CHAPTER 7 When William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president at the age of forty-two. Full of energy and idealism, Roosevelt was well traveled and well read, and he loved strenuous exercise of all kinds. Raised in a wealthy family, he was also well connected, knowing many prominent business leaders. His image as a fairly ordinary citizen enhanced his appeal, and in turn, he championed the causes of the working class by maintaining a balance between wealthy industrialists, business owners, and ordinary workers. He inspired the nation to regain its former glory and this time allowed for fascinating products and discoveries made by the world’s greatest thinkers, as you’ll soon see in this chapter.
WHEN COAL MINERS in Pennsylvania went on strike for higher wages in 1902, President Roosevelt threatened to seize the mines if owners would not agree to arbitration. Similar actions earned him the moniker of “Trustbuster” when he acted to stop unfair practices in the big businesses of tobacco, oil, steel, and the railroads.
_____________ 
_____________
IN THE 1880s, Theodore Roosevelt established a working cattle ranch in the badlands of western North Dakota. Roosevelt spent three years working as a cowboy on his own ranch. He identified himself as a cowboy at heart for the rest of his life.
_____________ _____________
THE TOBACCO, OIL, STEEL, AND THE RAILROAD INDUSTRIES had established trusts, working together to limit competition. The most famous was the Standard Oil trust run by John D. Rockefeller.
_____________ _____________
THE SHERMAN ANTITRUST ACT OF 1890 regulated the operations of corporate trusts and declared that every contract, combination in the form of trust, or other act in restraint of trade was illegal. In the late 1990s, the Sherman Antitrust Act was used by the federal government to prosecute the Microsoft Corporation for abusing its monopoly power by combining its Internet Explorer Web browser software with its Windows operating system.
_____________ _____________
IN FEBRUARY 1902, Roosevelt brought suit under the Sherman Antitrust Act against the railroad trust of the Northern Securities Company. The people loved him for it, and when the case went before the Supreme Court, the decision came in five to four against the trust. Actually, the president did not want to disband all of these trusts—just the most flagrant ones. He called his moderate approach the “Square Deal.”
_____________ _____________
LARGE FACTORIES HAD become the major employers for most people—a result of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. But the downside to that was that workers lacked protection from almost all contingencies, including inflation, illness, disability, and arbitrary firing. Workers soon banded together, demanding a voice and a change in labor conditions. A secret fraternal order called the Knights of Labor embraced workers in many occupations, becoming one of the most powerful early unions.
_____________ _____________
IN 1881, WORKERS met in Columbus, Ohio, to establish a far more effective group called the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Its first leader was Samuel Gompers, president of the Cigar Makers’ International Union and of the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. The AFL gave workers more rights, such as negotiating with employers for better conditions and wages.
_____________ _____________
IN 1892, LARGE numbers of private detectives as well as National Guard troops quelled striking workers at Carnegie Steel Company’s Homestead Mill in Pittsburgh, essentially destroying the union.
_____________ _____________
PRESIDENT REAGAN WAS twice president of an actor’s union, the Screen Actors Guild, which represents television and movies actors working in America. He is the only president of the United States to have also been head of a labor union.
_____________ _____________
IN 1894, a strike by the American Railway Union against the Pullman Company was defeated by an injunction issued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
_____________ _____________
AFTER THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR, the trade union movement grew so that by 1904, more than 2 million workers belonged to trade unions. Almost 1.7 million belonged to the AFL. With great reluctance, employers gradually accepted collective bargaining with the unions as the norm.
_____________ _____________
IN THE EARLY 1900s, two brothers worked closely to develop early aeronautics. Wilbur Wright, along with his younger brother Orville, enjoyed constructing simple mechanical toys, and in 1888 they built a large printing press. The two soon began publishing a Dayton, Ohio, newspaper and opened a bicycle repair shop and showroom in 1892.
_____________ _____________
IN SEPTEMBER 1900, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers tested their first glider invention, carefully noting their findings and correcting the problems they’d discovered. Astutely, they patented their idea and went on to construct their first propeller and a machine with a twelve-horsepower motor. At Kitty Hawk, on December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first test flight in their first powered glider, the Flyer I, making this the first airplane flight in history (though it only lasted a whopping twelve seconds).
