US Events

The Clayton Antitrust Act

The Clayton Antitrust Act (1914) passed by the U.S. Congress as an amendment to clarify the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It was drafted by Henry De Lamar Clayton (see picture). This was meant to add more specific regulations to the Sherman anti-trust law. This law says specifically what companies cannot do. They could not lower costs to only some people, force another business to sell only one company's goods, buy another company if this makes a monopoly and stop labor unions from trying to get more wages and better working conditions from companies. The Clayton Antitrust Act was the basis for a great many important and much-publicized suits against large corporations. This event we can connect across continents because was the war was being fought over seas in Europe, over in American the government was trying to protect different companies.

Jeannette Rankin: First Woman Elected to Congress

Born into a farming family, Jeannette Pickering Ranking spent her childhood living on a ranch until her familiy picked up and moved to missoula to attend public school. She attended Montana State University and graduated with a degree in biology, but after visiting her brother in at Harvard she decided to try social work. In 1910 she became involved in the woman suffragemovement and became the fist woman to speak before the Montana legislature. As war in Europe loomed, Rankin turned her attention to work for peace, and in 1916, ran for one of the two seats in Congress from Montana as a Republican. She became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress, and the first woman elected to a national legislature in any western democracy. Only four days after taking office, Jeannette Rankin made history in yet another way: she voted against U.S. entry into World War I by saying "I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war."