The presidential
election of 1900 gave the American people a chance to pass judgment
on the McKinley administration, especially its foreign policy. Meeting
at Philadelphia, the Republicans expressed jubilation over the successful
outcome of the war with Spain, the restoration of prosperity and the
effort to obtain new markets through the Open Door policy. McKinley's
election was a foregone conclusion. But the president did not live long
enough to enjoy his victory. In September 1901, while attending an exposition
in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was shot down by an assassin. (He was
the third president to be assassinated since the Civil War.)
Theodore Roosevelt,
McKinley's vice president, assumed the presidency. In domestic as well
as international affairs, Roosevelt's accession coincided with a new
epoch in American political life. The continent was peopled; the frontier
was disappearing. A small, former struggling republic had become a world
power. The country's political foundations had endured the vicissitudes
of foreign and civil war, the tides of prosperity and
depression. Immense
strides had been made in agriculture and industry. Free public education
had been largely realized and a free press maintained. The ideal of
religious freedom had been sustained. The influence of big business
was now more firmly entrenched than ever, however, and local and municipal
government often was in the hands of corrupt politicians.
In response to
the excesses of 19th-century capitalism and political corruption, a
reform movement arose called "progressivism," which gave American politics
and thought its special character from approximately 1890 until the
American entry into World War I in 1917. The Progressives saw their
work as a democratic crusade against the abuses of urban political bosses
and corrupt robber barons. Their goals were greater democracy and social
justice, honest government, more effective regulation of business and
a revived commitment to public service. In general, they believed that
expanding the scope of government would ensure the progress of U.S.
society and the welfare of its citizens. Almost all the notable figures
of the period, whether in politics, philosophy, scholarship or literature,
were connected, at least in part, with the reform movement.
The years 1902
to 1908 marked the era of greatest reform activity, as writers and journalists,
strongly protested practices and principles inherited from the 18th-century
rural republic that were proving inadequate for a 20th-century urban
state. Years before, in 1873, the celebrated author Mark Twain had exposed
American society to critical scrutiny in The Gilded Age. Now,
trenchant articles dealing with trusts, high finance, impure foods and
abusive railroad practices began to appear in the daily newspapers and
in such popular magazines as McClure's and Collier's.
Their authors, such as the journalist Ida May Tarbell, who crusaded
against the Standard Oil Trust, became known as "muckrakers."
In his sensational
novel, The Jungle, Upton Sinclair exposed unsanitary conditions
in the great Chicago meat packing houses and the grip of the beef trust
on the nation's meat supply. Theodore Dreiser in The Financier
and The Titan made it easy for laymen to understand the machinations
of big business. Frank Norris' The Pit encouraged agrarian protest
by revealing how secret manipulations affected the grain market in Chicago.
Lincoln Steffens' The Shame of the Cities bared political corruption.
This "literature of exposure" had a vital effect in rousing the people
to action.
The hammering impact
of uncompromising writers and an increasingly aroused public spurred
political leaders to take practical measures. Many states enacted laws
to improve the conditions under which people lived and worked. At the
urging of such prominent social critics as Jane Addams, child labor
laws, were strengthened and new ones adopted, raising age limits, shortening
work hours, restricting night work and requiring school attendance.