_____________ _____________
ORVILLE WRIGHT’S FLIGHT on September 9, 1908 at Fort Myer, Virginia, established several records under government contract for a sixty-two-minute flight and made him an international celebrity.
_____________ _____________
FORD INTRODUCED the Model T in 1908. His first car sold for $850, a hefty sum back then. Ford developed an assembly-line style of manufacturing that became efficient enough to bring prices down. This assembly-line approach became the industry standard in the manufacture of automobiles. By the time the Model T (commonly known as the Tin Lizzy) was discontinued in 1927, its price of around $300 was widely affordable.
_____________ _____________
AT THIS TIME, there didn’t seem to be anything a person couldn’t buy from a Sears catalogue, including a house! Beginning in 1908, Sears offered to ship a customer a house ready to be assembled for anywhere from $100 to just over $600, depending on what kind of house the buyer wanted. Sears sold about 100,000 of these houses until it discontinued the program in 1940.
_____________ _____________
THE PANAMA CANAL connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Before it, ships had traveled from New York to San Francisco by taking the long route around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. Construction of the canal cut this journey by 7,000 miles.
_____________ _____________
THE PANAMA CANAL project became the most difficult undertaking during its time because of its complexity and its cost of $350 million.
_____________ _____________
THE FIFTY-MILE-LONG PANAMA CANAL opened to shipping on August 15, 1914, under United States control. Panamanian resentment over the next century led to new negotiations, and in the 1970s, treaties recognizing Panama’s ultimate ownership of the canal and surrounding lands were signed. Panama controlled the region from 1979 on, and the United States officially turned over the Panama Canal in 1999.
_____________ _____________
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION stems from the generosity of James Smithson, a wealthy English scientist struck by the principles of the United States as well as the amazing discoveries made in our country in the nineteenth century. Upon his death in Italy in 1829, Smithson willed his fortune to his nephew, with the stipulation that if he died without heirs, the entire fortune would be given to the United States to create a fine institution where knowledge would be increased for future generations. President Andrew Polk signed a congressional act establishing the Smithsonian Institution, and construction began in the 1850s.
_____________ _____________
TODAY, THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION is made up of sixteen smaller galleries on and off the National Mall and charges no admission, thanks to government funding and private donations.
_____________ _____________
ONE OF THE signers of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush founded the first public dispensary in Philadelphia and became one of the earliest doctors to characterize insanity as a medical condition rather than the influence of evil spirits. He was considered responsible for ending an epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793.
_____________ _____________
WHILE HE WAS revolutionary in many of his practices, Dr. Benjamin Rush still practiced bloodletting, an ancient and somewhat barbaric method of treating patients plagued by illness.
_____________ _____________
CRAWFORD WILLIAMSON LONG, a Georgia physician, was the first doctor to use ether (a gas that numbs pain but leaves the patient conscious) as a general anesthetic during surgery. William T.G. Morton was a Boston dentist who had publicly demonstrated ether as the first truly effective surgical anesthetic, but Dr. Long was the first to use it during an actual surgery: he painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of patient James M. Venable on March 30, 1842.
_____________ _____________
ELIZABETH BLACKWELL WAS America’s first female physician. She graduated at the top of her class on January 23, 1849, and was the first woman to earn a degree in medicine in the United States. In spite of her accomplishments, American hospitals at the time refused to hire a woman, so in 1857 she founded her own clinic, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.
_____________ _____________
MAJOR WALTER REED was a U.S. Army doctor who in 1900 confirmed the theory of Cuban scientist Carlos Finlay that certain mosquitoes spread yellow fever. This discovery saved thousands of lives during the construction of the Panama Canal (from 1904 to 1914).
_____________ _____________
MANY FAMOUS AMERICANS put their creativity to use discovering new processes and products, but none was as prolific as Thomas Edison, who patented 1,000 of his products, including incandescent electric light bulbs, the world’s first large central electric-power station in New York City, and an alkaline, nickel, and iron storage battery.
_____________ _____________
ALTHOUGH HE WAS POPULAR, President Roosevelt knew he had never been elected to the post in which he now served. At first, it was unclear whether Roosevelt would win his Republican Party’s nomination in 1904. However, the president was successful, winning not only the nomination, but also a landslide victory that stunned the incumbent president himself.
