582 Chapter 21 The Age of Reform
Key Terms
Ashcan School Artists in the early twentieth cen-
tury who used as their subject matter the things
and people found in city streets and slums. Ashcan
artists often supported progressive political and
social reform, 558
Clayton Antitrust Act Legislation that strength-
ened antitrust laws. Passed in 1914, it outlawed
interlocking directorates, exempted labor unions
from antitrust laws, and limited the use of injunc-
tions in labor disputes, 577
Conservation The efficient management and use
of natural resources, such as forests, grasslands,
and rivers; it represents a “middle-of-the-road”
policy as opposed to the uncontrolled exploitation
of such resources or the preservation those
resources from any human exploiters, 572
Federal Reserve Act A 1913 law establishing a
Federal Reserve Board, which controlled the
rediscount rate and thus the money supply;
this helped regularize the national banking
system, 576
Hepburn Act Federal legislation, passed in 1906,
that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission
sufficient power to inspect railroad companies’
records, set maximum rates, and outlaw free
passes, 572
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) A mili-
tant labor organization, founded in 1905 and
inspired by European anarchists, that advocated
“abolition of the wage system” and called for a
single union of all workers, regardless of trade or
skill level; it was repressed during and after World
War I, 559
muckraker A term for progressive investigative
journalists who exposed the seamy side of
American life at the turn of the twentieth century
by “raking up the muck,” 558
National American Woman Suffrage Association
(NAWSA) An organization, founded in 1890,
that united the National Woman Suffrage
Association, headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony, and the American Woman
Suffrage Association, headed by Lucy Stone. After
ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment grant-
ing women the vote in 1920, the NAWSA became
the League of Women Voters, 567
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) A national interracial
organization, founded in 1909, that promoted the
rights of African Americans. Initially it fought
against lynching, but from 1955 through 1977,
under the leadership of Roy Wilkins, it launched
the campaign that overturned legalized segregation
and it backed civil rights legislation. The NAACP
remains the nation’s largest African American
organization, 580
New Freedom Democratic candidate Woodrow
Wilson’s term in the 1912 presidential campaign
for a proposed policy that would restore competi-
tion by breaking up the trusts and punishing corpo-
rations that violated rules of business conduct, 575
New Nationalism Progressive candidate Theodore
Roosevelt’s term in the 1912 presidential election
for an expansion of federal power to regulate big
business and enact legislation to promote social
justice, 574
Niagara movement A response by W. E. B. DuBois
and other blacks, following a meeting in
Niagara Falls in 1905, in opposition to
Booker T. Washington’s advocacy of black
accommodation to white prejudice; these lead-
ers drafted a political program to achieve equal
opportunity, equal justice, and an end to segre-
gation that led to the founding of theNational
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), 580
Progressivism A cluster of movements for vari-
ous forms of social change—some of them
contradictory—during the early twentieth cen-
tury; progressives generally opposed corruption
and inefficiency in government, monopoly
power among corporations, and wayward behav-
ior among immigrants and others, 556
Square Deal The phrase, initially employed by
President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, to
describe an arbitrated settlement between workers
and an employer, but more generally employed as
a goal to promote fair business practices and to
punish “bad” corporations that used their eco-
nomic clout unfairly, 571
Underwood Tariff A 1913 reform law that low-
ered tariff rates and levied the first regular federal
income tax, 576
woman suffrage The right of women to vote,
ensured by the passage and ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment (1920), 565