American Decades
Creating the Federal Reserve System
Progressive Reform.
The fulfillment of many progressive reform goals came after the Democratic Party won both the presidential and congressional elections of 1912, President Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom" agenda included provisions designed to reshape the nation's financial system, which had long been characterized by instability and occasional chaos, and the government's fiscal policies as well. Wilson immediately began to implement his domestic program by calling a special session of Congress to address the tariff. After successfully rallying the legislature and the public, Wilson signed the Underwood Tariff Act on 3 October 1913, reducing tariffs and opening trade. Tariff reform, however, was only one part of Wilson's overall plan. The president then turned his attention to the nation's banking system, whose structure had not been altered since the Civil War.
Federal Reserve System.
The Federal Reserve Act,...
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1910's Business and the Economy
- Overview
-
Topics in the News
- Big Business: The Modern Corporation
- Creating the Federal Reserve System
- Economic Diplomacy in the 1910s
- The Five-Dollar Day
- Labor in the 1910s
- The New Freedom and the Trusts
- Organized Labor and the Wilson Administration
- Postwar Labor Distress
- The Retail Industry
- Seamstresses and Strikes: Women Organizers and the Garment Industry
- Taxation, Tariffs, and the National Economy
- The War Industries Board
- World War I and the Economy
- Headline Makers
- People in the News
- Deaths
- Publications
- Important Events in Business and the Economy, 1910–1919