_____________ _____________
OF ALL OF the men ever to serve as president of the United States, only one has actually been able to claim our largest city as his hometown. Theodore Roosevelt is the only president ever to be born in New York City.
_____________ _____________
ON A BEAR HUNT in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt found only a bear cub, which he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. Upon hearing the story, the Washington Post ran a cartoon, inspiring a Brooklyn toy maker to place a copy of the cartoon in his window next to a stuffed brown bear. The term “teddy bear” stuck.
_____________ _____________
ROOSEVELT’S OLDEST CHILD, Alice, loved to shock people by smoking in public, keeping a pet snake, and behaving in other ways that were unconventional for women of that time, including betting on horses at the racetrack.
_____________ _____________
ROOSEVELT WAS the first president to invite an African American to dinner at the White House when he dined with Booker T. Washington, principal of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
_____________ _____________
DURING THE CAMPAIGN OF 1904, Roosevelt vowed not to seek re-election in 1908. When the end of his second term rolled around, he wanted to stay in the position but chose instead to keep his promise. However, Roosevelt helped to pick his successor, William Howard Taft, who won the election of 1908.
_____________ _____________
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT was the first president to buy automobiles for the White House.
_____________ _____________
TAFT WAS THE HEAVIEST president to date, weighing more than 300 pounds.
_____________ _____________
DUE TO HIS LARGE SIZE, Taft once got stuck in a White House bathtub! After being rescued from this embarrassing situation, Taft ordered that particular tub removed and oversaw the installation of a larger tub made to fit him. The new tub would comfortably fit four men of average size.
_____________ _____________
TAFT SERVED ONLY ONE TERM, but went on to become the tenth chief justice of the United States and the only person ever to hold the highest offices in both the executive and judicial branches.
_____________ _____________
DOLLAR DIPLOMACY WAS Taft’s decision to use economic strategies (or “dollars”), such as having U.S. banks and companies invest in other countries, as a way to increase America’s power and standing in the world.
_____________ _____________
THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY remained in its infancy during World War I but quickly grew after 1918, leading to America’s first real consumer buying spree.
_____________ _____________
AT STORES SUCH as Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, Macy’s in New York City, and Marshall Field’s in Chicago, Americans enjoyed boosting the economy. These large stores and catalog companies provided the goods consumers desired, and advertising entered the scene to create whatever desire didn’t already exist. As prosperity spread in the Roaring Twenties, average Americans bought into the stock market, furthering the growth of newly merged companies and corporate giants.
_____________ _____________
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 to champion the rights of African Americans, becoming the most influential black organization in America. Among early members were noteworthy Progressive Era individuals, including Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, William Du Bois (W.E.B. Du Bois), John Dewey, Charles Darrow, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, and Ida Bell Wells-Barnett.
_____________ _____________
SEVERAL INDUSTRIAL AND FINANCIAL POWER BROKERS arose in the early 1900s. Their drive, determination, and uncanny ability to see the future led to vast empires. These hallowed ranks include such legends as the Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegie, as well as some lesser-known names.
_____________ _____________
SON OF A PROMINENT INTERNATIONAL BANKER, J.P. Morgan began his career in banking and after the Civil War reorganized the railroads. By the end of the century, he controlled a transportation empire. In 1895, he founded J.P. Morgan & Co., which lent the U.S. government millions of dollars in gold. In 1901, Morgan organized U.S. Steel, the first billion-dollar corporation.
_____________ _____________
BORN IN SCOTLAND, Andrew Carnegie started life with no wealth to back his rise to power. When he came to America in 1848, he worked as a bobbin boy in a Pittsburgh cotton factory. But he moved forward as a messenger, telegrapher, and in various positions within the Pennsylvania Railroad. During his railroad rise, Carnegie invested in oil, iron, and bridge building. Carnegie, a savvy businessman and ferocious competitor, also became known for his philanthropy, giving away huge sums for future generations to enjoy.
_____________ _____________
IN THE 1870s, he concentrated on steel, and soon the Carnegie Steel Company became America’s industrial giant.
_____________ _____________
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER made his fortune with the Standard Oil Company, formed in 1870. During the 1880s, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust controlled virtually all of the nation’s refineries. Not surprisingly, antitrust sentiments prevailed, and as the trust dissolved, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil of New Jersey as a holding company until the Supreme Court broke it up in 1911. Rockefeller retired early, his personal wealth a staggering $1 billion.
