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How Did Theodore Roosevelt's Approach To Regulating Big Business

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How did Theodore Roosevelt’s approach to regulating big businesses in the United States differ from Woodrow Wilson’s? Very different as a matter of fact. The 20th century presidents, Roosevelt and Wilson, approached the big business problem in the United States at different angles. Roosevelt focused on Standard Oil and the food industry while Wilson focused on the lack of competition and labor laws. Since the problem with big businesses in the United States was so large, Roosevelt and Wilson tackled only certain areas. The first area Theodore Roosevelt handled for big business was Standard Oil. The reason Roosevelt tackled Standard Oil first because he had the Square Deal. Roosevelt said “when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean …show more content…

Roosevelt’s safety concerns were in the sale of food and medicine (Trexler, 2011, pg. 313). The actions Roosevelt took to ensure safe sales of food and medicine were The Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. The Meat Inspection Act set rules for sanitary meatpacking and government inspection of meat products and the Pure Food and Drug Act required manufacturers to list certain ingredients on the label (Divine, Breen, Williams, Gross, & Brands, 2012, p. 757). Because of these acts, Roosevelt regulated how the sale of food and medicine would be done in …show more content…

One of Wilson’s labor laws was the Adamson Act. This act imposed the eight-hour day on interstate railways (Divine et al., 2012, p. 769). Wilson backed this idea of the eight-hour work day in order to avoid a crippling national strike (Ducker, 2016, pg. 228). Another one of Wilson’s labor laws was the Keating-Owen Act. This law is very important because of these three aspects. First, this law prohibited the shipment in interstate commerce of products manufactured by children under the age of fourteen (Divine et al., 2012, p. 769). Next, this law is the first federal child labor law (Divine et al., 2012, p. 769). Lastly, this law was later struck down by the Supreme Court because it gave the government too much authority (Divine et al., 2012, p.

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