During the 904 campaign, Roosevelt bragged he had worked in the anthracite coal strike to provide everybody with a square deal. Roosevelts first goal after winning the election was the powerful railroad industry. On page 505 it declares that The Hepburn Railroad Regulation Act of 906 was seeking to bring back some regulatory power to the government by giving the Interstate Commerce Commission power to oversee railroad rates. Roosevelt put pressure on Congress to enact the Pure Food and Drug Act, which limited the sale of dangerous or ineffective medicines. The Jungle, a book published by Upton Sinclair in 906, included horrific descriptions of conditions in the meatpacking industry. Roosevelt pushed for passaging of the Meat Inspection Act, which helped stop many illnesses once transmitted in impure meat. Roosevelt was the first president to actively take part in the new and struggling American conservation movement. In 902, the president supported the National Reclamation Act, which used funds raised by the sale of public lands in the West for the construction of dams, reservoirs, and canals, projects that would reclaim arid lands for cultivation and later supply the cheat electric power. Roosevelt shared the concerns of the naturalists who pledged to protect the natural beauty of the land and the health of its wildlife from human intrusion. Since economic consolidation is meant to continue to be a permanent feature of American society, a strong, modernized government should take a more active role in regulating and planning economic life. One of those who came to support this position was Theodore Roosevelt. On page 503 in The Unfinished Nation, Theodore Roosevelt once said, We should enter upon a course of supervision, control, and regulation of those great corporations. Roosevelt became the most powerful sym
bol of the reform impulse at the national level.
The 92 presidential contest was not just between conservatives and reformers. It was also one of two brands of progressivism. On the forty-six ballot, Woodrow Wilson, the governor of New Jersey and the one and only progressive candidate in the race, began as the partys nominee. Wilson introduced a progressive program called The New Freedom in 92. Roosevelts New Nationalism encouraged economic concentration and government regulation and control. Wilson appeared to side with those who believed that bigness was both unfair and inefficient, and the proper response to monopoly was not to regulate but destroy it. On page 5 in the Unfinished Nation, it says that the 92 presidential campaign was an anti-climax. Taft resigned to defeat and barely campaigned. Roosevelt campaigned energetically. In November, Taft split the Republican vote, while Wilson held on to most Democrats and won. He had received only forty-two percent of the popular vote, compared with twenty-seven percent for Roosevelt. In legislative matters, Wilson expertly united a coalition that would support his goals. Wilsons first victory as president was fulfilling an old Democrat goal of lowering the protective tariff. The Underwood-Simmons Tariff offered cuts large enough, to introduce real competition into American markets and help break the power of trust. To make up for the loss of revenue under the new tariff, Congress ratified a graduated income tax, which the recently adopted sixteenth amendment to the constitution now allowed. By the fall of 94, Wilson thought the New Freedom Program was completed and that agitation for reform would now subside. When congressional progressives failed to enlist his support for new reform legislation, Wilson dismissed their proposals as unconstitutional or unnecessary.