ABSTRACT
After 1912, the Wilson administration focused its attention on several major policies mentioned in the New Freedom. Wilson oversaw tariff reform, the ratification of the income tax amendment, antitrust legislation, and the creation of the Federal Reserve. Reformers continued to advocate for social justice issues as well.
The outbreak of World War I fundamentally changed the politics of progressivism. It provided the catalyst for the eventual triumph of prohibition and woman suffrage. Wilson sold the war as a way to remake the world under moral and progressive guidance—to assimilate American soldiers into a common culture, to export American ideals to the rest of the world, and to literally make the world safe for democracy. But World War I proved destructive and deadly, destroying the focus and political capital of the reform movement. An unsurprising turn back toward conservatism closed out the era.
