• Words to Know
• The drive to regulate big business
• The muckrakers
• Theodore Roosevelt's reforms
• Roosevelt and the Conservation Movement
• The election of 1912
• President Wilson's reforms
• Reforms at the state level
• For More Information

Throughout the rapid U.S. industrialization, or development of industry, during the nineteenth century, the government had maintained a laissez-faire, or hands-off, attitude toward the economy, allowing the big corporations to do more or less as they pleased. The top leaders of the nation's industries became so...