ABSTRACT
The late 1890s marked some major changes in the United States: the growth of imperialism, the rise of big business and the subsequent reaction to it, and the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt. William McKinley’s election in 1896 showed the strength of the Republican Party despite the Populist threat. In 1898, the outbreak of the Spanish–American War demanded a national discussion of the role the United States would play in the globe. J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie concentrated their business interests into United States Steel, demonstrating economic growth while not resolving workers’ demands for fair wages and treatment. Despite the recovery from the Panic of 1893, clashes between capital and labor continued.
Theodore Roosevelt, thrust into the presidency with McKinley’s death, came to articulate so much of the progressive ethos. His presidency highlighted the Square Deal, a demand for government action to improve the lives of workers, making concessions to labor and symbolic gestures to racial equality, while not truly dismantling the institutions of inequality. The federal government was far more active in reform—domestic and international—than it had been a decade ago.
