frontier, start farming, and prosper there. Few truly did, for they either did not know how to farm or had no means of transport to the frontier.
The frontier did, however, lure immigrant farmers who were less entralled by city life.
The real safety valves were the great western cities, such as Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco. (In 1880, the area west of the Rockies to the Pacific Coast was the most urbanized region in America.

Turner suggested that real American history was the history of the colonization of the great west, a constantly developing process that began with Columbus heading west and discovering the West Indies, and so forth, to the mainland, across the mountains and plains to the Pacific.

Important Points Concerning the Trans-Mississippi West:
*Where the Native Americans' last struggle against colonization took place (and where any reamining live today)
*Where Anglo culture collided with Hispanic culture, sparking a competition for dominance in the New World
*Where America faced across the Pacific to Asia
*The scale and severity of the environment, and all its magnificence and openness, molded political and social life, and the American immigration
*Where the federal government played its most conspicuous role in economic and social development, with landholding distrubution, railroad building, and irrigation projects



Westward-moving poineers and their vast landscapes were immortalized by writers such as Horte, Twain, Jackson and Parkman, and by painters such as Catlin, Remington and Bierstadt. They planted the seeds of civilization in the immense western wilderness...




(Information taken from p. 606 - 608 of "The American Pageant", Twelfth Edition)