_____________ _____________
UPON HIS FATHER’S RETIREMENT IN 1911, John D. Rockefeller Jr. assumed the reins in business. He also led the board of directors of the Rockefeller Foundation (among other board posts), and in 1930, he began supervising a massive undertaking in New York City. It was an extensive complex of buildings, completed in 1939, known as Rockefeller Center, or Radio City, where the ice rink and Christmas celebrations remain prominent today. Rockefeller’s philanthropy extended also to New York City land given to the United Nations (upon which the international headquarters was established) and to the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.
_____________ _____________
EDWARD H. HARRIMAN was born to wealth, but he built his fortune even further. Success on Wall Street led Harriman to rebuild bankrupt railroads in 1881. The centerpiece of this effort was the Union Pacific Railroad, but he also acquired controlling shares in other lines.
_____________ _____________
BORN A CANADIAN, James J. Hill matched financial wits with some of the finest in business. In the United States in the late 1870s, Hill became a partner in the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, which he acquired along with other lines. In time he consolidated his holdings into the Great Northern Railway.
_____________ _____________
HILL AND J.P. MORGAN paired against Harriman and financier Jacob Schiff in a battle for the Northern Pacific Railroad, causing tremors in the stock market in 1901.
_____________ _____________
THE TRADITION OF NEWSPAPERS vying for readers based on their divergent perspectives dates back to Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, who each found newspaper forums to use as their sounding boards.
_____________ _____________
UNTIL THE 1830s, newspapers were published essentially for the elite, but as printing techniques improved, the number of papers grew. In 1833, Benjamin Day founded the Sun in New York; the New York Morning Herald followed in 1835, founded by James Gordon Bennett. These two competing dailies led to the creation of a news gathering force known later as the Associated Press.
_____________ _____________
THE FIRST MODERN GAME OF BASEBALL was played in 1846. Incredibly, it wasn’t until April 15, 1947, that Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play baseball in the major leagues, breaking the “color line”—a practice of racial segregation dating to the nineteenth century.
_____________ _____________
IN THE EARLY 1900s, Edward Wyllis Scripps formed the United Press Association, which in 1958, after a merger with International News Services, became United Press International.
_____________ _____________
BY 1850, MONTHLY magazines such as Harper’s Monthly, the Atlantic, and the Ladies’ Home Journal informed and entertained Americans. You could buy the Saturday Evening Post for a nickel by the end of the century. Around this time, a young California upstart made himself a success with the San Francisco Examiner, which he took over from his father. With this newspaper, William Randolph Hearst intended to take on another successful publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, whose newspaper empire (starting with the New York World) reached beyond New York City.
_____________ _____________
JOSEPH PULITZER HAD pioneered the newspaper business with the advent of the sports pages, women’s fashion section, and more.
_____________ _____________
HEARST AND PULITZER tried to outdo each other from the comics to coverage of scandals, bringing forth the term “yellow journalism” to describe the sensational techniques often used to attract readers.
_____________ _____________
JOSEPH PULITZER DONATED $1 million to Columbia University for a school of journalism, founded in 1912, and funded Pulitzer Prizes.
_____________ _____________
PRESIDENT KENNEDY IS the only American president to ever win the Pulitzer Prize.
_____________ _____________
ADOLPH OCHS KEPT steering his newspaper, the New York Times, founded in 1851, to serious news coverage with the slogan “All the news that’s fit to print.”
_____________ _____________
TABLOIDS BEGAN AROUND 1919 as more easy-to-read newspapers profusely filled with illustrations and graphics. The New York Daily News was one of the first, followed by Hearst’s Daily Mirror.
_____________ _____________
ON MAY 5, 1906, a powerful earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale rocked San Francisco, causing three days of raging fires that destroyed many downtown and residential areas. Fortunately, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt and hosted the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915.
_____________ _____________
BY 1922, Reader’s Digest truly capitalized on the reading and news phenomenon. Published by DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, this small magazine featured informative but condensed articles that had previously appeared elsewhere. It remains successful with that tradition into the twenty-first century. The Digest, as some call it, inspired other magazine upstarts such as Time and Newsweek, and in 1925, the New Yorker, with its fine fiction, articles, and cartoons. Life hit newsstands in 1936 and proved that pictures could tell a story as well as words.