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| 1909, March 4–1913, March 4 |
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| WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT, 27th president. | 1 |
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| 1909–12 |
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| Foreign relations of the United States. In 1909 Taft and Philander C. Knox, his secretary of state, interceded with China to secure the participation of New York bankers with British, French, and German capitalists in the loan for the construction of the Hukuang Railways in China. This gave rise to the charge of dollar diplomacy. | 2 |
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| 1909, Aug. 5 |
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| The Payne-Aldrich tariff disregarded party pledges and maintained protection. | 3 |
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| 1910 |
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| Urbanization. The urban percentage of the U.S. population increased from 19.8 in 1860 to 45.7 in 1910. The number of cities with over 100,000 people increased from 9 to 50, whereas cities of 10,000 to 20,000 rose from 58 to 369. Special U.S. census data revealed that of 11.8 million new city dwellers counted between 1900 and 1910, immigrants accounted for 41 percent, American-born rural-to-urban migrants accounted for 29.8 percent, natural increase accounted for 21.6 percent, and incorporation of new territory accounted for the remainder. Black migration to cities within and outside the South also gradually increased. | 4 |
| W. C. Handy (1873–1958) wrote “Memphis Blues” (1909) and “St. Louis Blues” (1914), signaling the movement of African-American music into the mainstream. | 5 |
| Henry Ford's (1863–1947) Model T inaugurated a new mode of mass production and the automobile as a new form of mass transportation by bringing it within the financial reach of the average consumer. | 6 |
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| Jan |
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| Taft removed Gifford Pinchot from the forestry service as a result of the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. | 7 |
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| March 19 |
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| Insurgent Republicans in the House moved to strip the Speaker of the House of his power by supporting a resolution providing for the election of the Rules Committee and the exclusion of the Speaker from its membership. In 1911 the Speaker was deprived of the right of appointing other standing committees of the house. | 8 |
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| Aug. 31 |
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| In his speech at Ossawatomie, Kans., Theodore Roosevelt enunciated his doctrine of the New Nationalism. This augured ill for Taft. | 9 |
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