Regulating the Economy.

The American blend of republican government and capitalist economy, in combination with the nation's vast natural resources, had catapulted the United States into the first rank of world powers by 1910. Nevertheless, the national ideal of freedom had its limits. Enterprising capitalists, free to act as they wished, were amassing vast wealth to the point of monopolizing an entire sector of the economy. Presidents Roosevelt and Taft had used the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to breakup some of the most egregious monopolies, but by the 1910s it was clear to many Americans that further regulation of industrial and financial interests was needed. Thus, the Wilson administration, with help from progressives in Congress and political pressure from a variety of organized reform groups, pushed through a series of measures aimed at making the federal government a more efficient and effective regulator of...