In 1908 Grace Abbott became director of the Immigrant's Protective League (1908-1917). She called for regulation of employment agencies, compulsory education, and open immigration. She later served as director of the Children's Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor.

In 1909 Alva Erskine Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, inheritor of two of the largest fortunes in the United States, lent her name and financial support to striking garment workers in New York City. She was also an active member of the Congressional Union, an important suffrage organization in the 1900s.

In 1900 Carrie Chapman Catt was elected president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and would remain a prominent leader of the movement into the 1920s.

In 1909 Herbert David Croly published The Promise of American Life, in which he advocated a platform of reform and administration he called the "New Nationalism." The term, and the...