election of 1904, the popular Roosevelt soundly drubbed his Democratic opponent
Alton B PArker of NY and the Socialist party candidate, Eugene V Debs of Indiana
REGULATING THE RAILROADS
Roosevelt, late 1904, laid out a reform program that included railroad regulation, employers liability for federal employees, greater federal control over corporations, and laws regulating child labor, factory inspections, and slum clearance in the District of Columbia
1903, he had worked with Congress to pass the Elkins Act -prohibit railroad rebates and increase Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) he urged Congress to empower the ICC to set reasonable and nondiscrimatory rates reform governors LaFollette in Wisconsin and Albert Cummins in Iowa urged federal action--skillfully traded congressional support for a strong railroad measure
Triumph came with passage of the Hepburn Act of 1906, stregthened the rate making power of the Interstate Commerce Commisson
CLEANING UP FOOD AND DRUGS
Roosevelt was dealing with 2 important bills, these aimed at regulating food and drugs
Upton Sinclairs The Jungle (1906) set off a storm of indignation hoping to do for wage slavery what “Harriet Beecher Stowe had done for chattel slavery
Sinclair was disappointed at the reaction- was hideous and he threatened to publish the entire “sickening report” if Congress did not act--MEat sales plummeted , demand for Reform grew.
MEat Inspection Act of 1906, stronger than the packers wanted, set rules for sanitary meatpacking and govt inspection of meat products
Pure Food And Drug Act, passed more easily Samual h Adams, a muckraker, exposed the dangers of patent medicines in several sensational articles in Colliers’..
PAtent medicines=Dr Harvey W Wiley, the chief chemist in the Department of Agriculture, led a “poison squad” of young assts who experimented with medicines reorganized American MEdical Association, joined the fight, and the act