Theodore Roosevelt's Square Deal

The Square Deal President Theodore Roosevelt relentlessly improved the living, environmental, and business standards of the United States through his progressive program known as The Square Deal. Roosevelt’s Square Deal focused mainly on three domestic improvements, referred to as the “Three C’s:” conservation, consumer protection, and controlling corporations. Shortly after taking over the presidency position, upon the assassination of William McKinley, Roosevelt began implementing reforms from his Square Deal, which led to significant change in American business and lifestyle. An Autobiography, by Theodore Roosevelt, not only conveys the progressive reforms and actions taken by the President, but does so while expressing the opinions and tones of his desire to improve the middle and working classes. The implementation of both the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act significantly improved living and working conditions in the United States. As part of Roosevelt’s Square Deal, both of these laws assisted greatly in providing sanitary working conditions for employees, reducing the sale of contaminated food (which led to a reduction in illness and disease), and restricting the sale of medicines that were potentially dangerous or ineffective. Roosevelt also wholeheartedly supported, and enforced, the fair treatment of workers, most of whom were exploited by their employers through low wages, overworking, and other unfair treatments. In his autobiography, Roosevelt expresses pure relentlessness in achieving improved working conditions and fair treatment of employees: “Everything possible should be done to secure the wage-workers fair treatment. There should be an increased wage for the worker of increased productiveness…special care should be takenby the Government if necessaryto see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit, and that it is not all absorbed by the employer, or capitalist.”1 These reforms contributed to improved lifestyles

Bibliography: Primary Source Document 1.An Autobiography, by Theodore Roosevelt, 1913. (Specifics from chapters 11, 12, and 13). http://bartleby.com/55/12.html http://bartleby.com/55/13.html http://bartleby.com/55/11.html Secondary Source Documents 2. The Unfinished Nation, Sixth Edition, by Alan Brinkley (Chapter 20, pgs. 540-41). 3. http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/history/chapter14section2.rhtml