The central domestic issues concerned government regulation of railroads and large corporations ("trusts"), the money issue (gold versus silver), the protective tariff, the role of labor unions, child labor, the need for a new banking system, corruption in party politics, primary elections, the introduction of the federal income tax, direct election of senators, racial segregation, efficiency in government, women's suffrage, and control of immigration.
[2][3] The voting patterns established then displaced the near-deadlock the major parties had held seen since the Civil War; the Republicans would dominate the nation (with a brief exception in the mid-1910s) until 1932, another realigning election with the ascent of Franklin Roosevelt.
[4] Phillips argues that, with the possible exception of Iowa Senator Allison, McKinley was the only Republican who could have defeated Bryan—he theorized that eastern candidates such as Morton or Reed would have done badly against the Illinois-born Bryan in the crucial Midwest.
When Republican victory repeated in 1900 by an even bigger margin, business confidence was restored, a long epoch of prosperity was inaugurated, and most of the issues and personalities of the Third Party System were swept away.
Most voting blocs continued unchanged, but some realignment took place giving Republicans dominance in the industrial Northeast and new strength in the border states.
[7] The Democratic Party, after largely being excluded from national politics in the decades following the Civil War, would see a resurgence during this period thanks to the new immigrant voting blocs.
[11] Alarmed at the new rules of the game for campaign funding, the Progressives launched investigations and exposures (by the "muckraker" journalists) into corrupt links between party bosses and business.
The schism with Roosevelt helped elect Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and left pro-business conservatives as the dominant force in the GOP.
[14] As one political scientist explains, "The election of 1896 ushered in the Fourth Party System ... [but] not until 1928, with the nomination of Al Smith, a northeastern reformer, did Democrats make gains among the urban, blue-collar, and Catholic voters who were later to become core components of the New Deal coalition and break the pattern of minimal class polarization that had characterized the Fourth Party System.
The Democrats, led by Woodrow Wilson, dodged the feminist demands for the vote by insisting the states should handle the matter, realizing the South strongly opposed women's suffrage.
[17] By 1928, it was apparent to male politicians that women had weaker partisanship than men, but their opinions on political issues were parallel with a few exceptions such as peace and prohibition.
[20] Most Pietistic Protestants were "dries" who advocated prohibition as a solution to social problems; they included Methodists, Congregationalists, Disciples, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and Scandinavian Lutherans.
In the South, the Baptist and Methodist churches played a major role in forcing the Democratic party to support prohibition.
In the 1920s, however the sudden, unexpected outburst of big city crime associated with bootlegging undermined support for prohibition, and the Democrats took up the cause for repeal, finally succeeding in 1932.
President Woodrow Wilson tried to negotiate peace in Europe, but when Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping in early 1917 he called on Congress to declare war.
On the home front he began the first effective draft in 1917, raised billions through Liberty loans, imposed an income tax on the wealthy, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Food and Fuel Control Act, took over control of the railroads, and suppressed left-wing anti-war movements.
The Roaring Twenties were marked, on the international scene by the problem of the economic reparations due from Germany to France and Great Britain, as well as by various irredentist claims.