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Theodore When Roosevelt assumed the presidency, business and political machines dominated the landscape, carving up territory, buying candidates, and manipulating legislation. The courts usually defended moneyed interests, and had little care for the needs of the common folk. The president wielded as much power as the machines allowed. TR vowed to empower the presidency, and empower it he did. After a brief period of appeasing conservatives, Roosevelt launched the first salvo of his war against the machines, filing an anti-trust action against J. P. Morgan's Northern Securities Company. Shortly In seven years as president, he instituted numerous progressive reforms. The Hepburn Act gave the government power to set freight rates. The Bureau of Corporations took action against unscrupulous monopolies. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act ushered in a new era of consumer protections. As an ex-president and Progressive Party candidate, Roosevelt lobbied for policies that would form the core of the future federal government -- old-age pensions, unemployment insurance, a graduated income tax, child labor laws, and women's suffrage. With Roosevelt in the White House, the presidency became a position of popular celebrity. Battering aside years of colorless presidential politics, he blasted his way onto the national scene, an outspoken moral crusader who shot from the hip. A Roosevelt also understood the power of diplomacy. He brokered peace between Russia and Japan in 1906, stabilizing Asia, increasing America's international prestige, and winning the Nobel Prize. He arbitrated a Franco-German conflict over Morocco, possibly delaying the onset of World War I by a decade. Perhaps During Theodore Roosevelt's political career, the United States evolved from a weak, domestically-oriented nation to a country with imperialistic aspirations, from a conservative nation to a more progressive one, from a nation bent on destroying its natural resources to one that had begun to preserve them. The office of the presidency changed as well, expanding its powers and becoming a popular obsession. The politics of Theodore Roosevelt shepherded America into the 20th century. Much of his legacy shepherded America out of that century as well. |
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