Theodore Roosevelt’s Square Deal: A Fair Deal for All Americans

Theodore Roosevelt became president in September 1901 after the assassination of William McKinley making him the most powerful person in the government. As president, Roosevelt advanced political reforms, including the heavy regulation of business. Roosevelt was the first president to successfully invoke the Sherman Antitrust Act against monopolies and continued to restrict businesses throughout his presidency. His reforms greatly influenced economic, environmental, and international affairs as well.

Roosevelt’s platform became known as the “Square Deal” because he vowed not to favor any group of Americans but to be fair to all. When Theodore Roosevelt went into office he made it his mission to get everyone what they deserved, a "square deal. " The square deal meant that everyone had the same equal opportunities. Theodore Roosevelt became one of the most powerful presidents that attacked trusts and corporations to make them just so that everyone could prosper. Methodology: I took many steps in my research.

First I was assigned my topic The Square Deal. So I went and opened my history textbook and looked up my topic to get a general meaning of it. My first step was preparing for my research by brainstorming ideas and possible sources for my topic. Also I formed research questions about my focused topic. I narrowed down my topic to make it manageable and planned how I was going to do my research. Next I accessed my resources by deciding what resources would be best, choosing a few primary and secondary sources.

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After, I processed the information, where I looked closely at the information from my selected sources and decided if they might be helpful towards my assigned topic. For example the main concepts like background information, certain effects from the topic, political views and perspectives. Then I organized the information in different categories, and developed my own ideas about them, which would help me form an outline for my research paper.

Results: The Square Deal was President Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic program formed upon four basic ideas of conservation, regulating business monopolies, nforcing the anti-trust act, and supporting progressive ideas. The three C's of his Square Deal were control of corporations, consumer protection, and conservation of natural resources. Roosevelt was committed to addressing the problems of labor and corporate activity. Roosevelt defended the right of labor to organize, and avoid the use of federal troops to put down strikes. In 1902, he intervened in a United Mine Workers Strike and helped labor get management to agree to binding arbitration.

The arbitrators awarded the miners a wage increase and a shortened workday. Roosevelt also worked to restrict the power of big business by breaking up a monopoly. Also responding to the muckrakers on the unsanitary conditions in food plants and the dangerous ingredients in foods and medicines, Roosevelt endorsed the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, both passed in 1906. The first act prohibited the sale of inaccurately labeled foods and medicines, and the second established federal regulations for meatpackers and a system of inspection.

Roosevelt was at heart a preservationist, but understood the need for compromise. He achieved this compromise through his conservation program, which provided for the regulated use of the nation’s wilderness. Roosevelt designated 200 million acres as national forests, mineral reserves, and potential waterpower sites, and added five national parks and eighteen national monuments to the list of protected lands. In 1908 Roosevelt created the National Conservation Commission to inventory the nation’s resources and manage their use more efficiently.

Having become president shortly after the American victory in the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt was confident in America’s status as a major international power and his approach on his foreign policy. Roosevelt’s most notable achievement in foreign policy was the building of the Panama Canal, an artificial waterway stretching through Panama, which was then part of Colombia. Since the canal connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and vastly shortened shipping routes, Roosevelt saw its creation as important to American economic and maritime interests.

These were all major parts of Roosevelt’s Square Deal that made a impact in restoring America. To this day the action which Roosevelt took in the matter is looked upon, by many of those extremists who can’t see anything good in "big business," as a proof of his undue sympathy with the capitalist. But thirteen years later the United States Supreme Court in deciding the case against the United States Steel Corporation happened to be in favor of the Corporation, which completely justified Roosevelt's action.

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