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How Did Woodrow Wilson Affect The Economy

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Woodrow Wilson, as the 28th President of the United States, enacted some of the most sweeping economic overhauls the American government has ever seen. The "Professor President", by compromising and cutting deals, was able to bring to life his vision of reform in the business world. The Underwood-Simmons bill, the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act were all brought about by Wilson as tools to further his goal of taking away power from the large corporations and banks and giving it to the small businesses and entrepreneurs. First, Wilson enacted the Underwood-Simmons bill in 1913. This Act lowered the trade tariffs for the first time since before the Civil War, and initiated the first …show more content…

"The control of credit also has become dangerously centralized. It is the mere truth to say that the financial resources of the country are not at the command of those who do not submit to the direction and domination of small groups of capitalists who wish to keep the economic development of the country under their own eye and guidance." Wilson wanted to take the power away from the banks in New York and make money more available to people outside of Wall Street by spreading it throughout the country in independent reserves that were controlled by the federal government and not bankers. "We must have a currency, not as rigid as now, but readily, elastically responsive to sound credit, the expanding and contracting credits of everyday transactions, the normal ebb and flow of personal and corporate dealings. Our banking laws must mobilize reserves; not permit the concentration anywhere in a few hands of the monetary resources of the country or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder or impede or stand in the way of other more legitimate, more fruitful uses. And the control of the system of banking and of issue which our new laws are to set up must be public, not private, must be vested in the Government itself, so that the banks may be the instrument, not the masters, of business and of the individual enterprise and initiative…" With control over the interest rates and the amount of currency in

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