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Eugene V. Debbs
He entered politics as a Democratic City Clerk in 1879, and in 1885 he was elected to the Indiana State Assembly with broad support from Terre Haute’s workers and businessmen. Debs organized the American Railway Union, which waged a strike against the Pullman Company of Chicago in 1894. After embracing socialism, he became the party’s standard-bearer in five presidential elections. -
Jane Addams
Inspired by English reformers who intentionally resided in lower-class slums, Addams, along with a college friend, Ellen Starr, moved in 1889 into an old mansion in an immigrant neighborhood of Chicago. Hull-House, which remained Addams’s home for the rest of her life and became the center of an experiment in philanthropy, political action, and social science research, was a model for settlement work among the poor. -
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt unexpectedly became the 26th president of the United States in September 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley. Young and physically robust, he brought a new energy to the White House, and won a second term on his own merits in 1904. Roosevelt confronted the bitter struggle between management and labor head-on and became known as the great “trust buster” for his strenuous efforts to break up industrial combinations under the Sherman Antitrust Act. -
Andrew Carnegie
In the early 1870s, he entered the steel business, and over the next two decades became a dominant force in the industry. In 1901, he sold the Carnegie Steel Company to banker John Pierpont Morgan for $480 million. Carnegie then devoted himself to philanthropy, eventually giving away more than $350 million.
