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The Progressive EraDuring the period known as the Progressive Era (1890s to about 1920) the U.S. Government became increasingly activist in both domestic and foreign policy. Progressive, that is, reform-minded, political leaders sought to extend their vision of a just and rational order to all areas of society and some, indeed, to all reaches of the globe.America Looks Outward. During the 1890s, U.S. Foreign policy became aggressively activist.

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As American industrial productivity grew, many reformers urged the need for foreign markets. Others held that the United States had a mission to carry Anglo-Saxon culture to all of humankind, to spread law and order and American civilization. In 1895 the United States intervened bluntly in the Venezuela Boundary Dispute between Venezuela and imperial Britain, warning that, under the Monroe Doctrine, American force might be used if Venezuela were not treated equitably. A Cuban revolution against Spain, begun in 1895, finally led to the Spanish-American War (1898), undertaken to free Cuba. From that war the United States emerged with a protectorate over Cuba and an island empire consisting of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The United States also annexed the Hawaii in 1898, completing a bridge to the markets of the Far East. In 1900 the American government announced the Open Door Policy, pledging to support continued Chinese independence as well as equal access for all nations to China's markets.William McKinley's assassination brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency in 1901.

A proud patriot, he sought to make the United States a great power in the world. In 1903 he aided Panama in becoming independent of Colombia, then secured from Panama the right for the United States to build and control a canal through the isthmus. In 1904, in the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, he asserted the right of the United States to intervene in the internal affairs of Western Hemisphere nations to prevent 'chronic wrongdoing.' The following year his good offices helped end the Russo-Japanese War. Having much strengthened the navy, Roosevelt sent (1907) the Great White Fleet on a spectacular round-the-world cruise to display American power.Progressivism at Home. Meanwhile, the Progressive Era was also underway in domestic politics.

City governments were transformed, becoming relatively honest and efficient; social workers labored to improve slum housing, health, and education; and in many states reform movements democratized, purified, and humanized government. Under Roosevelt the national government strengthened or created regulatory agencies that exerted increasing influence over business enterprise: the Hepburn Act (1906) reinforced the Interstate Commerce Commission; the Forest Service, under Gifford Pinchot from 1898 to 1910, guided lumbering companies in the conservation of-and more rational and efficient exploitation of-woodland resources; the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906) attempted to protect consumers from fraudulent labeling and adulteration of products. Beginning in 1902, Roosevelt also used the Justice Department and lawsuits (or the threat of them) to mount a revived assault on monopoly under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law.

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William Howard Taft, his successor as president (1909-13), drew back in his policies, continuing only the antitrust campaign. He approved passage of the Sixteenth Amendment (the income tax amendment, 1913), however; in time it would transform the federal government by giving it access to enormous revenues.Republicans were split in the election of 1912. The regular nomination went to Taft, and a short-lived Progressive party was formed to run Theodore Roosevelt. Democrat Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) was therefore able to win the presidency.