1911
Robert M. La Follette, Senator from Wisconsin helps found the National Progressive Republican League, which advocates the direct primary, direct election of senators and state constitutional reform.

U. S. troops are sent to the mexican border to protect American citizens and property. The fighting during the Mexican Revolution is so close to the border, that U.S. citizens gather to watch.

The Supreme Court, under the Sherman Antitrust Act, orders the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company.

The United States passes a bill for direct election of Senators under federal supervision.

Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. In this tragedy 146 workers, most of them women, died. Many of the victims had been trapped inside the building because management had locked the emergency exists to prevent malingering. It was the worst industrial tragedy in New York City history and echoed across the nation. For the next three years, a state commission studies not only the cause of the fire but the general working conditions of the factory. By 1914, the commission issued a series of reports calling for major reform in the conditions of modern labor.

Illinois is the first state to pass a law to assist mothers with dependent children.

Listen to Irving Berlin' s first hit song "Alexander Ragtime Band."

Andrew Carnegie establishes the Carnegie Corporation of New York with an endowment of $125 million to support educational projects.

1912
Conservative Republicans win control the Republican National Convention. They re nominated William Howard Taft for president. Roosevelt and his delegation stormed out of the convention and organized into the Progressive Party (the Bull Moose Party).

Democrat Woodrow William and his running mate are elected to the presidency on the "New Freedom" platform.

Congress authorizes an 8-hour day for all workers under federal contracts.

James Weldon Johnson, African writer and composer publishes the novel Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.

Jim Thrope, an American Indian, wins both the decathlon and the pentathlon at the Olympics in Sweden. He is called the world's greatest athlete. Later his medals and honors are taken away when it is discovered he had played semiprofessional baseball as a summer job while in college.

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