Theodore Roosevelt Administration: Fighting Corruption and Big Businesses

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Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States of America serving between 1901 and 1909. Roosevelt succeeded as President after the assassination of the then President William McKinley. President Roosevelt was among the most visible Progressives during his time because of his ability to handle domestic and foreign affairs with monumental results expanding the Executive branch of government.
Square Deal
As a primary means of supporting blue collar America, Roosevelt’s policies were directed primarily at fighting against corruption and big businesses. He developed a program named the Square Deal to the American people to increase their standard of living and to put control to trusts or hefty dominating corporations. Trusts were technically not legal under Sherman act 1890. Attempted to merge companies’ interest to create a monopoly on particular products and do away with competition. The main points of the Square Deal were to evaluate problems that were related to economic consolidation to identify which companies were good or bad.
Most companies attacked and referred him as a socialist, but he passionately disapproved the accusations and also Marxism principles. In truth, he never despised the big companies, but he discovered that the trust had in one way or the other improved living standards for almost all American in the last half of Nineteenth century. However, he never liked the power trusts because American people had very little control over them. Still he was not comfortable in giving the labor too much power. The Square Deal policies tried to balance the two of them.
His first act and test of expanding the Executive Branch was during The Great Anthracite Coal Strike when miners from eastern...

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...c structures and other objects of historic or scientific interest in federal ownership as national monuments. National parks were established together with National Forest Service throughout U.S. for conservation and recreation purposes. These actions faced opposition from Western settlers and Congress members who had plans of using the land that was set aside but also the Indians who were forced to stop hunting and fishing. However, settlers were happy with 1902 Reclamation Act that put aside funds to irrigate unlivable chunks of land and previously dry.
Expanding the influence of the Executive Branch proved to be successful for Roosevelt and future presidents. President Nixon during Vietnam, President Regan during the Cold War and President Obama were all able to exercise a unique influence that started largely in part to President Roosevelt’s presidency.

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