US Election Discussion

You're confusing Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican in the 190x's (not sure, but you can search it up yourself).

The economy was almost entirely unregulated, and "trusts" formed in industries that monopolized certain commodities such as oil, railroads, steal, etc. This era is known as the Gilded Age because the seemingly prosperous America simply hid away all the crap that came about as a result of the unregulated economy -- horrible working conditions, low wages, rampant poverty, and a generally screwing over of the majority of America.

Teddy Roosevelt was the first Republican in a looooooong line of presidents (AKA the "forgettable" presidents because they didn't do jack shit) that actually tried to fix the US. He was known as a "trust-buster" because he split up trusts with lawsuits and enacted anti-trust legislation (ironically, his successor, Taft, actually busted more trusts than TR).

TR also introduced government agencies such as the FDA to regulate businesses. Before the introduction of the FDA, processed food was often unsanitary and even dangerous for your health (read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair).

tl;dr: unregulated economy sucks, business isn't altruistic.

I GOTTA APOLOGIZE. I DIDN'T KNOW THE AGE WAS CALLED THE GILDED AGE.

Would have quoted + added on if I knew about that factoid. Sorry for following-up without knowing I was following-up and then you following-up my follow-up.

MrTouchnGo beat me to the punch in his "Gilded Age" post and I would have not posted so audaciously knowing that he had already made the first reference to "Flonnmerica". Sorry for stealing your intellectual thunder. You had that one by a mile.