Teddy Part II

Teddy Part II The Elkins Act • Passed in 1903 • Prohibited railroads from Name: ______accepting rebates • Ensured that all customers paid Regulating Big Business the same rates for shipping their • Roosevelt believed big business products was essential to the nation’s The Hepburn Act growth but also believed companies should behave responsibly. • He spent a great deal of attention on regulating corporations, determined that they should serve Dismay Over Food and Drug the public interest. Practices • In 1901, when three tycoons Food joined their railroad companies • Food producers used clever tricks together to eliminate to pass off tainted foods: competition, their company, the – Dairies churned fresh Northern Securities Company, milk into spoiled butter. dominated rail shipping from – Poultry sellers added Chicago to the Northwest. formaldehyde, which is • The following year, Roosevelt used to embalm dead directed the U.S. attorney general bodies, to old eggs to hide to sue the company for violating their smell. the Sherman Antitrust Act, and • Unwary customers bought the the Court ruled that the tainted food thinking it was monopoly did, in fact, violate the healthy. act and must be dissolved. Drugs

Regulating the Railroads • Another way to ensure businesses competed fairly was through regulation. • Railroads often granted rebates to their best customers, which meant large corporations paid Upton Sinclair and Meatpacking much less for shipping than small • Of all industries, meatpacking farmers or small businesses. fell into the worst public • To alleviate this problem, disrepute. Congress passed two acts. • The novelist Upton Sinclair exposed the wretched and unsanitary conditions at Roosevelt’s Thoughts meatpacking plants in his novel • Recognized that natural The Jungle, igniting a firestorm resources were limited and that of criticism aimed at government should regulate meatpackers. resources • Roosevelt ordered Secretary of • Disagreed with naturalist John Agriculture James Wilson to Muir, who helped protect investigate packing house Yosemite Park and thought the conditions, and his report of entire wilderness should be gruesome practices shocked preserved Congress into action. • Believed that conservation • In 1906 it enacted two involved the active management groundbreaking consumer of public land for varied uses: protection laws. some preservation, some economical

Roosevelt’s Solution

• The Newlands Reclamation Act The Meat Inspection Act of 1902 reflected Roosevelt’s beliefs.

Pure Food and Drug Act

Environmental Conservation In the late 1800s natural resources were used at an alarming rate, During Roosevelt’s presidency, 24 and foresting, plowing, polluting, and reclamation projects were launched overgrazing were common.