Presidency Chart – Woodrow Wilson (28th) (1913 1921)

The Election of 1912

Wilson = (Progressive) Democrat

Taft = (Conservative) Republican

T. Roosevelt = Progressive (Bull Moose)

Debs = Socialist

Chafin = Prohibition Party

Wilson = moderate reform = Wilson's New Freedom advocated antimonopoly policies and a return to small businesses.

T.R. = major reform = Roosevelt's New Nationalism called for an interventionist government with robust regulatory powers.
Not a close election: Republican vote split – easy victory for Demo.

Foreign Policy

-lowered tariffs on hundreds of items that could be produced more cheaply in the United States than abroad. The tariff reduced the rates of the Payne-Aldrich Tariff (1909) by about 10 percent. As the first bill since the Civil War to lower tariff rates, the Underwood Tariff included an federal income tax to make up for the loss in revenues caused by the lower tariffs.

-created the de-centralized banking system of the United States. The most important job of the Federal Reserve System, also known as the Fed, is to manage the country's supply of money. The president appoints a Federal Reserve Board of seven members to staggered terms of fourteen years to supervise the conduct of the banks in the Federal Reserve System. The act divided the nation into twelve districts, each with a Federal Reserve bank.

Federal government can tax income. 

**[In response to Supreme Ct. case Pollock v Farmer's Loan and Trust (1895), where the Court disallowed a federal income tax.]
Seventeenth Amendment (1913)

Direct election of U.S. Senators

***[In response to the “Millionaire Congress” being bought off by business/trusts.]
Eighteenth Amendment (1919)

Prohibition – illegal to sell, transport, manufacture or consume alcohol. 

***[Anti-patriotic during WWI]

***Volstead Act = enforcement legislation 

Women’s Suffrage =  The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

***[NAWSA; NWP; Women’s effort in WWI]
Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914)